The learning paradox
The hidden power of curiosity and the value of recognizing the limits of our knowledge in our quest for learning.
“I’m Not Young Enough To Know Everything”. This quote, which is over 100 years old, resonates very well with my own experience. I have been that kid who knew it all, only to feel humbled by life lessons and to discover that only ignorance could be mastered but never wisdom.
Socrates said “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing”, and my own journey through learning has been one in which the things that I knew I didn’t know outgrew the knowledge I was aware I had. To explain this journey, from “apparent wisdom” to “humble ignorance”, I would like to use the knowledge-awareness matrix as a framework. As a young adult, the matrix probably looks like this:
You don’t know a lot, but your awareness about what you don’t know is very limited. So, in relative terms, the knowledge that you are aware that you possess is a lot more extensive than the knowledge gaps you are aware of. You feel on top of your game, and you don’t have a good framework to understand that your Achilles heel is all the sphere of knowledge that you don’t even grasp exists. This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, and as many of you were already guessing, it affects people of all ages:
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of cognitive bias in which people believe they are smarter and more capable than they are. Essentially, low-ability people do not possess the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence. The combination of poor self-awareness and low cognitive ability leads them to overestimate their capabilities.
Something interesting about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that it can happen in any new area of expertise you embark into, so you can actually feel more capable that you actually are after peeling the first layers of knowledge, only to later discover that mastery takes a long journey.
There is one key personal trait that can help you overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect: curiosity. Curiosity accelerates learning and as you continue acquiring knowledge, you gain awareness of your own gaps. As knowledge and awareness expand, the knowledge-awareness matrix looks more like the following:
As you gain knowledge, you become aware of the things you don’t know. This category of known unknowns, filled with topics you’d like to learn, expands more rapidly than your actual knowledge. To illustrate how your learning ambition can quickly surpass your existing knowledge, Umberto Eco’s antilibrary concept becomes very handy:
The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have. How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point is that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means … allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
Probably the biggest milestone in maturing as a learner happens once you acquire a mental model around knowledge. It helps you realize about the infinite nature of unknown information, and that no matter how much you invest in learning, more learning only grows your curiosity, causing your learning backlog to grow at a faster rate than your knowledge expands.
As a summary, we explored the learning paradox and the Dunning-Kruger effect, which can lead individuals to overestimate their knowledge and abilities. We discussed the importance of curiosity in overcoming this effect and the concept of the antilibrary, which highlights the vastness of unknown information. Ultimately, embracing the infinite nature of knowledge and nurturing curiosity can help us become better learners.
