Professional Ignorance Professions
Welcome to Professional Ignorance Week, Episode #2. (This series name really isn’t getting better with age.)
In Episode #1, we learned about the curse of knowledge in museum projects, and one of its antidotes: virtuous professional ignorance.
Are exhibition designers, developers, writers, et al, the only practitioners of this art? Are there kindred souls out there?
Yes! Museums are not uniquely vulnerable to the curse of knowledge, and exhibition teams are far from the only “anti-curse-of-knowledge” operators. Many other professions require preserving a beginner's perspective to translate complex knowledge for non-experts.
Here are a few:
> Exhibition teams must learn quickly, then stop learning at the visitor’s threshold, or their museum will be inaccessible.
> Science journalists have to know just enough to explain, but not enough to overcomplicate (echoes of Einstein’s Rule of Simplicity).
> Documentary filmmakers have to prioritize engaging storytelling clarity over intellectual completeness if they want to make films for more than just experts.
> Trial lawyers have to explain expert evidence to juries who have no prior knowledge, or they’ll lose their trial.
> Medical illustrators have to understand a new discovery well enough to make a clear diagram but no more, or all the people new to the concept won’t understand.
All these professions have their own expertise already. The trick is that they also have to constantly learn a little bit of another expertise fast, just enough for the assignment of the moment.
(One obvious profession is deliberately not on this list: teachers. They operate with a much longer timescale and process, both for their own learning, and for teaching others.)
Here’s the thing:
Exhibition teams are not alone: you are part of a long lineage of professional ignorance professions.
(And your skills are probably, ahem, transferable if you’re ever in a pinch.)
Next, in our final episode: the official principles of professional ignorance.
Warmly,
Jonathan
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MtM Word of the Day:
Professional ignorance. The virtuous practice of preserving a beginner's perspective in order to make more effective content for them. It is not a lack of competence; it is a methodological restraint to help counter the curse of knowledge among subject-matter experts.
