40 Things People Weren’t Aware Of Until Embarrassingly Late In Life

We managed to get in touch with Big_Piccolo_8369, and they said this post was a result of a conscious attempt to create a viral thread.

"I kept on trying to think of questions that would blow up. Since everyone has found out something way too late, and Reddit users love answering questions about themselves, I decided to ask that question," they told Bored Panda.

"I was kind of expecting lighthearted answers, but I was met with random things to do if you get sued or if you buy a house or something. I did see some funny ones so it sort of worked out."

Dr. Adi Jaffe, who holds a Ph.D. in psychology and teaches courses at UCLA that address addiction, pointed out that the more we learn, the more we realize how little we actually know. But when we lack this awareness, we fall victim to the Dunning Kruger Effect (DKE) — a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area.

"Because the world is full of know-it-alls who don’t actually have any idea of what they are talking about—and the more aware we become of this phenomenon, the better we'll be at deciphering the trolls spouting fake news from the truth-tellers," Jaffe explained on Psychology Today.

Many tend to overestimate their capabilities."People will rate themselves as average or above average on essentially all tasks," Jaffe said. "If you understand how averages work, you know this is impossible (some people have to be below average, some are average, and some are above average for the whole thing to work)."

But the incompetent fail, through life experience, to learn that they are unskilled. Why?

"One reason is that people rarely receive negative feedback about their skills and abilities from others in everyday life. We can call this tact, being diplomatic, or respect for others, but the end result is the same: We typically shy away from telling people they messed up. But what DKE teaches us is that people need honest feedback."

There's another reason why so many of us may not accept that we are incompetent or lacking knowledge. We may be ignorant of an important form of feedback: social comparison.

"One of the ways we learn about our competencies is by observing the actions of others. Research shows that, compared with people who are experts in particular areas, people who are incompetent in those same areas are less able to identify the skills in others," Jaffe explained. "Consequently, they are unable to learn that they had less competence in the area and were more likely to overestimate themselves."

So when you think you're really good at something, finding an objective way to assess your expertise might be really useful.