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In the car a couple of months back, my partner and I discussed a particularly gullible friend of mine.
“She’s suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect,” I told him knowledgeably. “People generally believe they are smarter and more capable than they really are.”
I like being well-read, and well-informed, and feeling slightly superior to everyone else.Credit: iStock
We sailed through the Cross City Tunnel and I silently congratulated myself. I like knowing about things like Dunning-Kruger, and logical fallacies, and Schrödinger’s cat. I like being well-read, and well-informed, and feeling slightly superior to everyone else.
But my partner looked distracted. “Why doesn’t your e-tag beep?” he asked. “I’ve never heard it beep.”
I was still thinking about how gloriously intelligent I was. “Oh, it doesn’t beep,” I said breezily. “I don’t know why. But it works. I get charged for the toll. So, it’s not a problem.”
He looked sceptical, which irritated me slightly. I’m a smart girl. And I know my car.
Later that day, I did the Wordle. After five turns, I had uncovered three of the five letters.
“C-A-something-L-something,” I muttered. I stared at the screen. There was no word that fitted. “Casle?” I wondered. “Caoly? Canlo?” It was clearly an abstruse and esoteric kind of word. The Wordle is becoming insuperable, I thought. I’m a writer, for goodness sake! My vocabulary is pretty wide. I know words like “abstruse” and “esoteric” and “insuperable”. If I couldn’t figure out the word, nobody could.
I gave up. The word was CAULK. I had never even heard of it. What in god’s name was CAULK?
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance,” said Stephen Hawking, “but the illusion of knowledge.”
Illustration by John ShakespeareCredit:
But this doesn’t apply to me. I know what I know – literature, philosophy, psychology, linguistics – but I also know what I don’t know. I cannot comprehend atoms, or astronomy, or blockchain. I have always been terrible at directions and geography. I cannot locate Bolivia or Kyrgyzstan on a map. I don’t even know how to spell Kyrgyzstan. I had to look it up.
Except, I couldn’t look it up. After vacuuming my floors, I’d returned to my computer to find that my home Wi-Fi had gone down. I spent over an hour on the phone to a Telstra rep, trying to sort it all out. He ran tests, he did diagnostics, and he couldn’t get a signal.
“Are you sure the router is plugged in?” he asked me, and I rolled my eyes.
“Yes, it’s plugged in.” I could see the power plug in the socket. “This happens all the time,” I told him testily. “The internet connection in my area is terrible. You need to send someone out to fix it.”
The rep booked me a service call. I thanked him wearily and hung up. Later that night, the internet magically turned back on.
“Oh my god!” I cried to my daughter. “I can’t believe it! The Wi-Fi is working!”
“Huh?” She glanced over from her laptop. “I plugged the cord back in the router. Someone must have knocked it out.”
I cancelled the Telstra man.
Last week, after several more silent toll roads, my partner searched for my e-tag. “It isn’t in the car,” he said. “You need to call up Service NSW and order another.”
A gentle reminder in the Cross City Tunnel.Credit: Tamara Voninski
“It’s in there somewhere!” I told him confidently. “I get charged every month for tolls, so it’s obviously working!”
He took a deep breath. “You know they scan number plates, right? You’ll still be charged for tolls, but you’ll be charged an extra fee for not having a tag.”
I did not know that. How could I not know that?
I rang Service NSW. Turns out, I did not have a registered e-tag. I have not had a registered e-tag for as long as their records stretched back. I have been charged an extra 50 cents for every toll road I have used (and I do like a toll road) for at least the past 18 months.
The verdict was in. I had finally been unmasked. For all my writing, for all my education, for all my critical thinking, I am actually pretty stupid.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool,” wrote Shakespeare.
He’s right, I thought. How much better would the world be if we could all appreciate our own stupidities? It is a life-changing revelation. I may indeed be a fool, but for the first time in my life, I might actually be truly wise.
Kerri Sackville is an author, columnist and mother of three. Her new book is The Secret Life of You: How a bit of alone time can change your life, relationships and maybe the world.
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