Mundane Knowledge is More Crucial than your Favorite Ph.D.

June 4th, 2021

#knowledge, #policy

If no one has even one percent of the knowledge currently available, not counting the vast amounts of knowledge yet to be discovered, the imposition from the top down of the notions in favor among elites, convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue, is a formula for disaster.

People on both sides of the ideological fault line may believe that those with the most knowledge should have the most weight in making decisions that impact society, but they have radically different conceptions of just where in society there is in fact the most knowledge. If knowledge is defined expansively, including much mundane knowledge whose presence or absence is consequential and often crucial, then individuals with Ph.D.s are as grossly ignorant of most consequential things as other individuals are, since no one can be truly knowledgeable, at a level required for consequential decision-making for a whole society, except within a narrow band out of the vast spectrum of human concerns.

The ignorance, prejudices, and group think of an educated elite are still ignorance, prejudice, and groupthink -- and for those with one percent of the knowledge in a society to be guiding or controlling those with the other 99 percent is as perilous as it is absurd. The difference between special knowledge and mundane knowledge is not simply incidental or semantic. Its social implications are very consequential. For example, it is far easier to concentrate power than to concentrate knowldge. That is why so much social engineering backfires and why so many despots have led their countries into disasters.

Where knowledge is conceived of as Hayek conceived of it, to include knowledge unarticulated even to ourselves, but expressed in our individual habits and social customs, then the transmission of such knowledge from millions of people to be concentrated in surrogate decision-makers becomes very problematic, if not impossible, since many of those operating with such knowledge have not fully articulated such knowledge even to themselves, and so can hardly trasmit it to others, even if they might wish to.

Since many, if not most, intellectuals operate under the implicit assumption that knowledge is already concentrated -- in people like themselves -- they are especially susceptible to the idea that a corresponding concentration of decision-making power in a public-spirited elite can benefit society. That assumption has been the foundation for reform movements like Progressivism in the United States and revolutionary movements in various other countries around the world Moreover, with sufficient knowledge being considered already concentrated, those with this view often conceive that what needs to be done is to create accompanying will and power to deal collectively with a wide array of social problems. Empahsis on "will", "commitment", "caring", or "compassion" as crucial ingredients for deailing with social issues implicitly assumes away the question whether those who are presumed to have these qualities also have sufficient knowledge.

Sometimes the sufficienty of knowledge is explicitly asserted and any quetions about that suffciency are then dismissed as reflecting either ignorance or obstruction. John Deweey, for example, spelled it out: "Having the knoweldge we may set hopefully at work upon a course of social invention and experimental engineering." But the ignored question is: Who -- if anybody -- has that kind of knowledge?

Since intellectuals have every incentive to emphasize the importance of the special kind of knowledge that they have, reltaive to the mudnane knowledge that others have, they are often advocates of courses of action which ignore the value, the cost, and the conesequences of mundane knowledge. It is common, fo example, for the intellgiensia to deplore many methods of sorting and labeling things and people, often saying in the case of people that "each person should be judged as an indvididual". The cost of the knoweldge necessary to do that is almost never considered. Lower cost substitutes for that knoweldge of individuals -- ranging from credit reports to IQ Tests-- are used precisely because judging "the whole person" means acquiring and weighing vast amounts of knowledge at vast costs that can include delayed decisions in circumstances where time is crucial. Depending on how expansively "judging the whole person" is defined, the time required can exceed the human lifespan, which would make it impossible for all practical purposes."