• Blog
  • About
  • Archives

elemental links

brenda michelson's technology advisory practice

The Curse of Knowledge

May 31, 2016 By brenda michelson

sense_of_style_book_cover[Originally published in my 100Stickmen Tech musings notebook. Before it was 100Stickmen Tech.]

The main cause of incomprehensible prose is the difficulty of imagining what it’s like for someone else not to know what you know. – Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style

From The Sense of Style:

The Curse of Knowledge: a difficulty in imagining what it is like for someone else not to know something that you know.

The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation of why good people write bad prose. It simply doesn’t occur to the writer that her readers don’t know what she knows—that they haven’t mastered the argot of her guild, can’t divine the missing steps that seem too obvious to mention, have no way to visualize a scene that to her is as clear as day. And so the writer doesn’t bother to explain the jargon, or spell out the logic, or supply the necessary detail.

Pinker’s Advice for writers and speakers on lifting the curse:

The key is to assume that your readers are as intelligent and sophisticated as you are, but that they happen not to know something you know.

Pinker’s Advice for readers and listeners on falling under the curse:

Richard Feynman once wrote, “If you ever hear yourself saying, ‘I think I understand this,’ that means you don’t.”

Lifting — or even denting — this curse on technology and technologist knowledge is crucial to extending everyone’s digital era acumen, understanding one another, and doing better work.

To borrow from Ladislav Sutnar: the 100 Stickmen [Tech] project aims always to intensify comprehension.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: 100stickmentech

Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

Technology Architect.

Trusted Advisor.

(BIO)

  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Experts Sketch
  • PEW Research: Tech Saturation, Well-Being and (my) Remedies
  • technology knowledge premise
  • The Curse of Knowledge
  • better problems and technology knowledge transfer

Recent Tweets

  • Harshest editorial feedback I ever received “stultified and like death”… (wildly popular paper, as it turned out):… https://t.co/qWNwBCOS5i February 28, 2023 2:16 pm
  • “…where the process of drawing itself can take us. We can follow a suggestion, a squiggle, shadow, or smudge, and s… https://t.co/oRg0x2LoXG November 30, 2022 5:05 pm
  • On the waiting list for Post, join me (on the waitlist) via https://t.co/U8wYK707f6 November 24, 2022 4:17 pm
© 2004-2022 Elemental Links, Inc.
 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.