🔍 Key insights
The Dunning-Kruger Effect – The less you know about a topic, the more likely you are to overestimate your knowledge about it.
The Illusion of Knowledge – We often believe we understand how things work, when in reality we only grasp the surface.
Heuristics – Mental shortcuts that save time but can frequently mislead us into making poor decisions.
📚 Go deeper
🎥 Related videos:
Why Incompetent People Think They’re Amazing – A look into Dunning-Kruger with vivid examples.
The Backfire Effect – Explains why correcting misinformation can make people even more convinced they’re right.
📖 Further reading:
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – A brilliant deep dive into how heuristics and biases cloud decision-making.
The Knowledge Illusion by Steven Sloman & Philip Fernbach – Reinforces the idea that most of what we “know” is collective, not individual.
🎧 Podcast to listen to:
The Knowledge Project: Episode #139 – Annie Duke on Decision Making Under Uncertainty
💡 Think for Yourself
When was the last time you felt incredibly sure of something—and later found out you were wrong?
What’s a “simple” everyday object or system you think you understand? Try explaining it in detail—what did you get right or wrong?
☁️ Thought Experiment
You’re elected mayor of a city. You must design a traffic system without using any existing infrastructure. How well do you understand traffic flow, pedestrian behavior, and public policy coordination?
Now imagine you spoke confidently on it in a meeting—without ever studying it. How often do we do this in everyday life?
Cheers,
Kevin