Knowledge can become your enemy if you are not careful (The Curse of Knowledge)

Knowledge can become your enemy if you are not careful (The Curse of Knowledge)

Common sense tells us that knowledge brings power. But do you know that knowing too much might do you harm?

Let’s imagine that you’re talking to a new friend. You talk passionately about Google, Apple iPhone, Twitter, blog, and other IT stuffs. You even swing your hand and gesture around while your new friend listens. Later, he shyly tells you that he doesn’t understand what you’re talking about. He doesn’t even know what Microsoft Windows is. You’re shocked suddenly (with your mouth wide open).

“How can someone don’t even know simple computer stuffs?” you asked in disbelief.

You might shake your head, laugh at him, or even look down at him. Little do you know that the real problem lies in you – You got cursed by your own knowledge.

What’s The Curse of Knowledge? How does it affect us? And most importantly, how to prevent it from creeping into our lives? We’ll slowly explore the dark side of knowledge in this article.

The Curse of Knowledge states that when we know about something well, we forgot how it feels like without knowing what we know. We don’t remember how it’s like before we learn ABC, and can’t connect ourselves to newbies who start to learn simple things in baby steps. We fail to see others’ struggle from their perspective because of the knowledge gap. Possibly, we understand others better when we lose our memory or unlearned what we have learned (ok, this one is a joke).

So what’s the big deal with The Curse of Knowledge?

It causes failure in communication and potentially spoils relationship. When the gap of knowledge between talker and listener is huge and the talker fails to communicate at the same level with the listener, the listener will find it hard to understand the talker (since the talker doesn’t understand that the listener doesn’t understand him). It’s like a rocket scientist explaining Quantum Physics to a school kid.

End up the listener might not remember much about what the talker talks, or he loses interest altogether. It becomes an empty talk where information enters one ear and leaves through the other ear. The talker might as well just keep quiet and go home to sleep, without wasting his and other people’s time.

The Curse of Knowledge also causes arrogance in some “experts”. They look down on newbie because they assume people should know what they know, since it’s natural for them to know what they know. You can see older internet forum members bashing new comers who are not familiar certain rules. These older members forget that they were once a newbie as well and they don’t just suddenly know everything right after they came out of their mothers’ womb.

* Read this blog post for an excellent example of how The Curse of Knowledge strains relationship.

So how does The Curse of Knowledge trigger communication failure?

In communication where knowledge gap exists, such as the conversation between expert and layman, problem arises when the expert assume that others think like themselves. When the expert asks himself, “do people understand what I’m talking?” The answer is yes, because he himself understands. So he just assumes others understand as well. He talks about capital gain tax and economic stimulus package to the old lady living next door, assuming she’s nodding happily in agreement.

Experts tend to think with abstract ideas, which is hard for layman to grasp. Sometimes experts fail to convey abstract idea in a concrete form, which causes communication problem as the knowledge gap is not bridged, since layman needs explanation in simple and tangible terms. How can a person who’s still learning A for Apple comprehend the lecture about A for Aerodynamics?

Another similar problem is the used of jargons. Jargons are words used by experts that are unfamiliar to the outsiders. When experts fail to know that their audience doesn’t understand the terms used, they become like gibberish talkers.

It’s natural for someone to talk in a way natural to them. They talk smoothly to someone on par in knowledge and feel natural with it. So naturally they tend to talk in the same way with layman without realising that the gap of knowledge exists. They might possibly get annoyed when the audience can’t get what they say, as it breaks their assumption that people should understand things at same level as them (unnatural).

So what can we do to break this curse and avoid miscommunication?

The first thing to do is to check the knowledge level of the audience. Don’t assume everyone is the same. If the audience is a group of experts, then it’s good for you. You can talk naturally with them. Otherwise you should be sensitive and avoid using abstract ideas and jargons.

It’s a good idea to convert your abstract, advance ideas into concrete, tangible, everyday message where everyone can understand. One way to do so is by using simple analogy to describe your ideas. For example, you can use planting trees as an analogy to describe long term investment. This effectively closes the knowledge gap and everyone understands each other.

Story is an effective tool to express your ideas to others. It’s concrete, meaningful, and people can relate their experience to it. More importantly, story can clearly simulate experience, which is a nice way to learn something. Instead of throwing tons of graphs, numbers, and boring facts at your audience, tell them stories that will evoke their emotion and make them care. Buying their heart is just as important as selling your idea.

Finally, you should understand that patience is needed to teach or inform others something new to them. It’s normal for you to get annoyed a bit but that’s how learning process works. People need time to learn as education is like investing your time to develop others. They are not stupid for not knowing something, but have room for improvement. That means you may have to go through the slow process of explaining things like A for apple, B for boy, C for cat…to your juniors/clients/laymen etc. After all, we ourselves started out by learning 1+2=3.

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Readers’ contribution:

Lisalicious says:

hey, I agree with having story as a tool to communicate when people do not get the jargons or confused with the level of explanation. However, to explain or tell a story requires a lot of patience to do so.

Most people in the working world do not have patience nowadays as they are bog down by workload and stress themselves.. thus creates an unhealthy environment and appears unfriendly to the new employees…
*one of the example*

foongpc says:

Not many people have the patience to explain everything down to the most basics to newbies. Not everyone is cut out to be a patient teacher. Especially in this fast paced world. That’s why we have miscommunications and misunderstandings.

Soha says:

I like this post. It is totally correct and I just had a conversation with a friend about this yesterday about some expert on tv talking about some medical condition and using all these jargons! How would we, who are not in the field expected to understand? I also think the best lecturers are the ones who tell stories or relate them to our daily life which everyone can relate to…

kenwooi says:

a very interesting writeup. i agree with what you’ve mentioned.
sometimes knowing to much and trying to be intelligent can make it harder for us to communicate with others. it’s better to be moderate when it comes to sharing knowledge and never to be over-using the “greatness” of our acquired higher-level knowledge.

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