Knowledge?
So yesterday i spent a lot of time contemplating knowledge, mainly its vastness and the true impossibility of "knowing" something. I guess knowledge and the lack thereof can be put into four catagories:
1. What you know you know
2. What you don't know you know
3. What you know you don't know
4. What you dont know you dont know.
The two largest catagories are what you dont know you know and what you dont know you dont know, which really really just means that most of the things in the world, you simply don't know. But thats one of the things people have generally come to accept, and therefore isnt much of a discovery.
If you were given a pen and paper and told to write down everything you know, how much would you you be able to say? You'd have all the obvious things, im sure, like 2 + 2 = 4, and the colors of the rainbow are red orange yellow green blue and purple. But when asked, would you remember that your aunts second cousins friends daughter had red hair? I'd like to say that i know for a fact that you wouldnt, except that opens a whole other can of worms.
A friend of mine, upon hearing out my ramblings on the subject, reminded me that knowledge is relative, using the example of a hollogram that showed one thing on one side, and something completely different on the other. When standing on one side, say a side that showed george bush, you would look at it and know that that was what the hologram portrayed. But someone on the other side is seeing a picture of john kerry and because most of us can trust our senses, they know that that's what the hologram is showing? I might stand on the george bush side and say "i know for a fact that this is a hologram of george bush." But could i be correct if right across from me the hologram showed something else?
And just to add "mayhem to madness" (which happens to be a term the above mentioned friend coined) what if you looked at the hologram from above it? assuming that the hologram is 2-D, you would see nothing. and therefore, from that perspective, you could say that you know for a fact that there is no picture at all.
i guess what it all comes down to is you dont know anything. you think you know a lot of things, but unfortunately all those years of school and learning about geometry, chemistry, history, literature and so on have taught you nothing.
you know only the outer layer of things.
Any fact is like an onion, layered with more and more information about a single statement. And you my friends, are only seeing the outermost skin.
Upon having these thoughts i decided to try and unravel all the layers of one of the most simple things in the universe. a fact that is taught at a very young age. 2 + 2 = 4. I studied it and found so many smaller problems branching off of those three simple numbers.
And you know what i ended up with?
a headache.
So my advice to you is to know- let all the facts that people throw at you sink in and pool together in the stream of conciousness. But don't try to contemplate them too much.
In the end, no one likes a know-it-all.
1. What you know you know
2. What you don't know you know
3. What you know you don't know
4. What you dont know you dont know.
The two largest catagories are what you dont know you know and what you dont know you dont know, which really really just means that most of the things in the world, you simply don't know. But thats one of the things people have generally come to accept, and therefore isnt much of a discovery.
If you were given a pen and paper and told to write down everything you know, how much would you you be able to say? You'd have all the obvious things, im sure, like 2 + 2 = 4, and the colors of the rainbow are red orange yellow green blue and purple. But when asked, would you remember that your aunts second cousins friends daughter had red hair? I'd like to say that i know for a fact that you wouldnt, except that opens a whole other can of worms.
A friend of mine, upon hearing out my ramblings on the subject, reminded me that knowledge is relative, using the example of a hollogram that showed one thing on one side, and something completely different on the other. When standing on one side, say a side that showed george bush, you would look at it and know that that was what the hologram portrayed. But someone on the other side is seeing a picture of john kerry and because most of us can trust our senses, they know that that's what the hologram is showing? I might stand on the george bush side and say "i know for a fact that this is a hologram of george bush." But could i be correct if right across from me the hologram showed something else?
And just to add "mayhem to madness" (which happens to be a term the above mentioned friend coined) what if you looked at the hologram from above it? assuming that the hologram is 2-D, you would see nothing. and therefore, from that perspective, you could say that you know for a fact that there is no picture at all.
i guess what it all comes down to is you dont know anything. you think you know a lot of things, but unfortunately all those years of school and learning about geometry, chemistry, history, literature and so on have taught you nothing.
you know only the outer layer of things.
Any fact is like an onion, layered with more and more information about a single statement. And you my friends, are only seeing the outermost skin.
Upon having these thoughts i decided to try and unravel all the layers of one of the most simple things in the universe. a fact that is taught at a very young age. 2 + 2 = 4. I studied it and found so many smaller problems branching off of those three simple numbers.
And you know what i ended up with?
a headache.
So my advice to you is to know- let all the facts that people throw at you sink in and pool together in the stream of conciousness. But don't try to contemplate them too much.
In the end, no one likes a know-it-all.