The Curse of Knowledge

I remember when I was to be a parent .. I was worried that I would not love my child. Seems a little silly in retrospect but it did cause me a lot of anxiety at that time.

And so I did what I like to do - I asked around. Especially girls who had had their children early and had previously mentioned they felt they were ill-equipped to handle the responsibility.

And one prize winning answer - "Oh it worked out ... it will come to you naturally" !!! I was in one word disgusted by this reply. Until I realized this person was cursed by .... The curse of knowledge !

She no longer remembered how it felt to be unsure, the feelings of uncertainty, of sometimes the sheer terror of having to take care of a small life and where being wrong could mean death ( okay okay sounds like an exaggeration but it felt like the scope for errors was definitely low ). And yes she had her mother to help out at the crucial juncture.

And I see this everywhere - a lack of empathy due to the curse of knowledge. I used to wonder about this phenomenon until I saw the coin termed in "Made to Stick".

A star math student - who is so good at maths that he does not understand how others do not seem to "get it". Presumably he has never known what is it like to be unsure in maths ? Or another computer algorithm genius who does not understand why double linked list is not easy to understand in the first round ! :)
I heard one son berating his parent for not being more receptive to learning to use the computer and was espousing how such fear was completely baseless. CA's wondering how people can confuse creditors and debtors :)

I am also not immune to this flaw.

In what I still think as the most hilarious episode - I wrote a set of Dbase programs for a friend who wanted to do her project in the allotted time and she felt she was ill-equipped to finish it. I had taken a printout of all programs and had handed it to her to type them ( she studied in a different institute ). When she told me it gave her umpteen errors I was puzzled. I had run those programs and they had worked perfectly and did not need any kind of local configuration. When I asked for an error list - I was flabbergasted to find she had typed them all in one program !!!!! In spite of clear demarcation with names of programs at the top ( there were about 6 programs in total ) she had done this.  Phew !!!

I must say I could not fathom how she could not make out something as simple as that ?
Luckily - she made the changes and the programs worked fine. Yet I could not help wondering at her.

This is still something that is not too serious perhaps ( but then if she looks for a job based on that certificate... ?? ) but the curse of knowledge attacks in other areas too.

When a brother is teaching his sister the 2-wheeler, a parent teaching her child, a mother-in-law not understanding her daughter-in-law's inability to merge seamlessly into the household routine .....

I see people who are mentally strong who do not understand or empathize with the plight of the abused. Time and again I hear the same refrain - "How could he / she have .. stayed on ? ", "How could he / she have ended life ?" [ Mind you ... I think it takes an awful lot of courage to commit suicide .. I mean it is "THE END" ... how can one just feel like doing that and of course not worry about the physical pain too  ?? Guess it takes desperation ..... ]

I feel the pathology of a victim is different and unless one understands that compulsions of that person one cannot judge the actions taken by him / her.

For listening / understanding / empathizing - negating the effect of the curse of knowledge and understanding and / or remembering what it felt like at the beginning is key.  It is the key to effective communication.
It seeks first to understand and then be understood.

As for .... why is empathizing important ? This is my take on it - Empathy.