You think you're so smart eh?

[RobdoR]

How much of what you know do you really know?

Here's what I know:

I know animals have guts. At least all the ones I cut open have guts.

I know you can eat some of the things that grow out of the ground. I ate some and they were good. (Not sure where grocery store food comes from though)

I know that mountains are real. I climbed some of them.

I know that the ocean is big. I couldn't see across it, and I couldn't see all the way down.

Ok, that's most of what I know about the world. Almost everything else has been told to me. I mean, I seriously doubt that I would have figured out on my own that we live on a ball floating in space around another big burning ball. Also, it's not obvious to me that I have a brain.

It's just fun to get knocked down off my high horse for a minute and realize that most of my knowledge is regurgitation of what some other guy told me was true. Don't worry though, you know what they say to do when you get knocked off your horse...

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

I expand on the knowledge that others have discovered before me.

When I was ten years old I was playing an online game which has a fairly extensive market. After many months of careful observations, running experiments and invalidating hypothesise I developed a theory on how the market worked. I was so excited I ran to my patents and explained to them how markets works but I was let down quite fast when my parents explained to me that other people had already developed theories on how markets worked and I was too young to be worrying about such things.

 

[snafupants]

Watching a documentary on the Ku Klux Klan and smaller white supremicist groups made me realize this a while ago. There were kids there cheerfully giving the Nazi salute and all this and I sat on the couch and thought, wow, kids are really stupid. Their sponge-like brains are completely undiscriminating and are highly susceptible to brainwashing. Taken to the extreme, you could convince a kid of damn near anything and s/he would believe you; they would have to, because their brains and worldviews are not evolved enough to either grapple with what is being said or employ instruments which could measure the information independently. Yup, kids are dumb. A lot of adults are too.

p.s., You would know what various objects and situations were without being told, beyond a mountain, but you obviously would not know the names of those objects. The more abstract concepts, like life and time, would be thought of in a radically different light.

 

[Agent Intellect]

This is assuming that empirical knowledge is the only valid knowledge. I can know things through logical inference (rationalism) and by being able to apply them (pragmatism).

For instance, I do not know that I will die. But, if I know that all humans die, and that I'm human, I can infer that I will eventually die. I do not know that all humans are born through live birth, because I have not witnessed everyone being born, but I can infer that this is true of all humans.

I do not know that my car requires gas in order to run (I've never taken a car apart and checked it out) but I know that if I don't occasionally fuel my car, it will cease to function. I don't know that other people are capable of thinking or feeling, but behaving as if they do works better than assuming they don't.

Empiricism is what led to the Humean philosophy of skepticism. How do I know that cause and effect exist? All I can say for sure is that every time up until now, when I pushed on my door, it opened, but how can I observe that it was my pushing that opened it? I have not witnessed this cause-effect relationship, just a series of recognizable impressions over many trials to the point where I have come to expect the first part of the series to be followed by the second part. I can't observe that one event must follow the other.

 

[RobdoR]

So it seems like we either know things by experience or by making sense of what people tell us through the lens of our world view (which is built on experiences and things we have been told I suppose). Once our world view is set it sure seems easier to keep building on it and only accept what fits instead of truly seeking the truth.

One of my hobbies is to play the devil's advocate on issues I agree with. Besides annoying others, this helps me find flaws in their arguments, and by extension, my own personal views. I like to think this helps refine my world view. How often you deliberately challenge your personal world view?

 

[CoryJames]

I know I am smart.

 

[josurac]

Continuing on with agent intellect's example of opening a door, have you considered something less trivial like the pharmaceutical industry? Most people would agree that pushing on a door will open it though they may not understand the subtlety - but is it obvious what will happen if you take the red pill (not intended to be a movie reference)? It's not obvious as it varies by a person's chemistry and what they've had to eat over the past day - it's complicated, but something will happen, and it will happen based on a set of cause and effect relationships that are infinitely more complex than pushing on a door. So, the drug companies essentially push on doors and see what happens - and patent something if it does something in a predictable fashion that isn't too harmful. will we ever get to a point where we understand all the complex interactions to build drugs from scratch that do exactly what we want - nothing more, nothing less? chemistry + nanotechnology? if we get there, it quickly gets to whether you can model everything - everything short of free choice presumably.

 

[DoveEyes]

Continuing on with agent intellect's example of opening a door, have you considered something less trivial like the pharmaceutical industry? Most people would agree that pushing on a door will open it though they may not understand the subtlety - but is it obvious what will happen if you take the red pill (not intended to be a movie reference)? It's not obvious as it varies by a person's chemistry and what they've had to eat over the past day - it's complicated, but something will happen, and it will happen based on a set of cause and effect relationships that are infinitely more complex than pushing on a door. So, the drug companies essentially push on doors and see what happens - and patent something if it does something in a predictable fashion that isn't too harmful. will we ever get to a point where we understand all the complex interactions to build drugs from scratch that do exactly what we want - nothing more, nothing less? chemistry + nanotechnology? if we get there, it quickly gets to whether you can model everything - everything short of free choice presumably.

Well said. I like how you think.

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

I know that mountains are real.

Thank you!
I had my doubts until now, but i trust you.

 

[Cognisant]

I know only that I do not know the extent of my ignorance.

Also the exact value of pi is not three, no matter how much I want it to be.

 

[Vrecknidj]

How much of what you know do you really know?

This is a remarkably difficult question, actually. At least, given the ambiguities and the implied meanings. What I suppose is that you mean something like:

You believe lots of things. Some of the things you believe are things that you would say you knew if you were asked whether you knew them. Some of the things you believe are things that you would say you weren't sure if you really knew them if you were asked. Some of the things that you believe you know, and you know that you know. Etc.

But, how much of what I believe do I actually know? That would require that I had some way of quantifying (even if only approximately) both what I know that I know and what I believe and have reason to believe is likely true. It would also require, at least in my case, that I have some way to grasp the magnitude of what I know that I don't know and what I don't know that I don't know.

I have very little confidence in that last bit. But, I think that what I know that I know is significantly less (in terms of, say, individual claims, positable as statements with truth values) than what I have reason to believe. I think that what I have reason to believe is less than what I am willing to accept. And I'm quite confident that what I know that I don't know is exponentially greater than what I am willing to accept.

How much?

Beats me.

I'll say, 11.43%, just so you have a number.