Curse of Knowledge
We assume others have the same background knowledge we have when communicating.
The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when someone assumes that the people they are communicating with have the background knowledge to understand. This leads to poor communication, unclear explanations, and frustration on both sides. Experts teaching novices consistently overestimate how much the student knows. The bias is called a 'curse' because it impedes the very knowledge sharing it presupposes.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Expert Technical Writing Engineers write documentation filled with jargon that is perfectly clear to themselves but incomprehensible to the target audience of new users.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
A gardener tells a neighbor to 'amend the soil with compost before planting', assuming they know the purpose of amending and where to get compost.
A project manager schedules a meeting for 'ASAP' and expects the team to know the client's urgency level without further context.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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