From information to knowledge or from wisdom to will

Some of the important feedback loops when we learn are between  (1) information and knowledge and (2) between wisdom and will.  While usually I address the connectivity as a hierarchy, here I want to address the feedback mechanisms.

Hierarchy of learnings

There are many kinds of hierarchies describing learning. In some of my courses, I use Bloom’s taxonomy. However, I find it complex and prefer a simpler model.

At the basic level, we have information or data pieces, that appear to be important but unconnected. We can create artificial connectivity through mindmaps and mental palaces, but this would be unnatural.

The next level is knowledge. What we know is usually well structured and enables prediction. Some of our knowledge is episodic and anecdotal, but usually, we prefer to work with semantic knowledge, a sort of formula for everything.

Knowledge has no ethical value. Even its practical value is highly contextual. Finding the right way to leverage our knowledge is a separate level of control we can call wisdom. We can use the leverage directly, or we can hack the loopholes in the structure of knowledge, generating creative opportunities.

At the top of the pyramid is our will. It does not directly deal with understanding the world around us and its limitations but with our values and vision, the way we want to change or preserve everything. It is a sort of “know yourself” phenomenon, prioritizing values and motivating wise decisions.

What makes some facts more interesting than others?

How does our will affect our perception of data? Apparently, our focus is not passive, but active. Things that correspond to our will usually appear more interesting, and things that have no meaning to our will are usually boring. For me, football is one of the most boring things in the world – but I know that many men will disagree. For them, sports play a large role in their identity, and identity is yet another way to formulate one’s will.

The desire to learn everything about something needs to be genuine for the subject to become interesting. Simply deciding that some knowledge is important for me, does not make the relevant learning any less boring. We can be affected by some charismatic mentoring or genuinely want to please someone, and then we may willingly learn something pretty boring. Or we can apply a technical approach focusing not on what we learn but on how we learn it.  However, more often than not, the data we collect and effortlessly remember will correspond to our identity as we perceive it. By changing the way we perceive our identity, we may facilitate learning or create obstacles to learning experiences. The formula is simple: “I want to become…” and a strong conviction in the chosen identity.

Which connections are wise?

Creativity can be pretty wild, and the connections we make can occasionally be meaningless. An example would be a classical image of a paranoid, connecting with red wire multiple uncorrelated events. The human brain searches for connections, and if we try sufficiently hard we are likely to discover such connections. But is that wise?

The wise approach to the collection of knowledge is well described by Occam’s razor. The simplest approach is usually the right one. There is no reason to suspect connectivity of events, unless such connectivity describes something which is hard to describe otherwise. As a path of minimal effort, we tend to stick with the ruling paradigms and describe everything using them.

It is easy to assume that abandoning paradigms and choosing creative answers is an eye-opening step. The problem is simple: more often than not we are likely to see madness. Houdini loved elaborate magical ticks. In one of his tricks he would cross under a wall using a hidden door on the floor of the stage. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saw the trick, he insisted on divine help and spiritual experience. As the author was trying to connect with his dead son, for him to accept the divine explanation was easier than to see a simple trick. When Houdini tried to connect with his own dead mother, he did not find any spiritual enlightenment, but instead discovered several well-engineered magic tricks.

Our knowledge can be meaningless unless we are wise about it. I have enough friends claiming crazy things relying for example on literary sources instead of historical findings. For example, it is easy to extrapolate using biblical sources that 2 mil Jews witnessed the lord on Mt Sinai. When asked about feeding so many people in a desert, the answers are usually magical. If we analyze logistics, the number would be much smaller, possibly around 20 thousand. Literary sources tend to exaggerate and should probably be used figuratively.

Values and identity shape our wisdom

Choosing the more literal biblical approach vs a somewhat more economical analysis of logistics is a question of faith. One could say that the bible is a pure myth and we should not treat any event in Sinai beyond a metaphor. Another would say that he believes the book to be an absolute truth, and anything directly derived from the book should be true. Yet, most of us would probably choose a position somewhere between these extremes, focusing on what could be feasible during the period addressed by the sources.

What position we choose is our will or identity shaping our wisdom. Once we choose any position, the connections of our knowledge will be shaped accordingly. Things that correspond with our wisdom will appear as knowledge, and things that diverge may appear as mythology.

As an agnostic, I claim that we may never know for sure what happened on Mt Sinai approximately 3200 years ago. I tend to assume that the mount was depopulated and the food was scarce as the peak of worship on the proposed sites appears to be 1000 years prior to biblical events. Thus I form my knowledge around doubts, rather than a firm conviction.

The things we know change and take new shapes as our beliefs may change. The differentiation between real knowledge and false knowledge or mythology might be arbitrary.

Feedback loops and selectivity

Typically we assume that we gather separate data point, then build a theory connecting the data as a knowledge system, acquire wisdom by applying our theory to various scenarios, and finally form an identity based on our wise choices. This is an ideal direction for learning.

Typically our actual learning is just the opposite. Based on our identity we choose an influential school. The school explains to us its approach to wisdom. Then we are told that this wisdom is further learned by acquiring knowledge of very specific theories. And then while learning these theories we also acquire some factoids supporting the theories. The things that do not correspond to our will may be doubted as unwise or rejected as boring.

Moreover, these loops are quite long. Our will is formulated as our core beliefs, and the specific facts we remember reinforce each other. We will remember the facts supporting the core belief, and as we have more such facts our belief will become stronger.

There are similarly powerful but shorter loops between other elements of the knowledge system. Typically we will choose a knowledge system that is not self-contradictory and offers explanation to a wide range of observations. This does not mean that we are likely to make a good and educated choice. We are more likely to make the most culturally sound choice and reinforce it by selective learning.

What can we do about it?

Even assuming that we can control the learning mechanism, it is painfully clear that we do not have the right tools. More often than not, it is best simply to reserve some question mark for the things we take for granted and accept people who hold very different opinions. They are not stupid. Their learning was probably formed using a very different format of personal identity. Even if what they say might sound misguided and offensive, it is best to use the golden rule: treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.