1. It keeps me aware, especially in domains where I'm a beginner, of how it can affect my self-evaluation of performance.
2. It helps me when teaching beginners; I may need to help them realize where they lay in performance; if you don't know you suck, chances are you won't improve.
3. I've 'counseled' many people who are in the upper-middle of performance, when they don't realize how good they are :) this has helped them go for more challenging jobs etc
So when someone says they are good at something, don't just take their word for it.
Yes - by reinforcing in people that confidence is disjoint from competence, and that 'trust-but-verify' is the best policy when evaluating people's competence.
EDIT: ...because your tools are useless in the face of ignorance.
It is useful in pointing out why I prefer medical professionals who express doubt vs those who are super confident.
Case in point: Physical therapists and massage therapists. The farther you go from what your hospital provides, the greater the certainty and confidence signaling. Same with a lot of alternative medical practices. It is effective in explaining why so many people flock to such professionals - because they always diagnose you and tell you what your problem is. And then the patients turn around and say "These doctors are incompetent, and their methodology is a sham. They could not tell me what my problem was, with all their years of training, whereas the <insert alternative professional> figured it out in just one sitting. And it all made sense, too!"
While I think there are in fact useful insights that the individual can glean directly from this paper, we shouldn't forget that scientific papers exist for a larger purpose than to be the tools of self-improvement or the weapons of our social wars.
Pure research is often useful to society because we don't know what's going to prove useful beforehand. Knowledge can also be useful to a person because simply because it satisfies their curiosity.
But in both cases it's the potential benefit to people that make it worth doing.
Growing up in a bicultural Asian/white household, reconciling these two viewpoints was one of my greatest sources of childhood angst. My Asian academic dad was all about learning for its own sake, and he'd look down upon the politicians and businessmen who sought to use science to further their own ends. My white teacher mom was very much "What's the point of information if you don't use it to do some good in the world?" This is a gross generalization, but I've seen strong echoes of this in the working world as well, eg. the stereotypical Chinese Ph.D working in a lab or at a computer whose results are then going to get commercialized by a Harvard MBA.
The reconciliation I eventually came up with is basically "You get what you ask for." On a factual level, cultures that value truth for its own sake tend to have a more accurate understanding of the truth, but then they get steamrolled by cultures that value truth for what it can do for them, but only if that other culture is on the same basic technology level. Then you get a very interesting dynamic where the usage of science for military purposes (often viewed as a "deal with the devil" by those in academia) ends up "carving out" safe spaces for scientists and academics where pure research is protected and supported by politicians for its usefulness.
I think that satisfying your own curiosity/the desire for knowledge is a valid reason to pursue knowledge.
I don't think knowledge needs to be directly useful to be worth pursuing.
But, all cultures amd people pursue knowledge they believe to be valuable in some way.
No culture encourages it's people to record the number of specs of dust on their floor before they sweep just because they value truth.
At a minimum (assuming that it held up; it's been widely criticized since) it would tell us that self-assessment, even aside from intentional dishonesty, is a dangerous basis for assessing ability in intellectual domains.
Conversely, it also would inform us that people that mis-assessing their own abilities in certain ways may well be honest rather than padding or demonstrating false humility.
I suspect that's exactly why it's popular, and why the critiques and followup papers that show this result doesn't hold up to real-world scrutiny don't seem to have any effect on the public perception of this paper.
It gives people an excuse to feel superior. I think it's a meta effect, because it's one of those specious, great sounding results that is super easy to understand and super easy to believe, but isn't actually true. Everyone has someone in their life that is aggressive and annoyingly over-confident.
This paper has some really big flaws, it's probably a bad idea to apply it to any real world situation including opponents. It can't benefit society to have everyone making incorrect assumptions that confidence proves a lack of skill.
That idea seems positive to me. If we could change our feedback mechanisms (via education and so forth), we could increase self-awareness and reduce incompetence.
Also, we tend to think of "incompetence" as extremely negative, but they use it in a specific way that is meant to be descriptive and not an insult.
That's my take on it anyway. I really don't know.
I like the paper, because it's a good reminder to seek out tutors / mentors early when learning something, and to take them seriously when they say you have a lot to learn.
Taking the point further, can anyone think of a mechanism by which the paper has a positive effect? The ignorant person who is overly self-confident presumably would be immune from its lessons, while the informed person is not better informed about their domain.
How does the knowledge of the paper's findings benefit society? (I ask this because the paper's findings seem to be widely celebrated.)
To the extent it makes readers more hesitant to boast or claim superior knowledge, it's a good thing, but I have to think that those predisposed to such boasting will continue rather unfazed. Maybe I'm just too much a pessimist.