Curse of the Nerds
(This article is co-authored with Ahmed Said) We know about curse of knowledge where one who knows assumes that others are likely to know what one knows, even though the majority of a random sample would not have that knowledge. The Curse of nerds is the illusion that most nerds have; regarding their capability to solve any problem or dilemma; no matter what that is, a social problem, psychological, political and whatnot. This tendency to over simplify the problem and over estimate their capabilities is attributed to the professional level they reached in their respective domain plus their experience to “conquer” knowledge and know how of other different fields. Add to that their wide knowledge of gaming or fantasy worlds of super heroes and the likes. This fallacy is aided with the proliferation of bite-sized infotainment videos and summaries, especially with the flood of simplified popular science videos. Only a “noble” nerd would be humble about and skeptical of their k...