I’m sympathetic towards the idea that pursuing all the knowledge we can get our hands on is a good thing. It is a tempting idea for me to believe in, because it offers a justification that is satisfying to values I hold like curiosity and respect for information. However, this means I might be biased. And I don’t want to believe this idea if it isn’t true.
When I think critically about this, I’m inclined to think that seeking so much knowledge across so many subjects is a suboptimal use of time, even for the prodigiously talented. My view is that details are important insofar as learning them helps us to learn broad patterns, and some types of details predictably are unlikely to lead to such insights and so can be safely ignored. For non-biologists, I don’t think there is much value in knowing all the names and types of the plants. For non-astronomers, I don’t think that the stars and planets are worth studying.
I acknowledge that there sometimes are cross-applicable ideas or universal patterns which can be discovered by studying obscure fields. For example, Newton’s laws of motion or his law of gravity are useful to almost all of science, not just to astronomers. However, even acknowledging this, it’s unclear to me whether the probability of discovering such patterns is high enough that it’s worth the opportunity cost. Maybe if people before Newton had been more inclined towards specialized knowledge, some astronomer would have discovered the equation for gravitational attraction even sooner. Perhaps we’d also have some additional knowledge besides.
Is there any actual evidence for the idea that unfiltered pursuit of knowledge is superior to the filtered pursuit of knowledge? The only other argument for it that I can advance is that a lot of famous intelligent people have believed so, but I find this argument pretty unpersuasive. Thoughts?
Partly, I may simply be taking reliable access to high quality detailed information for granted, since I’m used to living with internet access and Wikipedia.
Is there any actual evidence for the idea that unfiltered pursuit of knowledge is superior to the filtered pursuit of knowledge?
In my view, it’s about the right level of filtering. For most people, I think looking at much more sources than they currently do is justified, as is developing the ability to quickly extract important pieces of information from sources for efficiency. The latter includes developing the ability to prioritize, skim, summarize, and assimilate information as well as abilities related to acquiring new sources, like knowing how to reach people with knowledge of other fields who can expand your horizons. I think it’s also helpful to interact with others who can fill in gaps in your knowledge, e.g., you might have decided that learning about X was unimportant, but your friend in the same field read a lot about X and understands its importance. That example is basically applying parallel processing to knowledge acquisition. I can also think of a number of instances where I was looking for information about something, concluded it didn’t exist, but later found what I was looking for (or something close) in a different related field, often with different terminology.
For some basic evidence, consider the foxes and hedgehogs dichotomy. Foxes, who take a more global view, tend to perform better in predictions. Geoff Colvin also thinks that more knowledge is better and he discusses this in his book Talent is Overrated on pp. 150-151. (Edit: Actually, the latter author says nothing about the unfiltered vs. filtered distinction as I recall now, but he does believe that more knowledge is better in a general sense.)
There’s another common related view, which I see as misguided. Sometimes people claim that your thinking is often less constrained (i.e., you are more creative) if you are not familiar with a subject. I recently read a book, Gossamer Odyssey, where very successful engineer Paul MacCready attributed his success in human powered flight to not doing things the “standard” way, because he was totally unfamiliar with the standard way. He had a PhD in aerospace engineering, but he focused on atmospheric physics, not aeronautics. In MacCready’s case, I think he was wrong about ignorance being the key. It was broader knowledge that helped him here. His knowledge of gliders rather than traditional aircraft turned out to be the key. Indeed, if you look at a lot of the cases where “ignorance” is held up as being useful for creativity, you see that having broader knowledge actually was the key (This blog post about Invisalign is another example I can find right now).
So, this seems to me like a post-hoc rationalization of intellectual laziness, and misleading because wider knowledge (“unfiltered” knowledge as 27chaos put it) is often key in cases where ignorance is held up as a benefit. Even if some creativity benefits come from ignorance, it does not follow that one should always remain ignorant in a field you are interested in. It seems to me that an hybrid strategy would be best: think about things before and after you learn. That way if your mind is unconstrained early on, you get the benefits of that. (In this popular book on decisions, they recommend the same thing on p. 50 according to my notes.)
However, according to this blog post, the book Origins of Genius by Dean Keith Simonton provides evidence that creativity follows an inverted U curve as a function of knowledge, where both too little and too much knowledge can hurt you. I have not read the book, but you might find it to be of interest.
