Knowledge is like an
I.O.U.
It represents some future
value to the one who issues it, and perhaps less to the person it is given to,
until it either is paid in full or proved false. Like a good bank (or a
reliable person), the value of that I.O.U. is based largely on the reputation
of the one who issues it, and what is known about that person; the same holds
for knowledge. Each is a currency based on trust and past performance. Each is
based on what we think we know about the person issuing the currency, such as
reputation, or station in life.
Human beings, for
the sake of simplicity and expediency, tend to have a default, almost basic
trust in each other, or, at least professionals they depend on (doctors,
teachers) and their well-known acquaintances and friends. (In other words, ‘I trust you until you show that I cannot
trust you’.) That reputation adds to or detracts from the value of that
‘I.O.U.’ of knowledge whether it is offered as opinion, or fact.
We inherently trust
and depend on that person being correct, based on past performance and experience.
Failing the presence of both of those, we depend on professional title and
assumed knowledge associated with that title. Either way, we except
what they offer to be true, at least until proven otherwise.
However, what about
ourselves, how do we know what we
(personally) know is right? How do we know that what we know about what others know, and are telling us, is also
right? By extension, how do we know what we think we know about others is
factually correct, and not influenced by emotion, relationship, pre-formed
assumptions, or even physical or ideological attraction?
How can we tell if our
own long-held opinions, which may or may
not be based on fact, are, in fact,
correct? How can anybody tell whether anything
in his or her vast storehouse of personal knowledge is at all correct, or still correct, from the time it was
originally learned? (Things change over time. What was once held as fact may
no longer be considered so.)
How do we know how we
know anything about the world, and whether it is correct, is actually valid? After
all, some forms of ‘misinformation’ can be deadly, such as which mushrooms are
poisonous, or which household cleaning chemicals can be safely mixed.
Persons of vast intellect
are especially susceptible to this problem, because their storehouse of
knowledge contains so much more to keep track of. Like a library of too many
books, or a house filled with a lifetime of collected knickknacks and
memorabilia, at what point do we eventually ‘lose track of it all’, and forget
some of the things we think we know, or worse, confuse it with other things we
thought we knew? How long before it all gets lost in the shuffle?
Let us bring back the
analogy of knowledge being like an I.O.U. and bump it up to being more like
money. Rich people have considerably more money to keep track of, just as the very
knowledgeable have more information of which to keep track. This calls for
constant relearning, fact checking, and in professions such as medicine and
technology, constant recertifying and retraining. That’s fine for professionals,
though many doctors (especially older ones) probably don’t retrain as often as
they should. (In the technology field, retraining and recertifying cannot be
avoided, because of the rate at which the information in that field changes.)
The typical person has
it a bit harder, since they have to (or should) ‘re-certify’ on their own, by
constant checking and rechecking their facts, and being parsimonious in what
they proclaim or ‘say’ as fact. Geniuses, or the highly intelligent, have an
even greater responsibility in this area of fact checking. If all else fails, such
people have to be willing to (humbly) admit that they were wrong, and take
pains to rectify the problem, and again, by reviewing and if necessary, re-learning, and perhaps be less
adamant about what they say is fact.
"There are several types of 'knowledge processes’, which people have access to:
1. Firsthand knowledge based on personal experience and discovery.
2. Secondhand knowledge, which, at its most basic, is something someone told you, or TAUGHT you.
3. Personal hypotheses, theories, and epiphanies or revelations, which may or may not be sound, true, or based on truth, or derived from personal observations and deductions, which may have originated from the interpretation (correct or not) of the first type of knowledge.
The problem comes in confusing these. There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of people in the world who have degrees based on secondhand knowledge who also think they are very intelligent, from PhDs down to associate degrees. They may not be as smart as they think, especially if their understanding does not also contain an equal or greater amount of firsthand knowledge, and discovery based on it.
Having equal helpings of firsthand and secondhand knowledge makes personal hypotheses, theories, and epiphanies more likely to be valid, with the result that those types of erudition (help) create NEW knowledge and result in new discoveries, which add to the overall sum of human understanding and, knowledge."
An entire field of
study of the knowledge of knowledge has been around for quite some time, and
has gained new immediacy and currency with the advent of the Internet, search
engines like Google, and the formulation of ‘expert systems’ as they are implemented in
the growing field of Artificial Intelligence.
Perhaps now is as good
a time as any to verify what we know about what we know – before we teach it to
the computers that will no doubt soon run our world, and control more critical
life sustaining and enhancing systems.
