When it came to matters like hunting, some important knowledge could be transmitted using words—like where one might find some diamphidia larvae to poison an arrowhead, or which animal sinews made the best bowstrings. But the most important forms of knowledge could not. This kind of knowledge, they insisted, could not be taught because it resided not just in their minds but also in their bodies, and because it found expression in skills that could never be reduced to mere words.

But what we forget is that while it’s easy for us to parse, others may not feel the same way. While we have spent lots of time thinking about something, or know a lot about it, we often fail to account for the fact that others may not be in the same position.

And abstractness is the cause.

The more people learn more about something, the more they naturally start to think about it abstractly.

As Chip and Nancy put it, for people afflicted with component focus, “wholes are not the ‘sum of their parts,’ they are a function of one part.” The deeper a person’s expertise, the worse this narrow focus gets. Chip and Nancy show how “the curse of knowledge” accentuates the coordination troubles caused by component focus: Experts wrongly assume that—because a subject comes so easily to them after learning about it for years—what they know is obvious and can quickly be grasped by others. Experts unwittingly create coordination snafus by failing to pass along essential information to people in other positions and fields because they assume it is self-evident. Or, when they try to pass information along, experts provide explanations they believe are easy to understand but are incomprehensible to people who aren’t indoctrinated into their circle.

To put its wisdom simply, one could say the fundamental human challenge is this:

It’s hard to learn if you already know.

Unfortunately, we are hardwired to feel as if we know—as if we see reality itself rather than a version of reality filtered through our biases, backgrounds, or expertise. But we can unlearn the habit of knowing and reinvigorate our curiosity.