Curse of knowledge

Biological Parallel

Experienced foraging ants lay pheromone trails to food sources, but cannot "unlearn" the direct path to demonstrate alternatives—the chemical trail is binary: present or absent. Similarly, once a whale learns a migration route, it cannot recreate the naive exploration process for teaching; calves must follow and memorize. The curse of knowledge—inability to recreate a naive state once expert—reflects how learning consolidates into automatic patterns: the exploratory process gets pruned away, leaving only the efficient solution. Effective teaching requires reconstructing steps you no longer consciously access.