TB: Circle of Competencies

Know what you don't know. Every person — including experts — has a bounded domain within which their judgment is reliable. The circle of competencies is the boundary between what you genuinely understand and what you merely think you understand.

Operating outside your circle without knowing it leads to overconfident decisions. Probing the edges of an expert's authority — before trusting their advice — is a practical defense against being misled by credentialism. The goal is not to maximize the circle's size but to know its shape precisely.

• Circle of Competencies (source note): Key questions — "Is this authority truly an expert?" and "How trustworthy can we expect the expert to be here?"

• The Map is Not the Territory
• First Principles Thinking
• Take the Other Person's Point of View