Opinion: A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing (Or, Please Don’t Call Me a Watch Expert)

We live in a golden age of watch knowledge. Never before have so many people known so much about watches, or cared about them so deeply, and it’s genuinely remarkable. Have a specific question about a rare Rolex from 40 or 50 years ago? The answer is probably just a Google search away. Need to check that the watch you’re looking to buy was made in exactly the spec you’re seeing on eBay? There’s almost certainly a forum post somewhere breaking it down for you — no subject is too esoteric, no prompt too singular. There’s enough watch knowledge out there to fill a lifetime, and probably more, if you go looking for it.

Then there’s the other… stuff. Open up Instagram and you’ll immediately be inundated by accounts professing to represent ‘watch experts’ peddling surface-level observations as hard-earned insights. Start to absorb enough of this, and it’s easy to convince yourself you should count among them, that you’ve done the real work required to achieve expertise. It’s a trap, and an easy one to fall into at that.

Because unless someone in your life brought you into this world, you’re probably the foremost watch expert in your life. You’re almost certainly the one your friends and family come to when (cough, cough… if) they have questions about watches. Just being able to tell the difference between a quartz and a mechanical watch probably puts you in the top quartile of watch knowledge. And if you’re reading articles like this on sites like Worn & Wound, I feel comfortable assuming that watches are something you’re passionate about. But none of this makes you an expert. And to be very clear, that I’m the one writing this doesn’t make me an expert either.

There’s a concept in psychology called the Dunning-Kruger effect, first described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in the late ‘90s, that helps to explain this. Now, I want to preface this next bit by saying that I’m not a psychologist, I don’t play one on TV, and I’m possibly the only liberal arts college alumnus in history to have never taken a psych class, so my understanding of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that of an extreme layperson. It cannot represent a definite or comprehensive explanation of the concept.

With that out of the way, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that helps to explain the overconfidence experienced and exhibited by novices and those with limited competence or information. It argues that those who have tackled the first hurdle in approaching a skill or set of knowledge may overestimate their abilities because they don’t yet understand the chasm between them and high performers. There are plenty of examples of this in real life. Think the teenager who has just passed their test and confidently believes they’re a great driver, or the amateur athlete who suddenly feels comfortable critiquing the performance of an Olympian.

We’ve probably all recognized instances of the Dunning-Kruger effect around us, even if we sometimes struggle to identify them in ourselves. The watch space is especially fertile ground for the Dunning-Kruger effect to take hold, simply because so few people know about watches. But the gulf between knowing about watches and genuine expertise is vast, and it’s hard to fathom the ‘unknown unknowns’ ahead when you’re standing on the edge of that chasm.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate. Since I joined the watch industry in 2022, I’ve been able to handle literally thousands of watches, more than I could have ever dreamt of. I’ve gotten to sit down with genuine experts, meet and talk to many of the leading voices in our industry, see how watches are made at the highest level, and have my questions answered by exactly the people you’d want them answered by. And I’ve learned definitively that I am nowhere near being an expert. It’s not that I don’t know a lot about watches, or that I feel ill-equipped to share my perspective with all of you, but I’m also increasingly aware of just how much I don’t know, and how much I just don’t have the time and capacity to learn (unfortunately, WOSTEP is likely not in my future).

One of the great magics of watches as a subject is the sheer volume of the things that do, have, and will exist. With exceedingly rare exceptions, it’s too much for any one person to wrap their head around. That’s the fun of it. In over fifteen years of watch enthusiasm, I’ve never reached the bottom of any subject, I’ve not exhausted any branch of curiosity, and I’ll never get to see everything that’s out there. I’ve certainly built an expertise in the watch space, but it’s an expertise as a consumer advocate, not as a generalist capital-E “Expert.”

Besides watches, one of my other great loves in life is music. I’ve been playing guitar since I was five years old, and I’m not bad — but I’m not all that good either. I’m a decent amateur guitarist, but I know enough about the instrument that I can see what it would take to take the next big step forward, and I know it’s not a level of effort I’m willing to put into it. Sure, I’ll take the time to keep working on my Bluegrass turns, and maybe spend a few hours on a Sunday afternoon reverse engineering some new chord voicing or progression, but that’s probably the limit, because with 25 years of guitar in the rear-view, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that I can enjoy playing while being comfortable not being the best in the room.

Most of us can and should enjoy watches in the same way. We can be curious, excited, and comfortable without the need to prove our superior expertise. If we can’t find that balance, it makes the whole world of watches less fun for everyone. So, to wrap this up, I want to share a quick story about a recent experience, one that laid this whole problem bare for me.

Long story short, a collector I don’t know well posted a watch for sale in the Buy/Sell/Trade channel of a small group chat I’ve been a part of for several years. The watch itself was nothing particularly special and was only listed for a few hundred bucks (nothing to sneeze at, but not enough to raise eyebrows in the wide world of watches), but immediately, I could see that there was a lot wrong with it. 

So I quietly (and privately) messaged the seller to raise the point, and cited one or two of the issues with the watch. The seller immediately replied, telling me I was wrong, and cited an unsupported theory as evidence. Now, since I didn’t perceive any ill intent in his response, I let the situation lie. But as I’ve spent the last week or so turning the interaction over in my head, I’ve realized it’s the perfect encapsulation of the fundamental problem I’m talking about: We all know too much, and none of us know enough. 

Or, to crib a turn of phrase from the oft-cited Alexander Pope, “A little learning is a dang’rous thing.”

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