But if it's false, why is the imposter story so persistent? Probably because it's relatable. Everyone likes to feel empowered, and it's quite empowering to feel like you could do just as well as a specialist, if only you put your mind to it. And maybe you can. But are you willing to put in the years of work?
On one hand, the Dunning-Kruger effect reminds us that the most competent people tend to question their own capabilities. On the other hand, a lack of confidence is a severe penalty in most areas of your life. The best path is probably to realize whether or not you're trained (or have experience), and if you're trained, don't feel like an imposter. If you're not, don't be afraid to try, but be aware of how far your boundaries can be pushed.
You have to pretend you know how to seduce, to deal with your daughter crying with no apparent reason, to pay taxes because that what adults do.
The point is that if you were trained in your domain, you can't hold yourself up as an example of "an imposter who had to learn it all themselves" because some of it was given to you as "absolute" knowledge. That you weren't "trained" in some 'basic tasks' (and some people are - imagine the boy scouts, preparatory schools or the military) doesn't mean you had to "imposter" your way into learning everything else - you simply learned those "by osmosis". (Otherwise, we'd have thousands of different ways of accomplishing each of those basic tasks in use.)
Social interactions are informed by past interactions, in a sort of "telephone game" through time and society (which is why trends evolve and change). And we aren't trained how to do taxes because there's an entire industry devoted to profiting off them which lobbies to keep it feeling complex and against just having the IRS send you a form to sign or dispute.
While this is excellent snark and a great witty rejoinder to internet arguments, there is something underlying which I think is useful: Figuring it out yourself is commendable, but no-one's going to mind if you look for some expert advice from time to time.
It won't help you when exhausted, you have to get up at 3 in the morning, trip, brake a glass, open your hand and bleed on the last batch of milk. It won't help you to react to the effect of society on your child's language, choices and behavior. It won't help you with the feeling you get when you get mad and slap the child and instantly regret it.
And even for the things they talk about, RTFM doesn't make you not an imposter. Unless you practice it, theoretical knowledge has limited value.
You stop being an imposter after you had your children and are satisfied with the result.
And of course, there is no official manual, only hundred of ones contradicting each others, written by people whom expertise you can't easily assess yourself. On a topic that doesn't really have a clear way of demonstrating truth.
From this outsider position I have, it sounds like a very unlucky choice of words (imposter, fraud) for a human feeling that comes from lack of self-esteem... Psychologists should know better.
Conclusion: you can live a happy life without the "fear" of being an imposter or a fraud. Anyway, you should know when you're doing right or wrong, and that's what counts.
The way I manage to get over it was to realized everybody was like me, and If I accepted others could screw up on a catastrophic scale, then I could indulge me doing it.
I think i really depends on circumstances. I work from home as a freelancer which means that rather than interacting with a lot of coworkers, I mostly read things professionally from people at the top of their game. This skews the perception I have in term of skills and means that I sometimes feel like an imposter.
I didn't have that problem when I was working in a company.
Also, I don't pretend we don't suffer the same symptoms, just that without a name to put on it, it's more bearable.
Personally, I have a very hard time with compliments (I had to learn to say thank you to compliments, which make me think "bullshit" naturally). So I tend to believe I'm average, even when someone insists I'm not. That's not unlike imposter syndrome. Plus I do understand what you mean about reading stuff from/about brilliant people.
But an imposter or a fraud? Nope... I just think I don't have enough self-comfidence or self-esteem, because "being a fraud" and "self imposter syndrome" meant nothing to me not long ago, plus these terms seem absurdly guilt-inducing to me. Living without this guilt definitely helps make progress in anything.
Sure we do, its called culture. My parents were immigrants so I got to see two systems compete, their native culture and US mainstream culture. There's a lot of info here on how to live, if anything its overwhelming.
I think the idea that we're all winging it on some certain level is pretty different from a feeling like an imposter. I don't feel like any kind of imposter in my day to day life.
If I do feel 'imposter syndrome' its at work and largely because we have, in the US, an anti-worker climate where we're expected to be instant experts on everything, especially if you're in tech. A realistic outlook on what staff can do doesn't benefit management as much, so they don't help dissuade the myth of the IT/dev superman. They'd rather you near burn-out trying to be a 5x multiplier than hire 5 more guys. We often talk about imposter syndrome at work, but rarely its principle driver. Its not "my teachers said I was smart and can do anything" but very deliberate policies that help businesses maximize profit at the expense of the wellbeing of their own staff.
But give me a culture where people have a healthy reltionship with sex. Morality, religion, security, health, children educations, gender status... All major actual cultures screw it up massively in some way.