What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You

It’s an interesting quirk of human nature that sometimes we are the most confident about the things we understand the least. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it’s been validated across many experiments in all kinds of situations.

People sometimes mistake this as an affliction of the dull-witted and self-deluded. “Look at that idiot who thinks they’re an expert!” But the truth is, we all stumble into the Dunning-Kruger effect more often than we realize. The problem is, in the areas where we lack skill and knowledge, we lack the skill and knowledge to realize that we lack skill and knowledge.  Assessing how skilled you are turns out to be a skill in itself--and a difficult one.

Fortunately, there are a few things we can do to reduce the number of Dunning-Kruger rakes we step on. First of all, we can recognize when we’re most likely to fall prey to overconfidence. Lack of experience is the biggest factor. Intuition in the absence of experience is actually just a guess. And look out for fear as well. When we’re afraid, we often cling to certainty as a security blanket, and it’s hard to see things clearly with a blanket over your head.

The best way to avoid Dunning-Kruger, though, is to simply embrace the joy of not knowing. Once we admit that we’re beginners, it gives us the freedom to be curious, and to ask questions and learn. Eventually, not knowing becomes a habit--and that’s where really knowing actually begins.