Introduction

This is my notes after watching Dr. Sean Brady's Keynote talk at LCA-2020. The full recorded video can be found here.

Summary

Expertise is certainly necessary for us to be better at our jobs and do less mistakes. However, there are cases when expertise can negatively prime us down the wrong solution path! He uses the examples of Hartford convention center collapse and the Mann Gulch wildfire to show that in the moments of pressure we continue to cling onto our expertise despite of all the warning signs to the contrary. In some scenarios, our expertise itself can be the greatest source of negative priming since we use it sub-consciously (and automatically) at all times!

When we end up trying to solve a problem that's slightly outside our expertise, even if we know that our "tools" aren't giving us the right solution, we continue to hold onto them (just like the firefighters of Mann Gulch did)! It is hard for all of us to accept the fact that the tools we currently use are not the right ones for the job.

Some nice quotes from this talk:

  1. "The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge"
  2. "We all see the world with the prism of our expertise"
  3. "In pursuit of knowledge, everyday something is acquired. In the pursuit of wisdom, everyday something is dropped"