the three types of knowledge

i was in school for a long time. essentially, i never left, its just that now instead of taking tests, i have to create new knowledge, convince my "peers" that the new information is interesting, and struggle to find jobs every couple of years.

as i really began to focus on one field during my phd studies, i realized one particularly fascinating and frustrating fact: the more i learned, the more questions i had! the more knowledge i gained, the more i realized i *didnt* know! and i became acutely aware during the build-up to my PhD defense that there were lots of things i learned in classes that i'd already forgotten, and all sorts of topics that i should review before defending because i felt i didnt know them well enough... overwhelming.

BUT, considering that i am in such a specialized field, i realized just how much potential information existed in the universe that i didn't even know i didn't know!! ... daunting.

according to the blog of steve schwartz, these are the three types of knowledge: (1) the things you know, (2) the things you know you don't know, and (3) the things you don't know you don't know.

the interesting twist is that the ratio of these categories of information changes throughout one's life, and i dont think there exists a "perfect" combination. certainly there is no universal combination that we can all strive for, because we're each so different!

the entire article i mentioned above is hilarious and well worth the read, but i want to share the pie charts here, because they are a nice and clever summary of the possible evolution of the ratio of these three types of knowledge.

this is what we start out with:


and as he points out "this chart is not to scale; the red slice is unimaginably large."

then we move on to the goals of education. learning more should mean there is less you don't know, right?


but in reality...


hilarious!

in my opinion, the real goal is to be curious... to be aware of what's going on, to question why, to investigate the things that interest you, to recognize things that don't work, and to do what you can to make those things "better" in your local community, or in the world if you can reach that far.

"the cure for boredom is curiosity. there is no cure for curiosity."
-- dorothy parker