Curse of knowledge(en.wikipedia.org)
en.wikipedia.org
Curse of knowledge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
6 comments
I found that this often applies to software developers. As someone who writes the code and understands the product internally, you lose the ability to relate to the end-user. You just don't see things the way end-user sees them. This is the reason having a non-technical co-founder on board is useful -- their mind is uncorrupted by the knowledge of internals.
There's a good quote related to the Curse of Knowledge in a conversation between Daniel Ellsberg and Henry Kissinger as told by Ellsberg: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-li....
[deleted]
OK, nice link, but was there something in particular you had in mind when you posted this, or did you just assume we'd figure it out (in which case I question if you read the entry)...
I think it's relevant to a lot of things posted here. For example, any programming language advocacy article based on non-objective engineering qualities like 'here's a benchmark'.
How does that relate to the phenomenon of forgetting that other people don't know as much as you when you're trying to convey information to them?
Well, it's evident to you that having all methods/functions/X be mockable/pure/Y is the best thing since sliced bread because your bacon has been saved so many times by testing/referential transparency/Z; but to someone who has not been saved?
You could ask that question to just about every person who submits a link to HN. Why do Wikipedia article submissions attract these comments? There are nearly 4 million articles in the English namespace alone. Is it not reasonable that some of them may occasionally pique a person's interest and make them want to spark some commentary around the topic? I've done it.
To add a little to the discussion:
Yihong Ding wrote an interesting article titled "The Curse of Knowledge and the Semantic Web" in 2007 for my (now very much on-hiatus) blog Semantic Focus: http://www.semanticfocus.com/blog/entry/title/the-curse-of-k...
To add a little to the discussion:
Yihong Ding wrote an interesting article titled "The Curse of Knowledge and the Semantic Web" in 2007 for my (now very much on-hiatus) blog Semantic Focus: http://www.semanticfocus.com/blog/entry/title/the-curse-of-k...
Just thought it was interesting and that it might interest HN as well. There's nothing more to it! In fact, I'm currently going through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases and this one grabbed my attention as it is a bias technical people are particularly vulnerable to (we often hear about engineers' difficulties at clearly communicating with customers/management/investors). Also related: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Inferential_distance