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.