Every few days there is a new question here at Cognitive Sciences asking for a scientific term to describe a behavior that the inquirer finds fault with.
Examples include:
- Is there a term for a person who moves from one field of expertise to a new field and has an inflated belief in their competence in the new field?
- Is there a formal name for the "love" of arguing?
- https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/7639/is-there-a-formal-name-for-the-annoyed-by-who-tries-to-force-me-trait
- Name of the bias where someone really needs something after they find out it exists
- Is there a name for the tendency to use proper nouns often in conversation?
- and so on
Reading this type of question, I often get the impression that the person asking them is affronted that the person they describe in obsessive detail did not agree with their view or follow their advice, and now want to regain their sense of self-importance by pathologizing the other. It seems to me that many, if not most, of these questions are not based on facts but on the egomaniacal deslusion of knowing better.
For example (using the first question above):
- How does the inquirer know that the person moving to a new field is not an expert in it? Is he himself expert enough to judge the other's expertise? It is a well-known fact that even experts often disagree so violently that they accuse each other of complete ignorance. So how can the average cogsci.SE passer-by competently judge anyone's expertise or lack thereof?
You'll be easily able to find similar objections to all other questions.
So what is the name for that affliction?
