Reverse curse of knowledge - NorikiTech

The “curse of knowledge” is a common term when we hear about teaching beginners. The experts expect the newcomers to the field to know way more than they actually do. The professionals have forgotten what it’s like to be new.

To have the curse of knowledge, then, is to consider simple what many people find hard or impenetrable. You’re stricken with the curse of knowledge if you think “that’s obvious” about sizable chunks of your field, or “I thought everyone knew that.” No—if everyone knew that you’d likely be out of a job.

As you may have guessed, the curse of knowledge is an illusion. You are working under the false premise that what you know is easier to acquire than it actually is, and that other people know more than they do in reality.

With that out of the way, what is the reverse curse of knowledge? Now that software engineering and tech in general have become such a sprawling, ever-expanding mess network of knowledge, outside your particular specialty you can only learn about things, not the things themselves. And when you have approximate knowledge of many things, everything starts to seem hard.

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