Argumentative Essay On Chris Mccandless

Chris McCandless, a 24 year old young man found dead in a van in the middle of Alaska. He was a smart, transcendentalist, college graduate who believed it was best to live life alone and in the wilderness. For two years McCandless through his journeys met many people who helped him get to Alaska. Chris McCandless was very confident that he would be able to live in Alaska alone and would not take anyones advice. Many individuals in the world are overly confident when talking about their jobs, sports, skills or activities they may do or have. The individual thinks they are way better than they really are, “the eponymous Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias whereby people who are incompetent at something are unable to recognize their own incompetence. And not only do they …show more content…
Since he was oblivious to not being as good as he thought, he suffered consequences. When Chris went to Alaska he brought only a few supplies that would not allow him to survive in the Wild, “A year earlier he’d subsisted for more than a month beside the gulf of California on five pounds of rice and a bounty of fish caught with a cheap rod and reel, an experience that made him confident he could harvest enough food to survive an extended stay in the Alaska wilderness, too” (Krakauer, 1996, P.162). It has been found that “the more incompetent you are at something, the less likely you'll realize you're bad at it unless a professional points it out” (Klosowski, 2014, para. 6). This is an example of the DKE because he was incompetent on his journey. Chris thought he knew what he needed and that he would survive, but because of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, Chris Died of starvation in the wild. If Chris could point out that he was not as good as he thought, he would have brought more food and supplies to gather food. This would allow him to live throughout his