"The confidence of amateurs is the envy of professionals"

[nancylebov]

I get the intention of "The confidence of amateurs is the envy of professionals"-- that professionals wish they could be as certain as people who don't know much of anything about their subject-- but I get distracted by the idea that the confidence of amateurs is equivalent to the envy of professionals, which makes no sense.

Besides, I'm not sure that professionals really envy amateurs' certainty about the professionals' field. People tend to like the knowledge they've got. However, this usually doesn't stop them from making amateur generalizations about things they're not familiar with.

Would "The confidence of amateurs is the despair of professionals" be better?

Comments

[landley.livejournal.com]

I don't envy the amatuers' confidence. I clean up after it. (You have to have confidence to notice you're in over your head, yet keep digging.)

Still, it goes both ways. Nobody said "beginner's luck" was always _good_ luck...