The more you know, the more you don't know
What can we do to stay ourselves in this day and information age
The more we know, the more we don’t know. Why do I believe this?
Well, learning about the various diverse topics in society and going down different rabbit holes has led me to this conclusion: The more ideas I learn about and begin to understand, the less I truly know and understand. I’ve heard various philosophers and geniuses such as Aristotle and Albert Einstein say an iteration of this. And it is true. For example: the stock market. The more you learn about the fundamentals of the market, the technical analysis of the price action and historical moves, the trends of the markets and current news, the less you know about where that stock will go and its future price, especially in the environment we are in now. This is connected to the system that we succumb to as humans: cognitive biases. Specifically, this deals with psychology and the cognitive bias of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a paradox, where we are ignorant about our own ignorance. (1) Moreover, we are oblivious to the things we don’t know. The information age exacerbates this, where we are constantly bombarded with news and information from people who claim to be experts. The problem is, our lives move so quickly, we don’t have time to check and verify how credible each piece of information we are receiving is. This leads us to have fake news and facts that we believe are true, running rampant in our heads.
So how do we combat this?
The first step in change is being aware. This is a hard first step because as humans, we are poor at self-examination. This is due to our metacognition not being our best skill. However, learning about these types of biases and properly examining the areas and topics we believe to be experts in, can help us swing closer to being more transparent with our actual level of knowledge. As one of my favorite authors, Ray Dalio states, “think about people’s believability to assess the likelihood that their opinions are good.” Basically, discern the reality of our abilities and how well we are skilled in certain areas of life. More people need to become comfortable saying “I don’t know", or “I’m not as well-versed in this as I think I am.” By challenging yourself in this way, you can become one step closer to being better, more curious, and independent-minded.
How does this connect to curiosity and being independent-minded?
We all come from different environments, backgrounds, and people that help form the way we think and act. This process starts from a very young age when we are taught how to learn from our teachers and educators, how to love from our family and friends, and how to behave by our parents and guardians. And it is to protect us. Because there are some actions, we just can’t do if we are thinking differently from everyone else. That’s part of why we have fears. Our ancestors would die if they weren’t scared of heights, living near cliffs, on top of mountains, etc.
Nevertheless, conventional thinking isn’t the best way to view the world. We can't differentiate between what is true and what we are taught to be true. It limits our creativity. This prevents us from being the most open-minded we can be, thus preventing new useful information and opportunities to come to us. For example, think of startups. Many people thought the concept of an app that has disappearing photos as a way of conversation wasn’t the best idea. Regardless, this idea ended up being worth 122.25 billion dollars (Snapchat). It’s hard to fathom ideas and thoughts like this when we are limited in our own thought processes and convictions. This is why we need to cultivate curiosity and independent-mindedness to be our best, most open-minded selves.
The first step is overcoming the Dunning-Kruger effect and realizing we don’t know as much as we think. This forces us to be more curious, so we can actually try to know more. Ask questions, research topics we are interested in, pick the brains of people who work on or with ideas we are interested in, work with curious people. This is how we become more independent-minded and take control of our reality. (2)
That’s part of why I started this blog. Diving into topics that I was curious about and getting the opportunity to learn even more. Start creating public content that I can be judged on and share my research, opinions on ideas. This creates accountability, helps me receive feedback & improve, and with luck, creates a virtuous cycle that brings me closer to my goals and aspirations. (3)
Hopefully, this encourages others to chase whatever they want in this life, overcome our human tendencies and biases, be independent and curious. It’s not an easy process, but nothing worth having comes easy. Let’s be great.
Resources
Trends I'm seeing
Sustainability
The importance of Data
Non-Fungible Tokens(NFTs)
Important questions
How confident am I about this topic and how confident should I be?
How skilled am I in this? How do I fare with the most successful in the field?
Can I explain this topic to a 6th grader?
Quotes
Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you - Henry David Thoreau
Thinking is the hardest kind of work — which is probably the reason so few engage in it. - Henry Ford
Music on my mind
Juicy- The Notorious B.I.G
Rest in peace 🐐
“If you don’t know, now you know,”
Meme
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