I’m sympathetic towards the idea that pursuing all the knowledge we can get our hands on is a good thing. It is a tempting idea for me to believe in, because it offers a justification that is satisfying to values I hold like curiosity and respect for information. However, this means I might be biased. And I don’t want to believe this idea if it isn’t true.
When I think critically about this, I’m inclined to think that seeking so much knowledge across so many subjects is a suboptimal use of time, even for the prodigiously talented. My view is that details are important insofar as learning them helps us to learn broad patterns, and some types of details predictably are unlikely to lead to such insights and so can be safely ignored. For non-biologists, I don’t think there is much value in knowing all the names and types of the plants. For non-astronomers, I don’t think that the stars and planets are worth studying.
I acknowledge that there sometimes are cross-applicable ideas or universal patterns which can be discovered by studying obscure fields. For example, Newton’s laws of motion or his law of gravity are useful to almost all of science, not just to astronomers. However, even acknowledging this, it’s unclear to me whether the probability of discovering such patterns is high enough that it’s worth the opportunity cost. Maybe if people before Newton had been more inclined towards specialized knowledge, some astronomer would have discovered the equation for gravitational attraction even sooner. Perhaps we’d also have some additional knowledge besides.
Is there any actual evidence for the idea that unfiltered pursuit of knowledge is superior to the filtered pursuit of knowledge? The only other argument for it that I can advance is that a lot of famous intelligent people have believed so, but I find this argument pretty unpersuasive. Thoughts?
Partly, I may simply be taking reliable access to high quality detailed information for granted, since I’m used to living with internet access and Wikipedia.
In my view, it’s about the right level of filtering. For most people, I think looking at much more sources than they currently do is justified, as is developing the ability to quickly extract important pieces of information from sources for efficiency. The latter includes developing the ability to prioritize, skim, summarize, and assimilate information as well as abilities related to acquiring new sources, like knowing how to reach people with knowledge of other fields who can expand your horizons. I think it’s also helpful to interact with others who can fill in gaps in your knowledge, e.g., you might have decided that learning about X was unimportant, but your friend in the same field read a lot about X and understands its importance. That example is basically applying parallel processing to knowledge acquisition. I can also think of a number of instances where I was looking for information about something, concluded it didn’t exist, but later found what I was looking for (or something close) in a different related field, often with different terminology.
For some basic evidence, consider the foxes and hedgehogs dichotomy. Foxes, who take a more global view, tend to perform better in predictions. Geoff Colvin also thinks that more knowledge is better and he discusses this in his book Talent is Overrated on pp. 150-151. (Edit: Actually, the latter author says nothing about the unfiltered vs. filtered distinction as I recall now, but he does believe that more knowledge is better in a general sense.)
There’s another common related view, which I see as misguided. Sometimes people claim that your thinking is often less constrained (i.e., you are more creative) if you are not familiar with a subject. I recently read a book, Gossamer Odyssey, where very successful engineer Paul MacCready attributed his success in human powered flight to not doing things the “standard” way, because he was totally unfamiliar with the standard way. He had a PhD in aerospace engineering, but he focused on atmospheric physics, not aeronautics. In MacCready’s case, I think he was wrong about ignorance being the key. It was broader knowledge that helped him here. His knowledge of gliders rather than traditional aircraft turned out to be the key. Indeed, if you look at a lot of the cases where “ignorance” is held up as being useful for creativity, you see that having broader knowledge actually was the key (This blog post about Invisalign is another example I can find right now).
So, this seems to me like a post-hoc rationalization of intellectual laziness, and misleading because wider knowledge (“unfiltered” knowledge as 27chaos put it) is often key in cases where ignorance is held up as a benefit. Even if some creativity benefits come from ignorance, it does not follow that one should always remain ignorant in a field you are interested in. It seems to me that an hybrid strategy would be best: think about things before and after you learn. That way if your mind is unconstrained early on, you get the benefits of that. (In this popular book on decisions, they recommend the same thing on p. 50 according to my notes.)
However, according to this blog post, the book Origins of Genius by Dean Keith Simonton provides evidence that creativity follows an inverted U curve as a function of knowledge, where both too little and too much knowledge can hurt you. I have not read the book, but you might find it to be of interest.
Excellent comment, thanks for all the links!