My daughter (11) has developed another irritating habit.
Whenever you say something to her she replies “I know”
- Your sister needs help. — “I know”
- We are late for school — “I know”
- E = MC squared — “I know”
- The cat is on fire — “I know”
Of course I explode. How can you possibly learn anything new if you think you know it all already?
Poor girl. Having me for a father. Mind you, you should have met my Dad.
It gets worse as you get older
Being older doesn’t necessarily make you wiser, it just means that you have seen more.
Our natural inclination is to try to make sense of what we see today by matching it with what we saw yesterday, always reinforcing our beliefs, but rarely challenging them.
I know, I know, I know…
It is called confirmation bias.
But sometimes you really do learn something new
Let me give you an example…
In my last post I wrote “there is no I in team“.
I was wrong. Thanks to Annette Franz for the enlightenment (proof below).
Now the killer question
Did I really learn something new? Or just reinforce my prejudices?
Mind you, it did make me laugh.
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Read another opinion
Image by Annette Franz
James,
Thanks for the mention. Glad it made you laugh. :-)
Being the mom of two boys, I wonder about the stock “I know” answer, too. Do they really know? Or is it a way to brush me off so I’ll go away because they don’t want to hear it? Or a little of both?
Annette :-)
Definitely a brush off, it is a world wide phenomenon
Hi James, Annette,
Thanks for the picture….brilliant and made me laugh too. But, so true.
Adrian
And of course there’s ‘me’ in team!
Chris
I hope that is the exception to the rule Chris
My preferred countermeasure to the “I know” is to ask a question.
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2006/11/17/illusion-of-explanatory-depth/
Often attempts to encourage kids along takes more energy and especially if we are wiped out by work taking more energy to engage kids and help them discover cool knew things is hard.
A strategy for kids, or executives, is to have them predict and explain their prediction and then see what actually happens. After events it is easy to say “I knew” that would happen. Predicting before they happen is often not as easy.
http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2005/07/14/management-is-prediction/
Thanks for the links John, a helpful strategy