In yet another attempt to show how this is not irrational, here goes:
There are every year about 100,000 new math theorems produced. To learn each of these theorems would require learning them at a rate of about 1 every minute when sleeping is taken into account. This is excluding all of the theorems needed to understand those theorems. Further this is just math and doesn’t included every other field of human endeavor as well as on the job knowledge.
It should be clear from the above that is physically impossible to have all the knowledge in the world, let alone the problem of being able to remember it all. There are no “heros” and it is impossible to have such “heros”. This is more then about gains in specialization (which are great and the only reason we can have this discussion in the first place) but the bounds of learning.
Now, going back to my earlier response on specialization and gains from trade there arises the question of does it make sense to try and have answers to every problem?
There is a reason that specialization works well, people become better at doing what they are currently doing. So even assuming one were able to “know” everything they would still not be as good at doing any particular task as someone that had specialized in that task. I may know how to read a recipe and how to make bread but I am not going to be a master bread maker and make amazingly good bread unless I practice making bread for some amount of time.
So assume for a minute that you have specialized in mayan epigraphy and someone brings you an Egyptian hieroglyph, as they are both ancient writing systems so they must have some common skill sets, is it rational to say “I have no idea and I am going to drop working on finding the meaning of all of these other glyphs that I am working on deciphering to figure out what most likely any master level Egyptologist knows off of the top of their head ” or to say “I have no idea, here is the number to my colleague that specializes in reading Egyptian hieroglyphs”? in the one you have filled in a blank in your knowledge, but at a cost to adding new knowledge to the world, while in the other the blank remains but you continue working on what you are paid to do. What appears to be advocated here is the first response which has a huge opportunity cost for extremely low reward.
You definitely have a point here. The Law of Comparative Advantage is an extremely powerful driver of improved standards of living. So you definitely shouldn’t try to do everything yourself.
But at the same time it pays not to over-specialise. If you rely on another person to fix your computer problems for you (for instance), that might work fine, until they aren’t available for some reason. Then you have a choice between working it our for yourself or just giving up.
So I’d say at the very least overcoming “learned blankness” is helpful for implementing a back-up plan.
Learned blankness, as described, is not about recognizing specialization. It’s about not bothering to notice that you already have the skills to tackle this. Like, if your mayan specialist was asked, “Hey, is this the egyptian heiroglyph known as the ‘ankh’?”, she can probably answer that one without having to call anyone, if she doesn’t just blank out the moment ‘egyptian heiroglyph’ was uttered.
In yet another attempt to show how this is not irrational, here goes:
There are every year about 100,000 new math theorems produced. To learn each of these theorems would require learning them at a rate of about 1 every minute when sleeping is taken into account. This is excluding all of the theorems needed to understand those theorems. Further this is just math and doesn’t included every other field of human endeavor as well as on the job knowledge.
It should be clear from the above that is physically impossible to have all the knowledge in the world, let alone the problem of being able to remember it all. There are no “heros” and it is impossible to have such “heros”. This is more then about gains in specialization (which are great and the only reason we can have this discussion in the first place) but the bounds of learning.
Now, going back to my earlier response on specialization and gains from trade there arises the question of does it make sense to try and have answers to every problem?
There is a reason that specialization works well, people become better at doing what they are currently doing. So even assuming one were able to “know” everything they would still not be as good at doing any particular task as someone that had specialized in that task. I may know how to read a recipe and how to make bread but I am not going to be a master bread maker and make amazingly good bread unless I practice making bread for some amount of time.
So assume for a minute that you have specialized in mayan epigraphy and someone brings you an Egyptian hieroglyph, as they are both ancient writing systems so they must have some common skill sets, is it rational to say “I have no idea and I am going to drop working on finding the meaning of all of these other glyphs that I am working on deciphering to figure out what most likely any master level Egyptologist knows off of the top of their head ” or to say “I have no idea, here is the number to my colleague that specializes in reading Egyptian hieroglyphs”? in the one you have filled in a blank in your knowledge, but at a cost to adding new knowledge to the world, while in the other the blank remains but you continue working on what you are paid to do. What appears to be advocated here is the first response which has a huge opportunity cost for extremely low reward.
You definitely have a point here. The Law of Comparative Advantage is an extremely powerful driver of improved standards of living. So you definitely shouldn’t try to do everything yourself.
But at the same time it pays not to over-specialise. If you rely on another person to fix your computer problems for you (for instance), that might work fine, until they aren’t available for some reason. Then you have a choice between working it our for yourself or just giving up.
So I’d say at the very least overcoming “learned blankness” is helpful for implementing a back-up plan.
Learned blankness, as described, is not about recognizing specialization. It’s about not bothering to notice that you already have the skills to tackle this. Like, if your mayan specialist was asked, “Hey, is this the egyptian heiroglyph known as the ‘ankh’?”, she can probably answer that one without having to call anyone, if she doesn’t just blank out the moment ‘egyptian heiroglyph’ was uttered.