ReasonPilled

There’s this attitude that if everyone understood the world better, the world would be a better rather than a worse place. After all, knowledge is power. But, would widespread knowledge necessarily lead to better outcomes? Also, which knowledge would be important?

Let’s start by talking about fetishization. When a political ideology focuses too heavily on one measure in a way that’s overall detrimental to the organisms that make up society, that’s a bad thing. For instance, let’s say that lantern flies are bad. And, I can tell you every way in which they are bad, and the negative outcomes that happen to trees, cats, and dogs. I can tell you their species, subspecies, secondary sexual characteristics, and the way in which they emit a slightly foul odor. I can tell you the amount of toes they have, their neurons.

As one can imagine, there’s a veritable wealth of statistics someone has, but the term tunnel vision is apt. While maybe I know more about a specific situation, I may be less accurate or attuned about what to do. Fetishization, or overfocusing creates a situation where you have tunnel vision and focus on your pet issue at the expense of other things.

This can flow negatively into politics as experts may fall victim to this tunnel vision. For instance, and speaking in generalities purposefully, trying to minimize deaths of one disease may make a whole host of other people more miserable and less healthy. One might even say that regulatory agencies are subject to focusing too intensively on one metric, without considering the drawbacks of a given policy.

Maybe what’s important is not the amount of information, but the balance or overall impression of the information. But, at this point, there’s little reason to assume that more reason is better, given that people tend to reinforce their already-had perspective.

Maybe more information is better, provided that you have a balanced, broader depth of information? I imagine this perspective fails to think in terms of output. If spending a trillion dollars achieves the same goal as spending a million, if the amount of time spent thinking about a subject goes up without any innovations, it’s unlikely to have been worth pursuing.

Unless knowledge is a platonic ideal. To be learned is to be important. But, the question then becomes, to be learned, or educated about what?