Is Our Relationship With Knowledge Outdated And Dangerous?

Hi all,

I hope the following article might stimulate some interesting discussion. If you wish to comment I will reply to your comments below. For now, a place to start...


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This article will argue that the "more is better" relationship with knowledge which is the foundation of science and our modern civilization is simplistic, outdated and increasingly dangerous.

Let's start with a quick analogy which can provide a glimpse of where we're headed.


Our Evolving Relationship With Food

For most of our history humans have lived near the edge of starvation much of the time. In this scarcity context a "more is better" relationship with food was entirely reasonable. In our time food is plentiful and readily available in much of the world, and where that's true more people die of obesity related diseases than die of starvation.

The point here is that a "more is better" relationship with food which was entirely rational for a very long time in an era of food scarcity became outdated and dangerous when transported to a different era characterized by a food explosion. We lucky moderns are required to replace the simplistic "more is better" food paradigm from the earlier era with a more intelligent and sophisticated relationship which can involve somewhat complicated cost/benefit calculations.

And if we decline to adapt, he said while glancing down in to his lap at those twenty pounds that didn't used to be there, well, the price tag may very well be an unwelcome trip to the emergency room or morgue.


Our Evolving Relationship With Knowledge

This is where we are in our relationship with knowledge as well. The simplistic "more is better" relationship with knowledge which served us so well for so long now must adapt to meet the challenge of the new environment which it's success has created. To understand why, let's remind ourselves of some basic facts about the knowledge explosion currently underway.

First, the modern knowledge explosion obviously brings many benefits, way more than can be listed here, more than our ancestors could have even dreamed of. And although mistakes, missteps and even epic calamities such as technology powered global wars do occur, so far we've always managed to clean up the mess, fix the error, learn the lessons, and continue with progress. So what's the problem??

To understand the threat posed by operating from an outdated relationship with knowledge we need to examine the issue of scale. It is the vast scale of the powers emerging from the knowledge explosion that makes the historic [progress => mistakes => more progress] process that we are used to obsolete.


Here's What's Great About Nuclear Weapons

Luckily for the purposes of this article at least, nuclear weapons provide a very easily understood example of how powers of vast scale change the threat landscape by erasing the room for error. As you know, the nuclear stockpiles of the great powers will have to be managed successfully every single day forever, for as long as those weapons exist.

The key thing to note here is that as far as the future of humanity goes, successfully managing such vast power most of the time is no longer sufficient. Doing a pretty good job no longer works. Making a mistake and then fixing it is no longer an option.

In the nuclear era the room for error we've always counted on in the past is erased, and one bad day is all it takes to end the possibility for further progress. This is what defines the revolutionary new situation we now find ourselves in, a situation which demands perfection from us.


And Now The Bad News

It would be a mistake to assume this article is an act of nuclear weapons activism, because I've referenced nuclear weapons here only because they are an easily accessed illustration of the far larger problem which is their source, and that is our outdated relationship with knowledge.

If nuclear weapons were to all be abducted by aliens, the underlying "more is better" knowledge development process which created the nuclear threat would continue to create more vast powers with the potential for crashing civilization.

Each emerging power of such vast scale will have to be successfully managed every single day forever because a single mistake with a single such power a single time is sufficient to crash the system and prevent the opportunity for renewal.


And Now The Really Bad News

A key fact of the knowledge explosion is that it feeds back upon itself creating an ever accelerating unfolding of new knowledge, and thus new powers. So not only will emerging powers be larger than what we could produce in the past, and not only will there be more such vast powers than currently, but they will arrive on the scene at an ever faster pace.

Ever more, ever larger powers, delivered at an ever faster pace.

Each of these accelerating factors; scale, number, and speed; needs to be graphed against the glacial pace of human maturity development.



And They Said It Couldn't Get Worse

Yep, you guessed it, the most challenging factor is us.

There is actually nothing about thousands of years of human history which suggests that we are capable of the consistently perfect management which powers of vast scale require.

We've been able to survive repeated episodes of murderous insanity and other such mistakes in the past only because the powers available to us were limited. As example, we threw conventional explosives at each other with wild abandon in WWII, and were saved from total destruction only because conventional explosives simply aren't powerful enough to crash civilization.

A simplistic "more is better" relationship with knowledge contains within itself the assumption that human beings will be able to successfully manage any amount of power which emerges from that process.

Simple common sense reveals this assumption to be a wishful thinking fantasy. To those who have children this should be obvious. We sensibly limit the powers available to kids out of the realistic understanding that their ability to manage power is limited.

But then we assume that when children become adults they somehow magically acquire the ability to successfully manage any amount of power that the knowledge explosion may deliver. The irrationality of this assumption is proven beyond doubt by the thousands of hair trigger hydrogen bombs we adults have aimed down our own throats, a stark reality we rarely find interesting enough to comment upon.



A Problem Of Respect

A great irony of our time is that while we typically compete with each other to see who is the greatest supporter of science, we don't actually respect the awesome power of knowledge. What we respect instead is ourselves, our ability to develop knowledge.

What we seem not to grasp in our self flattering immaturity is that knowledge is not our personal property but rather a force of nature which must be respected, managed, controlled, limited, just like water and electricity, and perhaps even more so.

This necessity spells the end of the simplistic "more is better" relationship with knowledge which has defined our past. The extraordinary success of the knowledge explosion has created a revolutionary new environment which we must adapt to. And as is true for all species in all environments, a failure to adapt typically results in a predictable outcome.