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The expertise your brain is faking
The gap between knowing and knowing, marriage advice from 7-year-olds, and the day America went from pregnancy announcement to birth.
Greg Sullivan
September 17, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes
In partnership with
“Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”
― Steven Wright
Two kinds of knowing today. The kind you're sure you have until someone hands you a pen and asks you to draw a bicycle. And the kind a second-grader has when she tells her teacher, "Don't eat my snacks," and is somehow completely right.
Health
Your brain is surprisingly good at faking expertise.
You know what the Apple logo looks like. Obviously. Now grab a pen and draw it from memory. Where did you put the bite? Which way is the leaf leaning?* Suddenly, that little bitten apple gets suspiciously complicated.
That’s not just an Apple problem. People have struggled to draw pennies and even bicycles accurately, sometimes creating bikes that physically couldn’t turn. Our brains are apparently very comfortable saying “close enough” and calling it knowledge.
In this story by cognitive scientist Tommy Blanchard, there’s a name for the bigger phenomenon: metaknowledge, or what we know about what we know. Researchers have found fascinating gaps between our confidence and our actual understanding (I’m looking at you, flat-earthers). Those gaps get especially interesting when we try to teach someone else.
The good news is that there are ways to catch your brain bluffing. One starts with a deceptively simple challenge: try explaining the thing you’re so sure you understand. What happens next might make you a better learner, teacher, or person attempting to draw a bicycle.
* - I can’t leaf leave you hanging. The bite is on the right, and the leaf leans right. The internet legend that the leaf and the bite are the same shape is not true.
This cotton-candy vision of a sunrise and reflections on Echo Bay Lake Minnetonka comes to us from GOOD reader Georgia Ehrreich, who has an amazing eye for composition. Quick, someone turn this into an oil painting.
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How many delegates signed the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787?Fewer than you'd think. Two of them would go on to become president. |
And what did we learn?
In yesterday’s issue, we talked about how hard it can be to change a routine.
So how long does it take a GOOD reader to accept a new routine? Almost half of you take about a month to adapt to a new way of doing things.
A week, I adapt fast (38.3%)
A month, give or take a wrong turn (49.2%)
A full season, minimum (7.8%)
I'm still driving to places that closed in 2019 (4.7%)
GOOD reader Dana Sanchez spoke up for about half of you. “I like to gradually ease into new routines.” I’m right there with you.
Mental Health | Courtesy of Upworthy
 | ||
We asked people what they enjoy that other people don’t understand. One answer ruled them all. | ||
Surprisingly, research shows that these people are less likely to be neurotic. | ||
By Annie Reneau | ||
Some people have quirky hobbies and interests that others might find odd, so when we asked our Upworthy audience on Facebook, “What’s something that you really enjoy that other people can’t seem to understand?” and over 1,700 people weighed in, it wasn’t too surprising. Some people shared things like housework, cleaning and laundry, which a lot of people see as chores. Others shared different puzzles or forms of art they like doing, and still others shared things like long car rides or grocery shopping. | ||
But what was surprising was the one answer that dominated the list of responses. It came in various wordings, but by far the most common answer to the question was “silent solitude.” | ||
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Culture
A teacher asked her students how to make a marriage work. Their answers were simple, strange, and kind of hard to argue with.
I’ve been married for 18 years, and let me tell you, some of the advice Ms. Klarissa Trevino got from her second-graders on marriage could’ve saved me a few headaches.
Trevino, a teacher in Texas, asked her students to fill in one sentence before her big day: “The marriage advice I give my teacher is…” As Mark Wales reports, the results were equal parts kid logic, accidental comedy, and actual wisdom. “Don’t eat my snacks” is particularly insightful.
It’s easy to call it cute. It’s harder once you see what research says about how kids actually think about relationships.
July 4 gets the fireworks, the cookouts, and all the birthday cake. But you could make a playful argument that September 17, 1787 deserves a little more credit. If the Declaration of Independence was America’s pregnancy announcement, the signing of the Constitution was something closer to the birth of the government we recognize today. Thirty-nine delegates signed the four-page document in Philadelphia, creating an entirely new federal system to replace the struggling Articles of Confederation.
It still needed ratification before taking effect, so the metaphor gets a little messy, as birth metaphors involving constitutional law tend to do. But 239 years later, September 17 reminds us that declaring yourself a country and figuring out how that country will actually work are two very different accomplishments.
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Until tomorrow, remember to remember that you don’t know all the things you don’t know. Right? Did I get that right?