I am taking this example of wisdom directly from McKee and Barber (1999). I want at least one post that exactly fits the definition “seeing through illusion.” So I quote:

We shall now offer a more detailed description of the experience we intend to denote by the phrase “seeing through illusion.” It can be described in terms of an example adapted from one of Jean Piaget’s experiments with children (Piaget, 1952). Piaget asked five-year-old children to arrange a row of six pennies on a table, and next to them a row of six buttons, as follows:

Pennies: o o o o o o

Buttons: o o o o o o

When asked whether there are more pennies or more buttons, the child answers that there are the same number of each. Piaget then asked the child to spread the buttons out as follows:

Pennies: o o o o o o

Buttons: o o o o o o

Now when asked whether there are more pennies or more buttons, the child invariable declares that there are more buttons. Piaget concluded that the child thinks there are more buttons because the row of buttons takes up more space… a tempting, understandable and (among children of that age) a universal error.

We adults immediately recognize this as a hopeless illusion. This insight is not a one-dimensional, exclusively cognitive state. It is a state of integrated awareness with three distinguishable aspects. The first of these is the pellucid clarity of the cognitive awareness that “takes up more space” is irrelevant to the question at issue. Second, there is a conative awareness of immunity to the same error — we are free of any and all inclination or temptation to think that because the buttons take up more space, there must be more of them. Third, there is an affective sympathy with the child’s mistaken notion that “takes up more space” implies “more buttons.”

I intend to collect more examples of wisdom and place them in this format. If anyone has one they would like to post send me an email.

Reference:

McKee, Patrick and Barber, Clifton (1999). International Journal of Aging and Human Development. Vol. 49(2), pp. 149-164.