Shankar Vedantam

Do you think this intuition is backed up by research, Phil?

You know, I'm wondering, therefore, Phil, if experts, in fact, are more aware of what they do not know, whether education in general can serve the same role, that the more we learn, if we go to school, for example, the more we come into contact with the ideas that might be at the boundaries of knowledge.

Do you think this might be possible?

When we come back, the challenge of engaging with people whose views are strongly held and factually incorrect.

You're listening to Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Cognitive scientist Phil Fernback studies why we tend to believe we know more than we actually do.

It's a pernicious problem that affects many domains of our lives.

Phil, can you talk a moment about how the illusion of knowledge can have serious consequences in our lives, everything from airplane safety to the well-being of financial markets?

I mean, this isn't just fun and games or humorous examples of people believing they know more than they do.

This can actually have serious consequences.

You know, I was talking with a group of doctors some time ago in the Pacific Northwest, and one of them told me that, you know, she has the feeling that when patients come to her, they now come armed with information about the illnesses and problems that they think they have because they have looked up those problems on the Internet.

And she was telling me that she often feels like she's a vending machine, that patients are basically coming and they want to press a couple of buttons and get the medicines that they themselves have chosen for themselves before they've even come to see her.

And she was talking about how dispiriting this is as a doctor and how difficult it is to talk patients off the ledge, to basically say, no, you think you have condition A, but in fact, you have something completely different.

So a moment ago, Phil, you talked about how the illusion of knowledge can apply not just to, you know, our knowledge about how toilets work or how pens work, but also to our political opinions.

We often overestimate how much we know about public policy, and that can lead to heated differences in opinion between people who don't really know what they're talking about.

We got a question from a listener named Rob about that issue.

Here he is.

So, Phil, in a good faith discussion, we want to be curious about someone and ask them questions.