They say, “little knowledge is dangerous” and “knowledge is power.” We are so stunned by these sayings, yesterday and today. And perhaps many of us believe in them.
However, psychologists have found that knowing too much or having too much expertise in a particular field can be detrimental, particularly when it comes to sharing knowledge or communication. The more competent one become, the less he is able to understand the difficulties of others to learn. This is a cognitive bias called “the curse of knowledge”. Experts tend to forget about the experience of not knowing something when they were not experts. As a consequence, it becomes hard for them to express their views clearly before others.
Also, in the mind of a beginner there are many possibilities while in the mind of an expert, there are only a few, as an expert thinks that he has already understood many things and need not pay attention to different ideas.
Einstein once said: “The more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know.” He taught us that the more knowledge we acquire, the more we realise that there is still a lot more knowledge to acquire. I think in fact we have the choice of either not to learn anything, or take some new ideas and thoughts and transform them.
Let us not be trapped by the problem of knowledge.
R.K. Manwong
