«I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties, that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with» — Isaac Asimov (I Asimov, 1995)
What does it mean when we say „I know X“? Of course it means that we have stored es certain property X in our brain which is supposed to be true. But what does „true“ mean? 100% true? Or is 99% enough? And if yes, is 99% always enough (e.g. if we trust our life to a machine every day which behaves unexpectedly only in 1% of cases). Is it only sometimes true? And if yes, do we mean this in a stochastic way (like rolling dice) or in the sense that certain conditions have to be met to make it true? If the latter is the case, there might be situations where it is false. Are there cases where it is very difficult to decide if it is rather true or not (so it could be 5% true or 95%, we don‘t know)?
All these informations, we call them meta knowledge are extremely important, if we want to make successful use of the statement „I know X“. If you think about it a bit longer, you realize that knowledge („I know X“) without a much more extensive collection of meta knowledge is not only useless but even dangerous. It is in fact often better to have no knowledge about a subject than to have knowledge with missing or poor meta knowledge. Why is this so? Think about the following situation: You are in the (Swiss) mountains hiking. Which situation would you prefer:
- Stepping on a large stone from which you are absolutely sure that it will be stable, but which in fact might be not with 20% probability.
- Not knowing anything about the stability of the stone (so you will have to check first carefully or walk around it)
I think almost all people would choose the latter.
But now you might say: meta knowledge is a form of knowledge too! This requirement leads to an infinite need for knowledge and this ist not feasible! It's true that a high quality set of meta knowledge for each item in our knowledge would be perfect. But we have indeed to content us with much lower quality requirements for the meta knowledge. This is in fact the main difference between knowledge and meta knowledge: we call only those parts of our knowledge „knowledge“ for which we also have a sufficient amount of meta knowledge. We should „believe to know“ only things for which we understand mostly in which cases they are applicable or not.
We use knowledge to act on. Because of this, it is highly important that we are able to assess the reliability of the knowledge we use to make our decisions. If we realize that something we believe to know might be still wrong (or uncertain) in a certain context or situation, we can improve our actions: we can guess, use feelings or even instincts. Or we can (if we have enough time) fill the missing knowledge by analyzing the problem in greater depth. All of these options are much better than planning actions on the wrong assumption that we know for sure.
But why are so few people doing this? I think it has a lot to do with our school system. In our schools, kids get rewarded (with praise, good grades, shoulder tapping and sometimes even cookies) if they „know“ a lot (and get punished if they don't!). They should „know“ things „everybody knows“ and which are true because „everybody says they are true because the famous XYZ says that they are true“. They teach our kids that it is a good thing to be somebody who „knows a lot“. We show them at home at the dinner table how nicely one can brag with the things we „know“.
„Modern“ schools claim to do better: they teach the kids „critical thinking“. This means that the kids should learn to find the flaws in other peoples thoughts. The method should be used to identify showoffs (i.e. people who only pretend to know, but actually know little) so we can shame and ignore them. Unfortunately this is not an improvement at all! As long as the sword of the intellect is used against other people it is only a weapon useful to gain social status. Only if we learn to use it against ourselves (in a playful way!) we will improve.
What is the result of all the current efforts to educate our kids? Generations of people who believe that they know when they actually don‘t. I call such people „nerds“. You must have met one at the last party: they know almost everything but they still give you this strong feeling that they somehow don‘t „get it“ at all.
Then we have the (numerous) folks who, without thinking, pick up „knowledge“ from the majority of people. There are so many of these „believers“ nowadays, that it has become a real threat. They are the reason why the battle for the „opinion of the majority“ is fought so fiercely today: everybody want‘s to work in the „media“, become an „influencer“, a politician, a guru, a writer, a blog author ( 😜 ) or some other famous person who can tell others what is true and what is not. It does not matter anymore if some argument really makes sense or not, you only win if you can successfully stuff it down the throat of other people.
If people would have learned to think a little bit for themselves, all these people would have to look for a new job.
What should schools teach? I think the important thing is, that they learn to be content in the state of not knowing (instead of the state of knowing). Not to know something is a great thing! It means that you can have the pleasure to understand it. It is definitely not something to be ashamed of. Kids have to learn, that in every moment they think that they have learned or understood something, they should ask themselves (!) further questions:
- What is the distance between two points?
- We can calculate this using the pythagorean theorem!
- OK. But what happens on a surface which is not flat? Like on the sphere (earth!).
now we have options:
- Hm… I don‘t know. I have to be careful and check this again in case I need to calculate this on a sphere.
or:
- I want to study spherical geometry to understand this better!
Therefore, the end state of any discussion in schools should be the meta knowledge, the next questions.
“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.” ― Richard Feynman
And it is very natural that we don‘t have the answers to most of the questions which appear in this process. Of course this means that the kids get the feeling that they have maybe learned less than what they hoped in the beginning. But kids have to learn to live with this feeling of not knowing. This is how they should go home. In a state of wondering, thinking about other questions and problems which appeared from the discussion of a topic. We should teach them that the value of their achievements as students is not proportional to what they know, but proportional to what they „know, not to know“. Note that to „know, not to know“ is totally not the same thing as „to know nothing“. It‘s a huge difference: a baby knows nothing, to „know, to know little“ is only possible with great efforts:
“I’m smart enough to know that I'm dumb.” ― Richard Feynman
and even much older:
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.” ― Confucius
PS (2.10.23):
I write my blog mainly to sort my thoughts. So what are the „next questions“ I asked myself after the insights gained by writing this post?
- Am I a „nerd“ too? (Sure. Maybe not on the same level anymore like 10 years ago, but clearly a nerd nonetheless. And I'm probably well advised to consider myself a „nerd“ for the rest of my life)
- If the effort to acquire true knowledge (i.e. knowledge with the required meta knowledge) is so high, which knowledge should I acquire? (Hm...., just live a life and see what matters for me???)
Image: Shutterstock / Branko Devic
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