UPDATE: wow, never thought this post would take off this much! thanks
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From a more causal perspective, there is a thing called the “dunning/kruger effect”
Essentially, those who know little know so little that they don’t understand how little they know, and those who know a lot absolutely understand how little they know.
This leads to incompetent people feeling as though they know everything, and extremely competent people feeling as though they are know-nothing fools.
Imposter syndrome is exactly the latter scenario: as an expert in the field, and given the breadth of human ignorance and the vastness of subject matter that even an expert doesn’t know, many experts end up feeling like they are faking, namely the knowledge that they know they lack. In reality, most such people operate by having the tools to get the knowledge they need, at the time they need it (rather than “just knowing it already”). While this is arguably far more valuable (knowing how to learn rather than knowing how to do), it leads to a constant feeling of struggle to achieve.
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