Curse of Knowledge
Updated 2026-08-01
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A cognitive bias described by the economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber, and widely applied in teaching, writing, and product design. Once a fact is known, the mental representation of it is difficult to suppress, so the knower cannot accurately simulate the state of not knowing. Experts in particular omit premises that feel self-evident and substitute terminology for explanation. The result is a systematic overestimate of the audience's comprehension and a communication gap that the expert cannot perceive from the inside.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Audience simulation: assume your reader lacks the premise you find most obvious, and supply it explicitly. - Jargon sweep: replace every term of art with a plain description or a concrete analogy. - Feedback loop: test comprehension with real beginners rather than imagining their state of mind.
Anchor fast decisions
Knowledge is stored as an integrated representation that automatically supplies the missing steps, so recall feels like reconstructing the whole chain. Because the expert experiences the full chain while speaking, they assume the listener receives it too, and they systematically omit the intermediate links. The bias resists introspection because imagining ignorance requires suppressing knowledge that is already active, which is precisely what the knower cannot do reliably.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledgeverified
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