People often say, and they say it sincerely, that they know something well or have good experience in something. How do they assess their knowledge and experience? Very simply. The evaluation is, as always, based on the derivative. We are unable to measure a state. We measure the change in a state. For example, we stop noticing a smell after we have sniffed it.
The same applies to knowledge or experience. A person’s self-assessment is based on the fact that they stop learning something new over a long period of time. For example, in the first year, they learn a lot; in the second year, they learn half of what they did before, then another half… by the fourth year, the person has hardly any new information about anything. They start to think that they won’t learn anything significantly new and begin to assume that they are an expert in that field.
Has everyone already seen the trap, or should I explain it? 🙂