[Cayde-6]

Often the people who know the limits of their knowledge overcompensate for it when speaking with others. There's a lot of "I think", "it should", "I may be wrong" and other noncommittal hedging to cover the slimmest of chances and be on the safe side. It goes beyond simply conveying the known risks/probabilities clearly and objectively.

To someone in the same domain, all of those caveats are commonly accepted/implied, so they become tiresome and muddy the points being made.

To someone outside the domain, it unnecessarily erodes confidence in the supposed domain-expert speaker's abilities and recommendations. It's even worse when put up against someone else does speak with confidence. I've lost count how many times I've seen that leading to stakeholders accepting a suboptimal solution.

[urthor]

To write the problem out another way.

It's the contrast between what primordial lizard brains want. And what reality actually is.

Often I see:

Lizard brain wants: Simple, agreeable, opinions from authority. Stated confidently.

Reality: Nobody is completely sure. Probably requires some nuanced discussion and critical thinking.

Problem is, if someone expresses an unconfident opinion. And I reckon I see this all the time:

Primordial lizard brain computes the message as:

"This person isn't knowledgeable. Reduction in status."

IMO there isn't a good way in life to say "I don't know" about a topic. Without primordial lizard brains treating that as a reduction in status.

It's a huge problem.

I think our brains are just wired to be attracted to simple answers, have a bias for action over discussion. And avoid deep, reflective, critical conversations.