[peterwwillis]

  Recently I found this note on my desk at home. It says “I HAVE NO IDEA 
  WHAT I’M DOING”. I don’t remember writing it, but it was in my house
  on my desk in my handwriting, so I obviously did.

He might want to seek some psychiatric help if this persists.

  So what did it mean? Was it a cry for help? A product idea? A topic 
  for a blog post? Or could it be an idea for a conference talk?

The card was a cry for help. This talk is a cry for attention.

  I’ll begin by showing you some compelling evidence that I have no idea 
  what I’m doing.

Well, he definitely proved it with all the completely asinine comparisons in the rest of his talk, but this one is the best:

  If you only take one thing away from this talk, make it this: beavers are
  idiots. They have no idea why they’re building these huge structures; they just
  blindly do it.

Really.

"One of the primary reasons beavers build dams is to surround their lodge with water for protection from predators." [...] "On land, the beaver's short legs and wide body made them slow and vulnerable to their enemies. However, unlike most of their historic predators, beavers are excellent swimmers. As a result beavers evolved to have a strong preference to remain in or very close to the safety of the water. The need for safety is the primary reason beavers build dams to create ponds." -- http://www.beaversolutions.com/about_beaver_biology.asp

Sounds like they have a pretty good idea why they build dams.

  But enough about me. As you’ve seen, I frequently find myself in situations
  where I don’t know what I’m doing, and I usually hit a brick wall and 
  feel disappointed. But it’s not just me! You have no idea what you’re doing
  either.

Don't go projecting on us, buddy. Most people, when faced with a challenge they're not immediately sure how to solve, will go read a book, or take a class, or ask someone who does know what they're doing. Lying about being able to write a book when you have no idea how in order to make money is not "impostor syndrome", it's merely being an impostor.

Dunning-Kruger does not explain or justify a total lack of forethought.

  All of these animals look remarkably like something in their environment, 
  but none of them has any meaningful understanding of why they look that way. 
  They don’t know what they’re imitating. The stick insect doesn’t know anything 
  about eucalyptus; that’s just what it looks like.

Says who? You, the expert? I'm pretty sure an animal who lives on a goddamn plant and looks just like it probably realizes that it's a plant, and that it looks similar, and that if it wants to eat, it should use that plant in order to hunt, so it can live.

An interviewer asked Richard Feynman to explain how magnetism works. He explained that it was a force that interacted with certain things. The interviewer asked, but why? Richard's answer was a long way of saying "just because, you moron."

You don't need to understand every layer of the onion. Every layer has another layer, and once you understand every single of them, and grok quantum physics and multiple dimensions and relativity and whatever else affects that onion's properties, that won't change that you need to cook that onion until it's soft before you add in meat to get the flavor out of it. If you know how to cook it, you know what you're doing.

It's not that the author has no idea what he's doing. He's just an idiot.

[pcthrowaway]

Not only have you missed the point of this author's talk, you've also missed the point of Feynman's answer, which served to demonstrate that the question being asked did not have a simple answer that could be succinctly constructed in a way that does the whole story justice. He wasn't saying 'don't try to understand magnets, just use them' he was saying 'I can't answer that question in a satisfactory way without first explaining all of Physics'

The author of this talk is not abnormal to do things without remembering them. I write things down all the time only to come across them a year later with no recollection.

It must be nice to be so self-assured of one's intellectual superiority though. Most of us have no idea what we're doing, after all.

[peterwwillis]

The basic meaning of 'knowing what you are doing' is "to be aware of through observation, inquiry, or information of an action, the precise nature of which is often unspecified".

This is completely different than what the author (and other commenters) are suggesting, which is that one should have a completely in-depth understanding of all aspects of a given idea as far as human culture is capable of understanding.

If you are walking, you know what you are doing. If you are reading, you know what you are doing. If you're commenting on a web forum, you know what you are doing. You are not confused. You know what typing is. You know what the words you want to say are. You know what you intend to say. This is knowing. This is doing. That's it. That is it.

Most of us, except for maybe the mentally handicapped or the catatonic, know what we are doing. There is no big secret or mystery or hidden understanding. It is not correct to suggest that the majority of people do not comprehend the actions they take. Most people comprehend their actions, even if subconsciously in many cases.

If you watch the video, Feynman gets pissed off. He's not pissed off because he can't answer it, because he could just state "I would have to explain all of physics to you for you to be satisfied." He's pissed because this person doesn't even know what they're asking for.

This author doesn't know what he's talking about when he says he doesn't know what we're doing. But that has nothing to do at all with the rest of us.

The best comparison I can make is to say that most of us don't know why we do anything. There is seemingly no purpose to the universe, or why any of it does what it does. Yet there is completely obvious purpose to everything.

I drink because i'm thirsty. Why am I thirsty? Because my body needs to be hydrated. Why hydrated? Because it's made mostly of water. Why water? Continue that logic train until you run out of ways to explain why the universe exists. Nobody needs to know why the universe exists. But we do know when we're thirsty, and why we drink, which is what we're actually doing, so we do know what we're doing, and why.

We do know why we do things, and what we do. Anyone telling you different is selling something.

[mod]

Quoting a webpage about beavers is laughable.

The author has projected knowledge onto individual beavers, which is...asinine, to use your word.

The beavers don't look around and think "man, my legs are too short for this location. I need a lodge, dam, and pond!" They just do it. They don't "have a pretty good idea why."

The species as a whole has a motivation (survival), but it's a motivation selected by evolution, not by thought on any level.

[Raphmedia]

Take a step back and read it again from another angle, you missed some things.