Do you ever find yourself wondering why people seem to be getting stupider? Maybe they aren’t. Maybe the world is just getting smarter and the gap between what different people know is widening.

Imagine a circle that contains all of human knowledge. Perhaps the center of the circle, with a radius of one, represents elementary education. A radius of two might be high school, three college, and so on. As humankind evolves, we keep pushing the boundaries of science, art, and general understanding outward. The circle grows, we are in the information age after all. The running joke about PhDs is that they expand this circle by the tiniest possible amount in some obscure subject right at the edge.

I like to think that each person can only ever hold a limited amount of knowledge, maybe represented as a small area within that larger circle. My own circle contains almost nothing about sports, art, or even much history. Other people might know next to nothing about finance, crypto, gardening, or software. I tend to make friends with people whos circles overlap with my circles. For those who do not overlap, I probably either think they are really smart or really dumb. But, realistically, people aren’t dumb, their circle just probably doesnt overlap with yours.

This is ultimately why we pay professionals. I’m thinking about getting a patent, and while I could try to file it myself (or use Rachel who specializes in something different), I’ll hire someone who does this for a living. Why? Because they know the terminology, the process, and how to maximize the outcome. When I talk to the person writing my patent application, I’m sure I sound clueless which is fine. That’s the point.

The other day someone asked me if I knew what a “J-S-O-N file” was. I laughed a little and said, “Oh, a JSON file? Yeah, what are you working on?” At first it was hard to believe that someone in tech didn’t know what that was. Then I stopped and thought about it, and it made complete sense. Of course they wouldn’t. Why would they?

It’s easy to watch someone do something wrong and think “Everyone knows that.” But they don’t. None of us do. We all carry a small, incomplete part of a much larger and ever growing circle. Next time, don’t judge so fast, odds are you have different pieces of the same circle.

• Nice visualization of the metaphore https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
• Sometimes I turn off my brain and my circle shrinks significantly, but I suppose thats a topic for another day.