the knowledge illusion
In 2002, the psychologists Frank Keil and Leonid Rozenblit asked people to rate their own understanding of how zips work. The respondents answered very confidently – after all, they used zips all the time. But when asked to explain how a zip works, they failed dismally. Similar results have been obtained with respect to flush toilets, piano keys, helicopters and bicycles. It doesn’t just apply to physical objects: people have been found to overestimate their understanding of climate change, the tax system and foreign policy.
We know a lot less than we think we do about the world around us. Cognitive scientists call this “the illusion of explanatory depth”, and sometimes just “the knowledge illusion”. Collectively, we know an awful lot, but each individual’s knowledge of the world is much sketchier and more superficial than he or she imagines. Only when pushed to explain what we think we know in detail do we briefly apprehend the epistemological abyss gaping beneath our beliefs.
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