Ability to See Expertise is a Milestone Worth Aiming For

One of the inconvenient facts of expertise is that experts can see more gradients of expertise than novices can. A friend once described it to me as: “there are more levels of expertise than there are types of incompetence”, and I think about that framing a lot.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://commoncog.com/seeing-expertise-milestone-worth-aiming-for/

As usual, you articulated a key concept more succinctly than I was able to when I tried to. But in case you’re curious, my attempts were Faking it – Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist and Language Games – Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist where I share my experiences of trying to speak the language of various experts and occasionally getting caught, showing me where my understanding needed more refinement. I still play this game, but have advanced to generally being able to articulate the big concepts in many fields, even if I don’t have the nuance.

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