How To Overcome the Curse of Knowledge
Knowledge becomes a curse when we fail to transfer it to others.
The curse of knowledge is our inability to understand what it is like not to know. It’s a cognitive bias that makes us assume others have a basic understanding of what we communicate.
In a psychological experiment, researchers divided people into two groups — tappers and listeners.
The tappers tapped the tunes of popular songs, and the listeners tried to guess them. The tappers believed the listeners would guess at least 50% of the pieces correctly. The listeners got only 2.5% of the songs right.
Experts suffer from the curse of knowledge more than others.
Humility, curiosity to know what others do not know, simplicity and clarity of articulation could help avoid the curse of knowledge.
