When I was a student I thought professors are people who know lots of stuff. Then they went and made me a professor. After getting over my terror of not knowing stuff, I realized I had it all wrong. Here are a bunch of things that are far more important than how much you know.

- Knowing what you know and what you don’t know.
- Being good at teaching what you know.
- Being comfortable with saying you don’t know.
- Admitting when you realize you got something wrong.
- Effectively communicating uncertainty when necessary.

- Spotting BS.
- Recognizing others with expertise.
- Recognizing that there are different domains of expertise.
- Recognizing that there are different kinds of expertise including lived experience.
- Drawing from others’ expertise without deferring to authority.

- Accepting the unknowable (this one& #39;s my favorite). There’s so much we simply can’t know in our present state of understanding. But we seem to be wired to seek explanations, so pseudo-experts take advantage of us. Let’s fight this bias because it’s at the root of many problems.

I wrote this thread with academia in mind but it& #39;s really gratifying that it seems to be resonating with people in other fields as well.