I’ve been watching a range of language podcasts featuring David Perrell and also this other guy named William Fitzpatrick, and their conversations have been pretty interesting and sound; I’m not sure why this started, but I suppose there’s an internal part of me that is unconsciously trying to level up and thus is drawn to this kind of thing, that I inwardly and intuitively feel is needed to improve myself as a thinker.

I was particularly drawn to a single reference in Perrell’s conversation with Steven Pinker, though: 

The Curse of Knowledge – the idea that people who are specialized or expert level in their field of knowledge find it difficult to communicate with others, because they are precisely so well-informed that they think everyone knows what they know when they absolutely do not – and because they use abstractions in order to be able to compress higher level concepts and speak about vast bodies of knowledge even outside of appropriate context, they fail to communicate their ideas. 

I find that I am deeply afflicted by that curse, and that a lot of the things I do – create content – write – learn how to speak that little bit more articulately – visualize images more clearly, accessibly, understand the psychology of other people – are things that I am unconsciously doing with a small conscious aim of getting rid of that curse, getting rid of assumptions that don’t belong, and getting myself to be able to better communicate, and generally just get better at being a human being and participating in society – but not just getting better to the level of being some better communicator or otherwise, but to be able to somehow use it to the hilt.

It is a vain little aspiration on my part, but I hope it will come to light 🙂