We Are Ignorant - we only pretend to know

And so are you.

And so is everyone else on this planet.

"I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." - Isaac Newton

This is reality. We have not come so very far from Sir Isaac. We now have a handful of pebbles, but no understanding of larger rocks, much less boulders, and beyond a full sea of knowledge.


We have become better at telling and believing stories, so we no longer notice the emperor's lack of clothes.

Our educations have made us fools by providing distilled knowledge without understanding. Institutionalized knowledge ignores myriad uncertainties by simply pretending to be certain. Subspecialization in increasingly narrow disciplines has encouraged us to believe that we share inclusive general knowledge. Instead, specific information is fractured and a mile deep. A desire and ability to combine insular discoveries with another discipline's knowledge and hence create opportunities, is increasingly thin.

Deep and narrow knowledge encourages defense rather than collaboration between subject matter experts. Assumptions are passed to non-practitioners as basic truths. We all have distortions in our world view. The only way to discover these errors is to routinely challenge our beliefs. Unfortunately, it is quite human to seek reinforcement of our beliefs and knowledge structures, and to disdain contrary evidence.

In essence, the foundation of our hubris is self aggrandizing conjecture; all of which is seemingly printed on one side of intellectual post-it-notes.


We know much less than we need to know. The very basics elude us. Far too often we take our preferred authority's ideas and devise arguments to support them; rather than first considering if each idea is valid.

There are scientists on every side of almost every fact. Consider how often you "neglect" to read reports by scientists whose conclusions disagree with what you choose to believe. Contrary thought is often vilified and constantly ridiculed.

Global cooling was the well funded panic as I was growing up. We knew we were entering another ice age, Russian scientists think we still are. We are also told we are still in a warming trend from the last ice age, and we are acting like that is fact. A well oiled and funded anti-growth lobby concurrently paints yet another science based picture.

Scientists from various groups compete for support with publicity releases, political aspirants run to get in front of science so they can pretend to be leading.

It's likely the view you support is based on training at compulsory schools you attended. Further education is usually selected to conform with these images. As a graduate, you probably choose to respect media that supports your view, and further shapes it along comfortable patterns. Even a historic climate change graphic seemingly has to extrapolate a contested conventional view so as to minimize populist ridicule.


Thomas Malthus proved earth could not sustain its population; this was in the 18th century. Today you can find Scientists that will argue dozens of different positions about the population bomb from the same type of facts Malthus used. I imagine pretentious cave men argued over similar ideas, frequently for melodramatic and self-serving reasons.

We all know the world is in trouble, but it is not by pretending we can solve massive problems with simple solutions that the earth will survive. It is not the strong that survive; as Charles Darwin said: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

Without a willingness to support those individuals that can reshape our lives, we might be doomed. There has always been a race between innovation and annihilation; rewarding creativity instead of regulating it is one way humanity and the earth can survive.


We know everyone can't be right, but we seldom consider the fact that everyone can be very wrong. Evolution has dozens of different supporting camps, they argue as much within themselves as with various creationist camps, all from the same facts; I have a half baked other origin story myself (although the credit for this different story belongs to the consistently independent genius of Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller).

Contesting fact interpretations abound on all subjects, to the point Max Planck said:

"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning."

An important scientific innovation... not converting with facts, but by survival.

We only pretend to know.

Not all scientific innovations are accepted; and not all that are accepted are accurate. You can not change the laws of physics, but you can discover new laws that challenge accepted understandings.

Suppose a scientific innovation is in error, it may take generations to come back to the original knowledge and start over. Knowledge can be gained, vilified, lost, recovered, ignored, ridiculed, lost again, and discovered again.

Take another look at this model of the Antikythera Mechanism. That calculator and astronomical clock was built about 100 BC. We now think the knowledge to build such a mechanism was lost until reinvented, or rediscovered, in the medieval period.

Until the mechanism was discovered it was an undisputed fact that such sophistication was well beyond the ancients. We still know the ancients hadn't discovered gravity or how the heavens moved. It also raises questions as to why Atlas holds up a globe when folks thought the world was flat - maybe it was astronomy (see above).

Often we are like little children stating "I know" to any pronouncement even before the idea is presented. We are also very good at rationalizing away large errors and misjudgments that are consistent companions of progress.

"I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether things are so." - Michel de Montaigne 1532-1592

Just because a fact or some knowledge is known does not prove it is without error. It is not what we don't know that is dangerous.

It is what we think we know, and we are wrong, that can really hurt us.

We need to rediscover the joys of learning we experienced as children.

With the decline of the bureaucratic age it is partially their frequently renewed knowledge that sets the Netcohort apart.

Make learning enjoyable, if you must return to school, do it for yourself this time.

Start reading.

Read for enjoyment. The more you read the the faster you read. The faster you read the more enjoyable reading becomes.

After you are reading for enjoyment, toss in some reading about areas you are passionate about. You can unlearn school instilled habits and rediscover the pleasures of learning you knew as a child. Slow, deep reading of good literature can then help reshape your thoughts and life.

Keep challenging your beliefs - keep gaining wisdom and understanding. With broad knowledge you have a foundation for understanding your personally selected areas of concentration. Self-directed learning can profoundly enable excellence and meaning. Pursuit of mastery in a few of your life's passions can enhance your whole life.

Before you started school, learning was a 24/7/365 exciting journey.

It can become that again.

Even then we all must understand;

we only pretend to know.

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100% of direct income from my lenses goes to micro-finance solutions for world poverty provided by the Grameen Foundation. The Grameen Foundation is creating a rising tide of positive influence upon our world.

Will YOUR life be based on what you want to use it to accomplish, or by random urges of what you want to do?