The Dunning Kruger Effect, The Taste Skill Gap, and Knowledge Organization
The Learner's Journey, Creative frustration and Bottom-up knowledge.
The Dunning Kruger Effect
How do you know if you are good at something? It’s a tough question to answer. Science shows that we are terrible at judging our own capabilities.
Most novices assume that they already know a lot about their subjects. This is due to a cognitive bias called the Dunning Kruger Effect.
The peak of Mt.Stupid: Let’s say you started playing Tennis for a few weeks and managed to win a few games. Soon you feel like you know pretty much everything about the sport.
You have now reached the Peak of Mt Stupid. We might have seen any number of people who are at this stage. Sooner or later, they will face a real challenge and come into terms with the scale of their ignorance.
The Valley of Despair: If you are somewhere between a novice and an expert, you realize that there is so much more to learn. At times, you may even feel disappointed and start thinking that you will never be good at this.
This is the Valley of Despair. Don’t get settled here, keep going.
The Slope of Enlightenment: If you ask the same question to an expert, he will say that he is pretty good at his craft, but it’s hard to know it all. He will say that he is learning every day and not too worried about becoming an expert.
He has learned to enjoy the whole process. This is the Slope of Enlightenment where they see possibilities for endless discoveries and insights.
People on the Low end of the competency spectrum tend to overestimate their skills and people on the high end of the spectrum see expertise as something that anyone can attain.
Examples of this bias can also be seen in business and government:
Startup founders being overly optimistic about building a profitable company (E.g. MoviePass)
Failed companies that underestimated the complexity of solving a problem (E.g. Theranos)
Governments underestimating the launch of a new public welfare program (E.g. Obamacare)
Practical Takeaways.
When you are a beginner, keep your head low, get quick feedback, iterate, and learn quickly.
Keep experts and mentors in the feedback loop.
Read more books about the subject and never stop learning.
The Taste Skill Gap
Creative work is hard. When you start out in any creative field, you have very high expectations out of yourself. If you are a Youtube vlogger, you want to make videos like Matt D’Avella. If you are a writer, you want to write bestsellers like J.K. Rowling. If you are a photographer, you want your photos to look like Peter McKinnon’s.
The problem is, when you start out, you have great taste, but rudimentary skills. Ira Glass, writer, and creator of the popular podcast, “This American Life” explained this idea in this now-famous quote.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.
A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass
So if you are a creative person who is not happy with the work that you are making now, don’t quit. Keep producing a lot of work. Fight your way through!
The Structure of Knowledge
Knowledge is the greatest capital in today’s economy. How we collect and organize knowledge will impact how we live and work. Understanding the basic principles of knowledge organization is essential for any knowledge worker.
There are four levels in which we collect and organize knowledge.
Random- Every time we come across a random article or tweet, we are exposed to a random piece of information. On its own, this information may not be very useful. Yet, human wisdom is built upon these fundamental units of information.
Linear- When you string together random information in a linear way, it becomes a logical unit. It can now be shared with other people. This is how we structure our speech and writing.
Networked- The real fun begins here. You start to make connections with things you have learned before. You see similarities between ideas across multiple domains. Slowly, you start to see a pattern emerging from the chaos. This is when you move to the next level.
Hierarchical- As you expand your web of knowledge, you see patterns. Such patterns can stand on its own. All you need to do is clean it up and arrange them in a simple hierarchy. All books fall into this category. A Book has a main title, chapters, sections, and subtitles. The reader can enter this structure of knowledge at any level and work upwards or downwards.
Practical Takeaways
If you are a writer, you can apply this pattern to develop the structure of a book.
Pick a topic and start collecting all the random bits of information you find.
In the next phase, string them together in a linear way (E.g. A blog post or essay)
Next, use a networked knowledge organization tool like ROAM research
As this network builds over time, see the common themes, and start creating your outline.
If you are a student, you should create your own outline of the textbook. Break down the information in the book and build your own structure from the ground up. By doing this, you will own your learning process.
Breaking down the sources of knowledge and building from the ground up is the most effective way to deeply understand a subject.
Footnotes