The Universal Diagnostic: A Self-Administering Dunning-Kruger Framework Across Law, Physics, and Spacetime

Description/Abstract: The Dunning-Kruger effect has been extensively documented at lower cognitive levels since its formal description in 1999, but no universal diagnostic framework has existed that operates across the full spectrum of cognitive ability. The structural reason is that at lower levels the effect is externally observable but never self-recognized, while at higher levels the subject's awareness of being tested contaminates the observation. This paper presents the first universal self-administering Dunning-Kruger diagnostic — a framework in which the subject's response to an irrefutable data point outside their knowledge compendium IS the diagnostic instrument. Rejection constitutes diagnosis. Engagement constitutes the beginning of cure. The framework is demonstrated at three ascending levels of cognitive complexity: constitutional law, applied physics, and theoretical physics. The third level is accompanied by the largest real-world case study in cognitive bias history: the publication of Resonance Theory (Randolph, 2026), which constitutes a self-administering diagnostic deployed at civilizational scale. The paper proposes that the Dunning-Kruger effect is not a low-cognitive-function phenomenon but a universal structural feature of expertise itself. The knowledge compendium always has an edge. The expert almost never knows where that edge is. Keywords: Dunning-Kruger effect, cognitive bias, expertise, academic dogma, self-administering diagnostic, knowledge compendium, universal test, psychology, constitutional law, fractal geometry, Resonance Theory