Knowing About More Is Not The Same As Knowing More
In the past few months, I have noticed that I am already aware of most of the news or new subjects my wife tells me about. In the past, this awareness gave me a sense of pride, a feeling that I was knowledgeable.
Recently, I encountered someone very similar to me and not only found them annoying (Ouch, my ego!), but this encounter gave me a well-needed outside perspective on the issue: awareness and inch-deep knowledge on a variety of topics is not knowledge.
Worry not; I am not praising ignorance. Knowledge is central to understanding oneself and the world. What I want to critique is what we consider knowledge and ignorance to be today, and find a path towards following your own curiosity instead.
”Knowledge” In the Modern World
“Knowledgeable” is a quality that is universally praised and desirable. Knowing more is a sign of erudition, intelligence, and worldliness. Although I want to be knowledgeable, I’m afraid I have to disagree with what knowledge is considered by many today.
Knowledge is now often associated with knowing about as many things as possible. Being aware of all things from new tech to the latest news. It is also often associated with having an opinion on those things or the people involved. “Oh, have you seen the new Cybertruck? How ugly!” — “Have you seen the new laser the British army has? So cheap!” — “Did you see what Trump said on the TV today? How stupid!”.
Lately, I have often been catching myself telling my wife about a topic and asking myself: why would we ever want to know about this?
Ask yourself: how many of the things you have “learned” about in the past weeks will change your behavior and mindset or encourage you to learn more? Now, honestly, think of all you have consumed in the past weeks. By all, I mean all those advertisements, articles, comments, videos, article/video thumbnails, pictures, and titles. I cannot imagine that more than 5% will ever have much of an impact on you.
This is the crux of the problem: we are filling ourselves to the brim with factoids and fun conversation facts, thinking we are learning and growing when our brain and its limited space are only filled with cue cards full of inch-deep knowledge. Consequently, when that 1% of what we consume is something we could actually act on, we usually continue to do nothing and pass on to the following fun facts we can learn.
We are drowning ourselves in a sea of information, preventing us from actively thinking and acting on what we can.
What do we do with this “knowledge”
With our brains now filled with clickbait titles and comments from people drowning just like us, we now decide that we DO know enough about these topics to voice our opinions and maybe (but very rarely) act on them.
Socrates summarized it well:
Wisdom is knowing what we do not know
Unfortunately, we often take remembering many facts for knowledge and wisdom. We read an article and are ready to give advice based on it to people we know and strangers on the internet. This confidence is not deserved. We should realize that some things we do not know or understand enough to start either changing our lives or trying to change others’ based on them. You should not stop eating oatmeal because of one man yelling on TikTok.
I’d attribute this rise in anti-science, fake news, and misinformation to this. There is a high demand for quick, digestible information, and charlatans and overconfident innocents are ready to provide it. The problem: more often than not, these people are not researchers or scientists; they are people who, like you and I, read an article or two and now confidently summarize them. These people are there to entertain you and have views, not to give you facts.
This is often why scientists and experts are ignored: they are cautious about their wording and tone when discussing their fields of expertise. From reading tons of scientific literature, they know that proving something factual is very complex and challenging. “One study says X” is far from enough to consider something accurate enough to act on. They know what they do not know.
What Is Knowledge?
Although there is no single definition of knowledge, it is not about how many things you know but how much you know about fewer things. Understanding and truly learning about a topic will allow you to formulate much more complex ideas and find ways to reason differently. Although art is very subjective, this also applies to it.
For example, if film is only 1% of what you consume (because you try to consume of everything) the depth and complexity of the thoughts you will have on movies will be vastly inferior than if cinema was your favorite art-form which you spent more time on. You would be able to read essays and participate in discussions which would have went completely over your head before.
If all we consume is surface-level information on many topics, we will spend our time having surface-level ideas. Reading the equivalent of a cue card does not allow for many complex thoughts.
This logic can be applied to almost all parts of life. It is easy to notice when you have surface knowledge because you will typically formulate an opinion devoid of nuance very quickly. Coming back to our scientists from earlier, this is why they often give very tame and balanced answers: they know that a topic is complex, and a firm statement needs a lot of proof and thought.
Red Flags To Keep In Mind
- Complex matters being explained with too much confidence and “matter-of-fact” -ness
- Very complex topics are explained in a few lines, leaving no gray areas
- Social media comments in general
- Anything science or health-related that does not have any sources
- People using one study to push a point
If you keep a lookout for some of those red flags, you can generally spot most people who are in the business of attracting attention instead of informing you.
How To Stay Informed?
First, I want to make something clear: I am not arguing that one should live as an ascetic monk in some Grecian grotto. Understanding the world and, more importantly, the country you live in is important. For example, it is essential for me to be politically conscious and act accordingly.
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that it is very easy to find the line between “useful” and “useless” news. For example, reading the 2173rd article (and its comments) talking about an awful thing Trump did as a Canadian citizen is useless to me. The time I would spend reading and thinking about this article could be spent on many things. Even spending it as a nap would be more beneficial to me.
What I have been trying for the past few months is very simple but effective: I removed all news from my “feeds” (Reddit, News Apps, etc.). This way, I will ever only read the news if I am of the mind to do so or if I become aware of something through other indirect channels (friends, family, etc.).
In the modern world, unless you are a hermit without the internet, it is impressive how much news you are exposed to without even trying. At first, I was worried about missing events, but I found that I had not missed anything meaningful.
The act of leaving the endless feed of content is the important one here. We should respect our time enough to decide what we read about instead of being fed whatever an algorithm wants to feed us. Once you do that, you realize how much your mind is hungry for “deep knowledge” and creative things.
This also begs the question: what is the point of being “informed”? I’d argue that the vast majority of information people learn by keeping up with news either enters their brain and leaves it a few days later or gives them some negative emotion and THEN leaves their brain a few days later.
Our brains have limited capacity, and our judgment worsens throughout the day as we make more decisions. Why, then, are so many of us starting our days reading tons of news and comments? Wasting this precious brainpower, which could be used for creative endeavors, great discussions, learning about a topic, and more.
Parting Words
It is OK to not know about something
Rethink what learning means to you. Knowledge has never been more accessible than it is today. There is an infinite number of experts on the internet and in books waiting for you to learn about their field of expertise. Become an expert in something too! Genuinely learning about these topics will open the world up to you in ways you could not imagine.
You will be able to form more complex ideas, leading you to write/film/draw/debate/discuss them. New paths and avenues will also open themselves to you. Whole worlds of content you might not have found interesting to you before will now be fascinating.
In addition, you will become more sensitive to topics you do not know about. The lack of awareness becomes a gift of sorts; instead of approaching conversations always feeling you need to participate, you learn to listen and be open to new things.
Give yourself the gift of being a child again; instead of consuming whatever the world presents before you, seek out what truly interests you.
Let true curiosity win, you will not regret it.
