Interesting article on an important side of the ‘’knowledge’’. Of course, we often have difficulties to differenciate what we know from what we believe.
Also, the quantitative element of knowledge is what we are better able to measure/ evaluate. Knowledge already is an orderly aggregate of informations. But the qualitative element maybe is the key for us to overcome the ‘’mountains’’ of knowledge which we will never be able to filter/ ingurgitate and store.
On the first graph « innovation / time », I noticed that you indicated : ‘’You are here’’. Instead, we should read ‘’We are here’’. Indeed, it is human knowledge the graph is talking about.
For individuals, the story seems to be quite different. A few years ago, I wondered why the estimated EQ ratio of modern Cro-Magnon was likely to be higher than the average current modern sapiens. Cro-Magnon lived 20 to 40000 years ago. They were hunter-gatherers, and needed to possess a very large variety of knowledges/ beliefs in order to survive in varied & changing environments.
Progressively, with the invention of agriculture (12000 years ago ?), and technologies during the last milleniums & centuries, humans specialized.
So, if we were to represent a graph showing ‘’You are here’’, each of us will have a different mix of peaks and troughs. The addition of which would probably give a graph similar to yours. It is likely that we would be unable to survive in small groups in the wild.
What makes our modern societies to work probably is the social structure, which itself is underpinned by a series of imbricated knowledges/ beliefs/ ’’truths’’.
Within our modern complex world, we do not need to know everything. We need to try to acquire a reasonably accurate understanding/ hypothesis (adjustable from time to time) of the overall way in which a complex process is working (a complex process can be the Universe itself, down to a small business or human interactions within a group).
At this point, we can try to understand the views of a few people who dedicated a lot of time & efforts of a specific issue (or rely on specialists, as we do within large businesses/ administrations). And change our mind when it does not work as we think it should.
That is why we should not be panicked about knowledge, as we will have accepted, from the start, to be unable to know everything. Trying to be in control of everything is a lost battle. But we can have access to a huge quantity of knowledge through others. I think to remember that it is what Stephen Hawking meant when he mentioned that we are standing ‘’on the shoulders of the giants’’ who have preceded us.
