The Curse of Knowledge

Wait! what? Knowledge is a curse? I thought knowledge is a blessing, a power, a boon - anything but a curse. How can knowledge be a curse?

Well.. ‘Knowledge’ per se is not a curse. The curse is about an assumption, or presumption to be precise.

Typically, academics are often unknowingly affected by the curse of knowledge.? Curse of knowledge is the presumption that since we have a certain amount of knowledge, we assume that others also have the same amount of knowledge and hence focus on building on that. Simply put, because we know something, we assume that others also know the same thing.?

Communication is an important essence in knowledge sharing, and knowledge dissemination commences with setting a common platform of understanding. Unless we have an idea about how much others know, we may not be able to transmit our ideas in the same magnitude and spirit. This certainly varies with demographic difference: we modulate our tone, ration and censor our content of communication when speaking to heterogeneous populations (such as children, persons of authority or vulnerable population). But while speaking to a more or less homogenous population, such as students of a class, people attending a seminar on a particular topic or ‘friends’ in a social networking site, we impose certain prerequisites that make them qualify to be in such a position and take for granted that they have substantial knowledge (apriori) of the matter being/ to be discussed. While this may not be completely untrue; we attribute a certain intelligence level and previous knowledge to the listeners. But if this is not the case, then the purpose of such communication is lost. This is in fact a cognitive bias, and is the curse of knowledge.

When managers delegate jobs to their subordinates, they unconsciously presuppose that the employees have sufficient and necessary knowledge to execute the job. Worse still, they even think that the employees possess the same skills as that of the manager. So when an employee comes back and justifies his inability to carry out an assigned task, the manager may not be in a position to really understand the difficulty. This cognitive bias acts as a veil that shades the manager’s world view, and becomes confused as to “How can he not understand / do such a simple task?”. This veil is the cognitive bias caused due to the curse of knowledge.?

The if-I-know-this-so-do-they attitude often ends up in truncated communication. The listener may be too embarrassed to ask questions for clarification, or may have the fear of being ridiculed for not knowing apparently an obvious piece of information. The speaker may take it for granted that the listeners understand all what they say and never bother to double check. This disposition of displaced ego-levels severely affects meaningful relay of information.

We are all affected by the curse of knowledge. Imagine how many times you were frustrated because someone asked for more clarification on something that is pretty clear to you. People think in different ways; they process information in varied methods, make sense of their environment in diverse manners and possess different skill sets (often complementary) to what you have. Unless we understand this basic premise of diversity, the curse of knowledge is going to stay, and snowball into major errors.

Inclusion begins by accommodating the differences of the ones near us. Let’s not presume things and be a little more empathetic in trying to understand the world from their perspective as well. And importantly, let's also understand that our? world gets a little better when we ask as well as accommodate well-intentioned questions. An initial step would be to acknowledge the curse of knowledge that we (may) have.