#curse of knowledge

[wesleysniperking]

“Acting like Luffy’s status as captain means his decisions are beyond question contradicts the very foundation of their crew.” Freaking THANK YOU for what you said on that post, especially this line. I’m SO tired of people acting like Zoro was 100% right and objective in that moment or like his way was the only way to handle the conflict.

Absolutely. I’m going to say this—because I often bring up bias when talking about what Zoro said during that moment. When he made the statement about leaving the ship if Usopp didn’t apologize—along with some of the other strong language—people often justify it by saying, “Well, he was a pirate hunter, so he knows better than anyone how a pirate crew should operate.” But that, right there, is a classic example of something called the curse of knowledge.

It’s a bias where someone believes that because they know a little more than others in a certain area, what they say must be entirely right and universally applicable. But Zoro wasn’t a pirate—he was a pirate hunter. He might know something, but not everything. He doesn’t have the full picture. So his way of handling that conflict wasn’t some perfect blueprint. One size doesn’t fit all. And honestly? If we applied Zoro’s style of “leadership” to a modern group dynamic, it wouldn’t work. At all.

People also forget that the Straw Hats are Nakama—not just coworkers or a military unit. Pre-timeskip especially, the crew was still figuring things out. A lot of it was “fake it ‘til you make it” energy. And Usopp? He started questioning his own worth, which is such a deeply human thing to do. But he wasn’t the only one who lost sight of the fact that they were all learning as they went. That’s why I feel like people consistently underestimate Usopp’s intelligence—and that’s a whole other conversation we could have.

But truly, thank you, Anon. I appreciate you. I just like to speak honestly about what sits heavy on my chest, and I’m glad you took the time to see it. Much love. 😘

[thedomesticanthropologist]

Ya'll be suffering from The Curse Of Knowledge and ya dont even know it

I make posts referring to Astarion's reaction to the stats and get a wealth of commentary that digs deep into his psyche and personal knowdlege/information about him like he wouldn't have been insufferable about his perceived popularity or surprised at being not in first place and like

Bruh

Fist of all, it's all conjecture

Secondly, the deep knowledge of his inner workings wouldn't be applicable because he doesn't ACT precisely how he feels inside and it takes the whole game and specific dialogue choices to get him to be honest with himself and figure out his likes and dislikes.

You may know his inner workings to the depths of the Hells but that doesn't mean the character acts on like, FULL TRANSPARENCY and as a fully evolved person in every action they would take/statement they would make.

The curse of knowledge is:

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, who is communicating with others, assumes that others have information that is only available to themselves, assuming they all share a background and understanding. This bias is also called by some authors the curse of expertise

Don't forget that representing a character they way they represent themselves isn't just showing surface level interaction, it's deviating from the curse of knowledge by implying a character would act the way they *act* regardless of if YOU know their inner workings or not

[in-love-with-gwen-stacy]

Me, trying to ignore my family watching the LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special in the next room: you should be glad to be ignorant.

My dog, sitting next to me and chewing on a toy: squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak

Me: knowledge is a curse you shall never hope to bear.

My dog: *drops his toy in my lap, only to immediately pick it back up* squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak

[anerdyfeminist]

Ok now that I understand that new Tumblr user advice is real and isn’t a meme I wasn’t getting….this is another perfect time to reference that post about the curse of knowledge cognitive bias.

I've never been in a social media space that has more of its own, independent culture than Tumblr. (That's not me saying that this site is unique in that, just me reflecting on my own experiences.) By in large, how I see people communicate on Facebook, Insta, Twitter, etc., is largely how they communicate in other spaces. Tumblr, on the other hand, has its own way about it.

That culture can be one of the things that might make someone's experience here the best.........BUT if there are folks who have drastically different knowledge bases about these things, I can see how it may drive new people away from here pretty quickly.

There's no real big "point" to this post, just reflecting.

[nofatclips]

The curse of knowledge or: why people send terrible emails

[allthingslinguistic]

#LingComm day 3: The Curse of Knowledge and short talks

Previously: LingComm day 1: Goals and #LingComm day 2: Terminology and the explainer structure

We started by looking through the twitter threads that people created from last time, talking about what was easy and difficult. You can see these threads on the #lingcomm hashtag -- there were some nice interactions with people outside the class too!  

We did an exercise on the curse of knowledge where one group tapped out a song and tried to get the other group to guess it. In the lab, researchers have found that about 40% of tappers think that their song is clear, while only 2.5% of guessers actually succeed in guessing it. Our percentages were slightly different than that because one group chose the song “We Will Rock You”, which of course has a distinctive clap pattern. (Very clever, dangit.)

We then talked through a few quotes from this article by Steven Pinker, which was the reading, about how already knowing things makes it hard to remember what it was like to know have known them. 

We looked at a couple approaches to fixing it, from the mechanistic (like up-goer five, which makes you use only the 1000 most common English words) to the imaginative (like having an “ideal reader” in mind who doesn’t have a background in the topic). 

Then we had a break for improv games! We started with a quick clap-passing game (synchro-clap) as a warmup, and then moved into telling a collaborative story one sentence at a time, three words at a time, and one word at a time. One of the key things about this game is not being a mind-reader: other people are going to take the story in different directions than you anticipated! 

We then watched a couple video clips of short linguistics talks: the three-minute thesis and two-minute thesis by Sara Ciesielski

This video by Tom Scott, which explains 4 linguistic concepts in under 4 minutes. 

These particular two examples are a good contrast of two distinct styles of lingcomm that are both effective: the thesis explainer has a relaxed pace and uses vivid stories without much terminology or visuals, while the features video has a quick pace, lots of visuals, many terms, and doesn’t really tell stories. But they’re both engaging to listen to, start where the listener is at, and don’t rely on the listener remembering the meaning of a whole bunch of new terms, even when they introduce them (low cognitive load).  

There are also a couple supplementary videos which we didn’t get to but which I’d recommend, especially if you’re following along with this class from afar: this three-minute thesis talk about tones in Cantonese heritage speakers, this video about overcoming the curse of knowledge in three-minute thesis talks and other common difficulties, and this video explaining a neuroscience concept at 5 levels of difficulty. 

The in-class exercise was to talk through how you’d explain a more difficult or challenging concept, such as your own research or a paper you’ve recently read. 

Next class is going to be about debunking myths and changing minds. Reading is this handbook on debunking and homework is to explain a non-basic linguistics topic on twitter (such as your own research or a reading you have for another class), using images such as screenshots, photos, and/or gifs. 

[theemperorsfeather]

"Why is so much writing so hard to understand? Why must a typical reader struggle to follow an academic article, the fine print on a tax return, or

I love the phrase used here:

For Pinker, the root cause of so much bad writing is what he calls "the Curse of Knowledge", which he defines as "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 I know of why good people write bad prose."

"Every human pastime--music, cooking, sports, art, theoretical physics--develops an argot to spare its enthusiasts from having to say or type a long-winded description every time they refer to a familiar concept in each other's company. The problem is that as we become proficient at our job or hobby we come to use these catchwords so often that they flow out of our fingers automatically, and we forget that our readers may not be members of the clubhouse in which we learned them."

[nallamadras]

The Mahout, the Marma Points, and the Heavy Burden of Knowing Too Much

There is an old Indian legend about elephant trainers—mahouts—that perfectly explains why I sometimes sit in my studio staring at a Logic Pro session, completely paralyzed, while the rest of the world just goes ahead and makes music.  Let me paint the picture. You have an Expert Mahout and an Inexperienced Mahout. The Expert has spent decades studying the ancient texts. He knows every…

The Mahout, the Marma Points, and the Heavy Burden of Knowing Too Much