Or: Why We Can’t See the Gap Above Us
(I saw this idea while scrolling on social, but then got distracted and when I came back my feed refreshed and I lost it… but if I find the source again I’ll link to it here.)
There’s a theory that we can’t understand or differentiate the levels of expertise above us. We can only differentiate them below us.
If we have reached a certain level of experience, we can reflect back and understand the levels we went through and see where people below us fit into those levels. But for expertise above us, it’s hard.
We might know someone’s better (or even way better), but we don’t understand those levels. If we’re not musical and we see a classical pianist in concert, we can’t tell how good they are. We know they’re amazing, but we can’t distinguish those higher levels…
What does this mean? It means we need to be careful when there’s someone obviously above us in expertise. We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it’s only a small gap – because we don’t understand the level they’re at. The frameworks mentally they’re using are often out of our comprehension.
When we try to debate or argue or discuss with them, we’re arguing from a different mental model. This highlights to them our lack of experience and expertise but gives us a false impression of where we stand.
When discussing a topic with someone who is way ahead of us in terms of expertise, sometimes – if they have time – they’ll be able to come down to our level and discuss at that level.
But often they can’t. They’re time poor. They have better things to do than discuss at our level. And so we fall into the trap of thinking they don’t get it. When in reality, they’re speaking from another level of expertise we can only hope to achieve.
The obvious ‘armchair experts’ on social fall into this trap all the time.
As do you and I, most likely.
