A New Year Declaration of Ignorance

As 2015 becomes 2016 a lot of us begin to reflect on what has happened to them in the past year...
or many years before that. We ponder our past hopes, dreams, achievements, opportunities, mistakes, and regrets and (in the end) say "What the heck happened to me?"

I have been doing just that. I have been writing this blog for over three years now, with 2015 been my most productive year in content-making (so far). It began (as it said on the top of the page) as "a place for random scribbles and writings." Just after graduating from university I didn't know what to do with my life. I never really did even as a child. I had no idea what to do. The decision to make this blog happened just before I revisited my High School after sorting out a few financial stuff with the Job Centre. I had made one during a course at Uni as it was a requirement for the class as a way to show everyone your ideas and grasp of the 12 rules of animation. The idea of making one for my own artwork and writings became obvious soon afterwards. But from the start outside forces turned it from a simple showcase of my talents to something more commentary-like.....
I had read about the PETA protest game Pokemon Black and Blue from a magazine article and felt that the idea that the games promoted animal cruelty stank of "video games cause violence in the real world" bullshit. That article resulted in my first ever internet rant. The last sentence of that "rant" was (after thanking PETA and that magazine for giving me the push to write it) "Things are going to get very interesting in deed." And they did...
That first post was written in November 2012. By New Year I had a number of pieces of work uploaded. In January 2013 I officially called my examinations of various aspects of human culture "acts of cultural vandalism." I had begun to truly look at the world we live in and began to use my curiosity indiscriminately on to everything, from atoms to the vast cosmos....

"When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do."- Walt Disney

But recently I had an idea that involves my curiosity.

Back in September me and my mother visited the sets of the Harry Potter films. While there I looked at the T-shirts on sale at the shop that is in the mock-up of platform 9.75 (work it out). It had shirts that labelled you a "witch" or "wizard", as you might expect there. But there also were T-shirts that labelled you (in gold medieval-style script) a .... "muggle."

"Muggle" T-shirt from Harry Potter Tour (2015)

For those not familiar with Harry Potter, a "muggle" is the name given to anyone who isn't able to use magic. It's like the when the term "civilian" is used when referring to people who aren't in the military. It's a word that has been adopted by many in geekdom, usually to refer to "jocks" or people who buy stuff with a warranty.

Anyway, the thought that is the reason for this New Year post is the one I had when I saw that grey T-shirt (which I bought soon after). Muggles are people who can't use magic. In fact, most muggles aren't even aware of magic's existence. They are ignorant of the existence of Hogwarts. Or the fact that kids are disappearing through the wall between platforms 9 and 10 in Kings Cross Station every August. It's this idea of muggle ignorance that made me remember a big fact about the world. A fact that is expressed greatly in this quote...

    "Its obvious that we don't know one millionth of one percent about anything." - Thomas Edison

Everything we will ever learn and remember individually throughout our lives is just a tiny microscopic fraction of all the knowledge that exist in the universe. The human brain can only remember so much. We can try to read the whole Encyclopædia Britannica or other large reference materials and try to cram as much as we can from our school textbooks, but in the end its impossible for any human or sentient being (except maybe gods or some AI system running a massive database) to know absolutely everything. But despite this many of us think they do know everything....

“Nothing is more beautiful than to know all.”- Athanasius Kircher (c.1670)

We probably know at least one person who thinks he/she knows everything. They are more of them when comes to knowing everything about a single subject (doctors, lawyers and that). They are individuals in history that claim to have known everything at their time, such as Athanasius Kircher and Thomas Young. But we can easily dismiss them because we all know stuff they didn't, such as the Higgs boson and the final resting place of King Richard III. But what about people alive today who repeatedly blab on about things like, climate change, poverty, gun crime, obesity, the Middle East, terrorism, hackers, and many other things that sale newspapers. How can we be sure they do know everything? Academic points? Experience in the field points? Success points? Or the fact that person appears friendly or all-knowing, like that guy in the bar or cafe? But I feel that many of these people are caught in a trap. The trap of thinking they know everything. After a long time (maybe years) of reading, writing, and talking about various stuff (and receiving little or no challenge to their words) they become to think that they are intellectually invincible and wholeheartedly believe that they know everything (in the field of interest or (more dangerously) everything in general).

But the trap can also inflict others - in people who want to know everything (on one subject or in general). The one subject type is very common Something happens that prompts them to think about a subject and curiosity drives them to find out as much as they can on that subject, such as who the heck Kate Upton is? Usually one Wikipedia article is enough. But sometimes some go further. In the case of "Who the heck Kate Upton is?" it'll easily become an activity that can be described as stalking, which is why most people stop at the Wikipedia article. But this doesn't only apply to celebrity worship, the same thing can happen when something bad happens to someone's personal whelm, like a death (natural or inflicted) or a diagnosis of the medical kind. Just ask any parent who's got a child that is sick or disabled. In that last case, a group of people equally curious about a subject band their efforts together and form advocacy groups for the sake of others curious about the subject and find casual browsing isn't giving enough information. Depending on the politics of the people running them, such groups can be a force of good (providing useful accurate information to whoever enquires) or ill (providing misinformed facts and excuses to do things that'll cause harm). You may know of such groups already.

