Pulling the Thread

The Illusion of Understanding

By Danny Alpert and Kristin Pichaske

Not long ago, we had only a few sources of news: a newspaper in the morning, Walter Cronkite in the evening. Today, anyone can be a “journalist.” This has problematized a common mental foible known as ​the illusion of understanding:​ we tend to think we know a lot more about most things than we really do. With the decline of media gatekeepers how can we separate experts from amateurs and fact from fiction?

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