The Curse of Knowledge

Curse of knowledge is a devilish curse, says psychologist Stephen Pinker. We don't notice when we know something others don't - it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Experiment by Stanford University student Elizabeth Newton shows how this works. She asked volunteers to tap out songs and then guess which one they were listening to. They guessed correctly just two and a half percent of the time. The people doing the tapping simply couldn't imagine what it would be like to hear only the taps.