Have you ever wondered why some people can give bold statements with full confidence and you are thinking that the statement should not be that confident because there is more to it? It is because of the knowledge paradox.
Hi, I am Prakhar, and today we are talking about the knowledge paradox. But let’s first learn what paradox is.
As per Wikipedia – A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one’s expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox usually involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time. They result in “persistent contradiction between interdependent elements” leading to a lasting “unity of opposites”. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox )
Socrates’ paradox of knowledge says ‘I know that I know nothing’.
Knowledge paradox
In simple words, the knowledge paradox says more you learn less confident you will become with your statements. As you learn more you get more and more information. Information is processed by your brain and it becomes knowledge. More variety of information will lead to contradictory information because everything is subjective and all the findings are based on your assumptions and data inputs. And then there are no proper statements. This leads to the fact that the more you start knowing, the less knowledgeable you will feel.
Why does this happen?
When you accumulate more and more knowledge, your brain starts to understand everything and it tries to connect the dots. The more dots it connects the more complex your thinking becomes. You start to become wise and start getting more perspective.
When you add different angles to any subject or topic you will start to find more ways to interpret it and that will lead to endless possibilities and you can not give a statement with confidence from just one point of view. You will always keep getting different perspectives.
Dance of sun and earth
Let’s see the dance of the sun and earth. As a kid, it is taught that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the same goes for the moon. And as a kid, we confidently say the sun rises in the east and nothing matters.
Then we grow and learn that the sun is not moving around the earth. Earth is moving around the sun in an elliptical orbit. And the moon is revolving around the earth. We get another perspective that reality is different than expressions.
When we get into higher studies we get to know that earth is not just revolving around the sun but the sun is moving and all the planets are moving with it in a spiral orbit along with its moons. The perspective has gone wider.
And then we get to know that our sun is moving around the center of the galaxy and our galaxy is also moving. Now we know that the motion is too complex and in our galaxy, we are moving around at a speed of approx. 788,000 KMPH. Now the more we know, the less we know about things.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the knowledge paradox is in every part of life. It makes us wise and tames our ego and arrogance. It makes us realize at deeper levels that there is always more to know. It makes us grow and makes us wiser. It helps us get multiple perspectives and make us experiment more and more. But there are downsides of this that it traps you from doing anything.
So my advice is, to do things with confidence in your available perspectives and keep on looking for more in parallel and upgrade yourself.
So which other paradox is grabbing your attention?
