Penn and Teller are amazing magicians, but they do not do shows for kids. According to Teller, shows for kids are “just too hard.” As someone who does do kids’ magic shows, I can verify that they are very different than magic shows for adults.

Here’s one of the unique features of performing magic for kids that Penn and Teller know but you might not. Often, during a show, a kid will yell out “I know how you did that!” They don’t whisper it respectfully or look to their friend politely and nod knowingly; it’s shouted for everyone to hear.

Why do some kids do this? A generous interpretation would be that some kids are just so excited that they’ve figured out something interesting that the joy bursts out into the world. A less generous interpretation would be that some kids really want attention and need the other kids (and the magician) to recognize their intelligence, perceptiveness, cleverness, insightfulness, and, most of all, their uniqueness. Their desire to be “seen and heard” overrides any desire to be polite, have humility, or even just sit back and enjoy the show.

The hilarious thing is that they rarely know anything about how the trick is really done. All illusions are so much more complex than one surface-level secret. When the kid yells, “It’s a mirror! It’s a mirror!,” they might be partially right. A mirror might truly be a part of making the illusion work, but it’s only a small part and genuinely doesn’t explain how the illusion is fully done. In essence, they’ve deduced one piece out of the ten you’d need to make the illusion effective.

Take it from me, a professional magician without any natural abilities at deception: illusions are difficult to create. The many components that go into pulling off an illusion might include psychology, visual misinterpretation, misdirection, secret spaces, repetitive motions, trading out genuine for fake items, and so much more.

Kids who yell out “I know how you did that!” are often experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect. That is, people tend to overestimate how much they know about any given subject, especially when they know very little. We don’t know how much we don’t know. We often believe we know much more about a subject than we actually do. This is a very human tendency. A corollary to this is astonishing: the more we actually know, the less our confidence is about how much we actually know.

The Dunning-Kruger effect also applies extremely well to grownups on social media, particularly when folks make posts such as “You’re so stupid,” “That’s not true,” or “You’re a fool,” especially when they have no expertise in the area.

A lot of people believe that because they can comment, they should comment. And because they have really strong feelings about the subject, regardless of their actual knowledge or expertise, they shout about it.

The law of large numbers means that they are going to find like-minded others on the internet who believe the same thing, giving them social proof of their “correctness.” In a way, social media sets out the welcome mat by saying, “Welcome! We’ll validate your ideas even if they’re wildly, demonstrably false. Just keep spouting misinformation; don’t worry, the algorithm will back you up and spread it around.”

How do you fix it? Fixing others is beyond your control, but being aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect in ourselves is the first step to fixing our own misplaced confidence. To know that we all tend to overestimate our knowledge, our expertise, our ability to know stuff—and then to temper the things we say with humility will put us on a good path. Attempting to use critical thinking to explore the things we believe are true is the best path forward. We should always be asking ourselves what facts counter our thoughts.

Here’s the deal: overly confident statements such as a blurted out “I know how you did that!” during a magic show will always exist, because that overconfidence is built into each of us. Once we realize it’s our own overconfidence and not the truth that’s speaking up, we can do something about it. And that will make kids’ magic shows, and the world, a lot better.