The Problem with Knowledge

"Knowledge is Power." But what determines if it is a power for Good, or a power for Bad?

As humans we are constantly absorbing new things, we all understand that. As individuals though we will learn particular things at different times in our lives, under different circumstances, with a pre-existing bias to the new knowledge we take in, based on our current circumstance and also the current knowledge set we have. My definition of a "knowledge set" would be absolutely everything a particular individual knows at a given time in his life.


Any particular piece of knowledge can be seen as positive (helpful, beneficial) or negative (not helpful and/or potentially harmful) depending on the current situation of the person learning it, and reversely any situation can be perceived as positive or negative depending on the current knowledge set of the person in a given situation.

For example-

Let’s say there is a briefcase with $500,000 worth of gold inside.



-Person A has the knowledge that there is gold in the briefcase. What he doesn’t know is that the briefcase has been booby trapped, so that it will explode unless an inconspicuous button on the bottom of the briefcase is pressed before opening it. He opens the briefcase and is killed.

-Person B has the knowledge that there is gold in the briefcase, and also that to open it successfully he must first press the hidden button. He presses the button and disarms the trap, then opens the briefcase and gets the gold.

For Person A, the particular segment of knowledge (the knowledge that there was a fortune of gold in the briefcase) was negative, because he was then prompted by this knowledge to open the case which cost his life. Knowing what he knew, and in his situation, without any reason to believe harm would come from opening a brief case full of gold, most of us would have been moved to attempt opening the case and been killed as well.

For Person B, the same "segment" of knowledge was positive, but only because he also had other segments of knowledge so that he could see the entire situation.

Knowledge can have a negative effect only when it is incomplete, but in human terms it will always be incomplete. We will never know everything there is to know. Even if we knew everything about the physical laws of the planet and had complete knowledge of everything on the Earth, that is still only one planet. And we are so incredibly far away from even that.

This means that our knowledge will never benefit us as much as it potentially could; it will never benefit us 100%. Our knowledge will always be inefficiently used. Even when we think we are doing something correctly, without a full knowledge of everything in the universe we may not actually be having a positive effect with our actions even though our current knowledge base tells us otherwise. But really, that isn’t so much the problem- the main problem is the reverse impact our actions can have when we do not have a full knowledge of our entire universe. We may think we are doing something positive based on what we know now, but a century later new knowledge may be found that tells us not only are we not having a positive impact, but we’re having a very detrimental one.


This is why no human government could ever really accomplish anything worthwhile- because no person or group of persons will ever have a full knowledge of the universe. It can all only be based on our current knowledge set collectively, which will never be complete, and thus always has potential to inspire not only ineffective actions on mankind’s part but possibly negative ones. Even with the best of intentions.

I’ve gotten into debates/arguments with people who will use "Science" as the backbone of their debate. The problem with this is that really, Science is just a collection of statements and possibilities that the majority of humanity accepts as facts (at any given point in time). How can you debate so closed-mindedly?



Until you know everything, you can’t possibly really KNOW anything. Universally at least. There are a few branches of knowledge which are exceptions by nature, such as Math (honestly that’s one of the only branches of knowledge I can think of which can be excluded). But that is an entirely different concept, for all of those who are bitching and moaning about how I’m wrong.

You might know that 2 plus 2 is 4. There’s no arguing that. But that’s relative to what you’ve set 1 as to begin with. Numbers can only be useful to us if we have meaning assigned to them. Numbers are just units of measurement for other things. You might know that 2 + 2 is 4..... but it is ONLY beneficial if you know what you have 4 of. 4 by itself doesn’t really mean anything at all, unless it’s 4 of SOMETHING.

Measurements are things we’ve SET. What is an inch? It’s a particular distance that we’ve all agreed to use as a set measurment so that we can calculate things and all be on the same page. What is an hour? We’ve all agreed it’s 60 minutes. Which are made up of 60 seconds, and we have our reasons for using the second as a measurment of time but still- we could have used any other concept for the same results.
When you put a value that we all agree upon, we can make it useful and then we can use equations etc which there is no arguing with. Science is much different than Math, so for all of you who want to argue with me... feel free to do so, but do not consider using Math for a basis of argument.
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