
Curse of Knowledge - galaxyLogic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
======
galaxyLogic
I think this is a good description of the state of the US presidential
campaigning currently:

"... sales agents who are better informed about their products may, in fact,
be at a disadvantage against other, less-informed agents when selling their
products. The reason is said to be that better-informed agents fail to ignore
the privileged knowledge that they possess and are thus "cursed" and unable to
sell their products at a value that more naïve agents would deem acceptable"

~~~
galaxyLogic
Another application of Curse of Knowledge of interest to programmers from the
article: "... programmer fails to comment their code because it seems obvious
at the time they write it. But a few months later they may have no idea why
the code exists. "

I often experience something like that but not like I didn't write the
comments. I wrote the comments but a few months later I find it hard to
understand what they are about.

~~~
ksaj
It also applies to magicians and mentalists, but in a slightly different way.

A magician hopeful might watch a magic show and be completely overwhelmed.
Eventually they learn their first secrets, and there is a sudden case of "Oh,
really? That's it?" and something they were previously enthralled with is now
a bit of a bummer. Magic shows become more of a technical puzzle to work out,
instead of the spectator amusement they were before learning the secrets. For
a while, they forget what it actually was about magic or mentalism that got
them so excited. And it is so easy to forget that YOU know the secret, but
your audience doesn't.

The methods may very well be not so dazzling when you know them, but it's the
performance that makes it magical in the first place. And that's where the fun
is for the magician or mentalist, and why it's important to not give away
their secrets (unless you're like Penn and Teller, where sometimes the secret
IS the dazzling part!). Knowledge, to an audience, can immediately make the
show very uninteresting. But as the performer, you have to remember they don't
have the knowledge you have.

~~~
galaxyLogic
Talking about magic, Arthur C Clarke put it well:

[http://lab.cccb.org/en/arthur-c-clarke-any-sufficiently-
adva...](http://lab.cccb.org/en/arthur-c-clarke-any-sufficiently-advanced-
technology-is-indistinguishable-from-magic/)

What you are saying is "Any Magic is just Sufficiently Advanced Technology"
which I guess is the corollary :-)

