The 12 Temptations of Knowledge

Even if you’re a mere child in your 40s or 50s, knowledge has changed more in your lifetime than in any other. At least that’s an arguable position. But instead of making that case, let’s talk about how the temptations surrounding knowledge have changed just as dramatically. At this moment, there are exactly and precisely 12 of them. Approximately.

1. We all want to trust knowledge. In fact, that’s why we came up with knowledge in the first place: The ancient Greeks wanted to be able to distinguish mere beliefs from beliefs that are true and worthy of belief. That meant you had to have a good reason for believing that your claims were knowledge. Then, for the next 2,500 years, philosophers argued over what counts as good reasons for believing something. The criteria are far less stable than we’re tempted to believe.

2. It’s tempting to think that we shouldn’t use large language models (LLMs) because we usually don’t know how they come up with their answers. That can be crucially important when issues of bias and fairness are at stake, but LLMs are still astounding aids for many sorts of questions. For other sorts, no, you don’t want to take them at their word. And that tells us something about how varied the types of knowledge can be.

3. By definition, any piece of knowledge can be trusted, thus we can be tempted to exclude knowledge that isn’t settled. But, in actuality, nothing is so settled that it couldn’t be wrong, except for propositions properly derived in axiomatic systems such as logic and math. So the real question in each case is: What’s the risk of accepting this statement as knowledge? That isn’t a criticism of knowledge. It’s a requirement for knowing anything.

4. For our convenience and comfort, it’s easy to want to deal only with settled knowledge. There are obvious advantages to leaning on what’s settled, but long history has shown that what seems rock solid can turn into a mushy bowl of oatmeal overnight or over a few generations. We couldn’t survive, much less advance, if we only accepted settled knowledge.  

5. ”We’d be so better off if all of our knowledge were true and settled!” Nice daydream, but if it were, we would just get dumber over time. The inability to completely and permanently settle knowledge not only keeps us on our toes, it reminds us of how poor our ability to know our infinitely complex world is.

6. We’re tempted to assume that settled knowledge is settled because it accurately reflects the world. Maybe, but even when it does, applying it with what we know hits so many details, it still manages to lead us to false conclusions. The world would have to be much, much simpler and less interwoven with itself to close the gap between knowing and applying knowledge.  

7. The idea that knowledge belongs to individuals is very tempting. The knowledge management community knows better because it sees how dependent knowledge is on connected networks of people. Saying that knowledge belongs to individuals makes as little sense as saying that language does.