I kind of fell into this trap in the past. When I first encountered the Eyewitness Visual Dictionary of everyday Things back in 2000 and got inspired to make my own version, I thought the book needed improving by including stuff it excluded. This thought was responsible for me to begin reading encyclopaedias for leisure at the age of 12 - to find out more about everyday objects. By 2002 I stopped making the books, but still read reference books for leisure. But I developed ideas for other books to do and filled files of notes and sketches for them (I still do, except most of the notes are now in digital form). I think this could have been down to the fact that during that year the school was given planners that contained factoids and quotes - and one of them was of Thomas Edison. The one I mentioned may not have been the very quote I saw, but the message is the same - we don't know everything. This is a fact that has become more apparent to me as my personal reference library began to mushroom out of my room an into the hallway and I began to surf the internet on a daily basis, plus beginning to regularly watch documentaries on TV. There is so much information out there that no one person can take it all in.

We are living in what has been called the "Information Age."  We have more access to all sorts of information than ever before... and generating more so every day. It's no surprise that "information overload" is becoming a symptom of living in the 21st century. But it isn't a "modern" problem. It has been for centuries....

"As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes." - Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie (1755)

Sound relatable?

And after years of researching my big fields of interest - technology and culture - I have found concrete evidence that backs up this fact.

• In 2014 the UK alone published 20 new book titles every hour. So many in fact Jamie Byng of publisher Canongate Books has said “I think we publish too many books".
• According to Nielsen (the American TV ratings people) in 2014 the average American household receives 189 TV channels - and only watches 17 of them.
• In 2013 all the world's digital devices created 4 zettabytes of data.
• In 2015 about one trillion photographs were taken, and 60 million of them were uploaded to Instagram every day.
• In December 2014 300 hours worth of new footage is uploaded on YouTube every minute.
• In one minute on 12th February 2015 712 new websites were created and 2,623 blog posts were written. (from p164 of Guinness World Records 2016)

That is a lot of information... and its increasing.

How can one person factor all this in?

Can one person watch every cat video on YouTube or 

read every new book that gets published as it comes out?

NO

It's humanly impossible. 

That's why we have Google - to sort out the useful stuff from the "crap" instantly.

So the next time someone claims to know everything, imagine that person trying to read 20 books in one day. Can you read 20 books in one day? Exactly... unless your Johnny 5. 

But here's another thing about information I have learnt (more recently) ....

Facts have a half-life.

This is an idea that has been around for a while, but it has been popularized recently by Harvard mathematician Samuel Arbesman in his 2012 book The Half-Life of Facts (which I have read and referenced). He gives a brief synopsis of his book in this TED talk from 2012.

The Half-Life Of Facts: Sam Arbesman at TEDxKC (2012)

Basically, everything you can consider a "fact" has the possibility to be proven wrong sometime in the future. You will have encountered this phenomenon yourself when you read a newspaper full of articles claiming that [insert thing here] is good/bad for your health. Some have made a good income out of this. Think how much money the Jim Pattison Group will made during Christmas through the sales of this year's edition of Guinness World Records. Surely you don't need to be reminded about this fact of life with all this constant proof of this. Right...?

So, we are all exposed to new information every day and this information has the potential to become inaccurate in the future. How can it be possible for one person to know everything? How can one person keep up with all the world's knowledge as it gets updated? English Wikipedia got in the past year an average of about 150,000 edits every day.

What I'm trying to say is that the idea of someone knowing everything is impossible. Everyone who claims to know everything (except probably Gods or some AI systems) is either lying, delusional or ignorant of the facts I just mentioned earlier... or just doesn't like to listen to the other person's viewpoint.

I feel that many of the people out there who do claim to know everything are the most ignorant. By been so sure of their beliefs (perceivably because they read all the facts) they ignore the counter-argument. And if that person happens to be in a position of power and influence it can be dangerous. More dangerous than a suicide bomber who acts alone.. or as part of a group. These "idiots" (as they deserve to be called) are ignorant about a lot of things, because it is impossible for them to learn everything that exists in the world.... in the same way muggles are ignorant about magic in Harry Potter, which brings us to the idea I had when I saw that T-shirt.

If it is impossible to one person to learn everything, maybe we are better off admitting our ignorance on pretty much everything. We can try to read up on everything on one subject, but in the end there's going to be bits of your knowledge on that subject missing. We should all admit that they are things we don't know and just accept it. But this shouldn't be an excuse to give up. It's fun learning new things (especially on stuff you are very familiar with). We should explore the frontiers of our knowledge and search out the stuff don't know let and make what is found the new knowledge. No one individual should have the absolute authority on a single subject. "Experts" should be challenged if possible if you feel that they are in the wrong. We all must learn that (in the end) no one person can know everything. We are all ignorant of stuff like the muggles. We are all muggles.

This brings me to my New Year Declaration. I have never claimed that I do know everything. I am very aware of the gaps I have in my knowledge of some things, such as sports. But people can think I do due to my vast knowledge (and posts) on many subjects. I'm just a good organiser of information. So good I am able to link subjects that (to the layman) appear unrelated. But I should set the record straight with a public statement. And this is it, my New Year Declaration of Ignorance....

I, Gordon Wallace (author of the Internet Sketchbook blog) will say for public record on New Years Day 2016 that....

I confess that I am a Muggle, 

as I don't know EVERYthing. 

Happy New Year 
everyone