Are you a lazy thinker?

It might surprise you to know, but you don’t know as much as you think you do. This is not to imply that you don’t know a great deal about some things, just that you’re probably overconfident in your ability to explain others. Let’s demonstrate this with a quick quiz.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you in your ability to answer the following questions (10 = very confident; 1 = I haven’t a clue):

What is the capital of France?

What is the world’s largest land mammal?

What was the middle name of Wolfgang Mozart?

What year was the battle of Hastings?

The Velocipede was a nineteenth-century prototype of what?

Which actor starred in The Matrix?

It’s likely that some of the answers will come instantly to mind. However, some you might not know at all, while others you might know you know but still be unable to access the information — you might be able to see the face of the actor from The Matrix or list some other films they’ve been in but still fail to recall their name. In other words, there is a clear destination, even if that destination is I don’t know.

There is a big difference in answering questions like the ones above and having to explain concepts, theories, and other types of knowledge that don’t have pre-set destinations or end points.

With this is mind, on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that you can explain the following topics:

Climate change

Vaccines

Depression

Memory

You may have opted for 10 on some of these, but I suspect your confidence is lower than for the first list.

And now for the disappointing part — you’ve probably over-estimated your ability to explain most of the topics in the second list. You may, of course, have specialist knowledge in one or more of these subject areas — I’m quite confident in my ability to explain memory because I’ve been studying it, teaching it, or writing about it for around 25 years.

I also thought I knew a lot about climate change, until my 76-year-old mother asked me to explain it to her and I was gobsmacked by…