Sorry isn’t the hardest word.

One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn is to say

“I Don’t Know”.

Those three little words carry so much more emotional baggage for me than the word sorry ever has. Sorry is easy to say by comparison. To say sorry I have to overcome my pride and accept someone else’s point of view, the idea that something I did or said may have upset another person.

Admitting “I don’t know” means confronting a basket full of emotions it has taken most of my adult life to understand in myself. Saying I don’t know feels like an acceptance of failure, therefore it’s not only my pride that is hurt, but also that feeling of being judged, of being surreptitiously accused of being an idiot, which then descends into defensiveness. It also brings up feelings of worthlessness at not being able to help and of generally being a disappointment. All things I’m sure a good psychiatrist would have a field day with.

So much of online discourse is combative. You wave your knowledge around like a mighty sword and use it to batter your opponent in a zero sum confidence trick. Somebody must win. Saying “I don’t know” to someone in this situation is treated like a victory to the more confident person who has an answer, regardless of how wrong they may be. I’m reminded of a saying:

“Debating with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon. It knocks over the pieces, craps all over the board, then struts around like it won.”

This article of an interview with David Dunning, one half of the creator of the Dunning-Kruger effect highlights the difficulty of getting people to admit they don’t know something. When given the choice of saying “I don’t know” or giving a completely false, uninformed answer, people generally give the latter. *Cough* Brexit *Cough*. The number of times people on Question Time have shouted, “It’s not that complicated, we should just get on with it and leave” about Brexit makes me cringe.

I have been fascinated by the Dunning-Kruger effect ever since I heard about it. The idea that the less I know about something the more I think I know about it sounds quite offensive on the face of it, but being aware of it means I now see it and experience it all the time, not only in others but especially in myself.

Part of my job is to simplify processes. I may start off thinking something will be straight forward, until I start asking questions and soon realise there is a whole world below the surface of every subject that I know nothing about. I ask a lot of questions, which I’m sure pisses people off, but accepting my limited knowledge and trying to remove assumptions makes it easier to do my job.

Having an understanding of the complexity of the world and my limited knowledge of it has been somehow liberating. It’s far less stressful to be able to say “I don’t know” to a question and move on, than feel immense stress trying to best guess a scenario, then look like more of an idiot when it becomes clear I know nothing. Or even worse, become defensive at the audacity of someone daring to question my (questionable) knowledge.

The only thing I know for sure is that I don’t know anything.

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” — Shakespeare. As You Like It.