Andrew “Gribbit” Richardson proves his cowardice

Actually, Gribbit is a bulldog, not a pit bull. Pit bulls everywhere are shocked at your assertion.

I appear on Gribbit’s shitlist (the list of people who had the nerve to answer his poll), and I even registered for his site after he commented on my lack of balls! I left him a comment telling him I had registered, asking what he wanted me to do next, and linking to a post about him on my site. His response? Comment deleted, account deleted. I guess that showed me… or something. I think I’ll add him to my list of people I’m 99% sure are parodies. There can be no other explanation.

Correction noted. I hereby apologize profusely to the pit bulls of America.

I disagree that Gribbit and his ilk are necessarily parodies. I think the explanation is much simpler: pure, unalloyed incompetence. These folks are neither capable of rationally assessing the facts, nor of recognizing their inability to do so. There was a study a few years ago [PDF] that outlined this dual disability, and provided empirical evidence of its reality:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

And Beamy makes three! Check out Gribbit’s latest, an open letter to Ed Brayton that specifically notes the evil triumvirate consisting of, well, us. Or at least variations on our names that a fourth-grader would wince at. I posted notice of this at Dispatches maybe ten minutes ago and an exchange is already going between Ed and Gribbit at the latter’s site (of course).

Capt.—I’m tempted to agree with your parody idea after seeing Gribbit’s coda: “by all means don’t take my references of Moonbat, moron, imbecile, idiot, or stupid personally. I call all lefties that, and taking offense at such low level name calling, which I think is accurately descriptive of those who suffer from the mental disease of liberalism, is petty.”

Meatbrain—apropos of your article, the word of the day is “anosognosia.”

Or at least variations on our names that a fourth-grader would wince at.

I know! Someone totally skipped pun class!