On the Curse of Knowledge and the need for a glossary

Greet­ings, dear readers!

At Smol­tek, we have more PhDs per square meter than most places have cof­fee mugs. And with great know­ledge comes a pecu­li­ar chal­lenge. It’s called the Curse of Know­ledge. And no, it’s not the title of the next big hor­ror flick.

Let’s dial it back to 1990 when a research­er named Eliza­beth New­ton at Stan­ford set up a play­ful exper­i­ment. She had people tap out the rhythm of a famil­i­ar song on a table (like “Happy Birth­day”), and oth­er people guessed the tune.

Now, as the tap­per, with the song’s melody play­ing clearly in their mind, it seemed easy to nail the tune, right? They assumed the guess­ers would nail it about 50 per­cent of the time.

The real­ity?

A mere 2.5 per­cent guessed cor­rectly. Talk about lost in translation!

This exper­i­ment was a fun glimpse into the Curse of Know­ledge. Once we know some­thing intim­ately, like a catchy tune or, in Smoltek’s case, techy terms, it’s tricky to remem­ber what it’s like not to know it. Our thoughts waltz seam­lessly with advanced terms and abbre­vi­ations, leav­ing oth­ers to won­der if we’re speak­ing in some spooky lingo.

So, yes, this curse haunts the tal­en­ted cor­ridors of Smol­tek. As we pen down our insights, some­times a rogue tech­nic­al term or elu­sive abbre­vi­ation slips in, like an unex­pec­ted guest at a party.

But worry not, dear read­er! We’ve whipped up a potion to dis­pel this ghostly jar­gon. For every term that might leave you feel­ing you’re read­ing a spell­book, we have craf­ted an explan­a­tion. You can find them all in our gloss­ary. Think of it as our way of keep­ing the com­mu­nic­a­tion spir­its friendly.

Learn more about the Curse of Knowledge

The Curse of Know­ledge is a cog­nit­ive bias that occurs when an indi­vidu­al with a deep under­stand­ing of a sub­ject unwit­tingly assumes that oth­ers pos­sess a sim­il­ar level of know­ledge. This can lead to mis­com­mu­nic­a­tions and mis­un­der­stand­ings. Coined by eco­nom­ists Colin Camer­er, George Loewen­stein, and Mar­tin Weber, the term was first intro­duced in the Journ­al of Polit­ic­al Eco­nomy in 1989.

Eliza­beth Newton’s 1990 exper­i­ment is a clas­sic illus­tra­tion of this bias. Her study revealed how a person’s know­ledge sig­ni­fic­antly influ­ences their expect­a­tions of oth­ers’ under­stand­ing, often lead­ing to over­es­tim­at­ing what is com­monly known. To coun­ter­act this bias, it’s cru­cial to act­ively sim­pli­fy explan­a­tions, avoid jar­gon, and seek feed­back to ensure your mes­sage is under­stand­able to a broad­er audience.