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NoPickleztoday at 5:28 AM0 repliesview on HN

I feel like its human psychology that as we get exposed to the world and we learn it, we feel like we form an understanding of the world around us at a sufficient level to survive in our current circumstances. Then we have all sorts of stimuli and feedback that tell us whether our understanding is correct or not overtime. Sometimes we challenge that understanding and realise that we were wrong. Life is an iterative process of that.

Then as we move into building a career, we essentially need to understand a topic or field to a degree that we're useful enough to sell it or provide it as a service compared to others.

Do I understand some things more than others? Perhaps. Do I need to understand everything about a particular thing to be knowledge on it, perhaps not.

> Unfortunately, when information is not directly in front of us, our memories and conceptions of it are shaky at best―but our egos are still intact.

I have often found this when as part of my job I have been exposed to a particular area of my field. But years later when presented with questions about it, whilst I can't extract all of the information I have learnt, but if my memory is jogged the information comes back. For example, lets say you learnt a particular skill 5 years ago, but now you struggle to perform it. Egotistically you know you've been able to do it, but your lack of training in recent years prevents you from doing it.