The 21st Century is the century of information. More facts and figures are readily available
to more people than ever before, and what is not known usually can be
discovered, if one is determined to search assiduously for it. Although everything said in this blog so far
is obvious to virtually everyone, the implications may not be.
Because information is so cheap, we have developed an extraordinarily
inflated notion of what we understand.
However, having access to information is not equivalent to understanding. More important, as we shall see, not knowing
what we don’t know can hurt us.
Although knowing many things superficially is readily achieved,
superficial knowledge most often is of minimal usefulness. Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil pioneered study
of the concept which they called, “the
illusion of explanatory depth (IOED).”
As the phrase implies, those under the influence of IOED think that they
have a much more sophisticated understanding of phenomena than is the case.
Rozenblit and Keil (2002) initiated IOED studies simply, by asking
subjects to rate how well they thought they understood how common, everyday
items work, such as refrigerators. Next,
the subjects were required to write a detailed explanation of the workings of
the items. Finally, the participants
complied with the direction to reconsider and then to re-rate their
understanding of the workings. Not
surprisingly, the re-ratings of their understanding proved significantly lower
than had been their initial ratings.
Presumably, by the study’s end, the subjects had a much greater
appreciation for what they did not know.
For sure, they knew that they should call an appliance repair person
rather than attempting to fix a radically ruined refrigerator.
Follow-up studies have shown that the IOED applies to much more than
appliances and other common items; it also is relevant to a wide range of
phenomena that are abstract rather than concrete, including ethics and politics
(https://meaningness.com/understanding).
The major issue, as I see it, is that we all harbor an inherent
casualness about what we believe we know. We
briefly consider some item or issue when the spirit moves us, and devote just
enough energy to it to enable us to set
it aside as though it has been mastered.
That tendency frequently is of no import because we usually can find an
expert to adequately deal with the item or issue when necessary. You can enlist your refrigerator repair
person or senator to resolve food cooling or legislative challenges,
resectively.
Some things, however, are best handled by you—most notably lifestyle
practices that determine your physical and mental health. Your IOED can cause you to seize upon a
simplistic solution to correct problems with your body or mind when, in fact,
you need much deeper processing to cope with them.
It was my concern about facile solutions to complex problems that led
me to enumerate and explain sixteen change implementation strategies that you
should review when you plan a healthful lifestyle modification. I, myself, had to resist the IOED advice of
editors and publishers to limit what I recommended to seven suggestions, as had
been made the industry norm by such best sellers as Stephen R. Covey's book The 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People. I managed to
resist because I understand and have experienced with patients over 40 years
that every individual is unique and that they succeed over time only when
they implement plans that adjust for
their uniqueness. I knew by direct
experience the pitfalls inherent in communicating according to limitations
imposed by a state of the art IOED mental set. Don't be duped into believing that there are "seven simple steps" to achieving anything.
References
Rozenblit, L., and Keil, F.
(2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: An illusion of explanatory
depth. Cognitive Science, 26, 521-562.
The illusion of understanding.
(https://meaningness.com/understanding).
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