The Knowledge Economy Hypothesis

Introduction

I have hesitated to write on this subject, as I haven't done much in the way of serious scholarly work and can't provide much solid evidence. However, I feel as though I ought to formulate the theory at this point, so I offer it here in the form of a conjecture.

My running hypothesis is that all of human knowledge boils down to the points of reference which we compare against one another, and that any conclusion we draw from this comparison consists of a judgement call.

I've briefly touched on this topic before, but in pursuing this line of thought several implications, as well as some problems, have emerged.


The Point of Reference

The primary problem is nailing down exactly what constitutes a "point of reference". For our purposes, it shall be treated simply as the units that are being compared against one another by the individual thinker. There is no real size or shape involved here--it could involve comparing books against one another, or it could involve comparing different passages within a single article against one another. It might also involve comparing the data recorded in a study against a theory--the units do not have to be "equivalent" in the sense that units of length must be.

The defining characteristic of a point of reference is therefore a functional one--that it is something which is being compared to something else by an individual.

This process, of comparing points of reference against one another, and making a judgement call on what information can be gained by this comparison, should not be underestimated. It is tremendously powerful; witness the Rosetta Stone, which contained a 1600-1700 word long passage translated into three languages. From this foundation, linguists were able to gain tremendous knowledge about the Egyptian hieroglyphic language which had remained up until that time largely a mystery. The Stone itself seems tiny, in comparison to the great things that were yielded from it.

Effective though this process may be, we must never fool ourselves into believing that anyone has ever found certain truth. The story about the Rosetta Stone, as I told it, is one that I judge to be true, based on the bits of information I've come across on the subject. Having not been involved in any part of the translation process, my belief in it is no less an act of faith than a Christian's belief in the trinity is. Both beliefs are arrived at by the same process.

Moreover, not one of the Rosetta Stone's translators can claim a monopoly on certain truth, either. The version they presented was what they judged to be an accurate translation based upon their years of experience--and the accumulation of points of reference therein.

It is important that I make myself clear on this point--I am not arguing that there is no such thing as an objective reality. Nor am I arguing that a linguist's judgement within their own field is no more valid than anyone else's. What I'm saying is that there is indeed an objective truth, and indeed everyone's arguments ought to be held accountable based on how accurate their conclusions are in approximating the truth, as well as how precise their methods are for measuring the accuracy of their assertions. This is a point I've made repeatedly, and I feel little desire to emphasize it more than necessary.

All that I am adding to it here is that whether or not one concludes that a theory is accurate involves nothing more or less certain than the judgement call of whatever individual's intellect is engaged on the subject.


Mistakes of the Rational Tradition

The rational tradition has for centuries sought to fill this uncertain hole with a hope for a more manifest truth. Plato's utopian society was run by Philosopher-kings who by their reason were able to perceive the form of Truth and Good. Descartes wanted to do away with all assumptions, so that he might use his reason to build a true understanding of the world on a purified foundation. The Positivists argued that truth could be arrived at only by verifying theories with evidence. Karl Popper turned this on its head, arguing that the only thing one could know for certain was when a scientific theory had been falsified.

I am prepared to make the modest assertion that all of these superior minds were entirely mistaken, to the extent that they argued that certain knowledge of any kind was attainable. Reason, as understood by those rationalists I have had any contact with, is no more a tool to this end than faith.

What exactly "reason" is, I have never been able to entirely understand. Is it a methodology? Indeed, the case has been made that it is just a synonym for the scientific method--in which case it is easily done away with, as said method is just as much a historically useful fiction as rationality on the whole has been. The idea of hypothesis, to experimental data, to conclusion, is all very well and good in theory, but has very little bearings on actual practice.

For instance, Tycho Brahe spent a great deal of his life gathering data that would later be used as the basis for the theories of Johannes Kepler, his student. The idea that Kepler formed a hypothesis, then tested it, then drew a conclusion, is absurd. What was relevant to his contributions to the scientific tradition were the points of reference available to him on the one hand, in the form of his teacher's data, Copernicus' writings, and his education in mathematics, and his own individual judgement on the other. So if "reason" refers to the scientific method, then I can safely say that my understanding of that method was not at work.

Reason has also been taken to mean deduction, or induction, or both. For the latter, David Hume demolished it most thoroughly centuries ago. It takes only a simple question: why is it necessarily rational to assume that a pattern will continue, on no firmer basis than that it has up until this moment done so? As a specific example, how does the fact that the sun has come up every day of your life indicate that it will come up tomorrow? Hume argues, correctly, that so far as we are making assumptions that a pattern will continue, our expectations are taking the form of faith, and not reason.

This damnation of a central pillar of traditional rationalism was a thorn in the side of would-be rationalists for the rest of history. Immanuel Kant began to formulate his brand of rationalism as a sort of response to Hume; in his History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell reaches near hysterics as he describes Hume's formulation of the problem of induction, while Karl Popper developed a rather elegant approach to utilizing the problem of induction within the framework of his philosophy of knowledge.

Nevertheless, it is my belief that Hume was not only correct, but in fact he did not go far enough. Not only is induction a fiction, but deduction is a convention. The idea that one point follows to the next is absurd; formal logic and math are both modes of approximating reality that owe their existence to thousands of years of tradition. For a more detailed look, by a more intelligent author, I recommend Tobias Dantzig's Number.

For my own part, I will simply assert that all deduction does is attempt to put a structure over certain of our points of reference, by drawing on those principles that we have learned. Moreover, those principles themselves are points of reference for us to draw upon; how they are used, and what meaning we derive from them, remains a matter of personal judgement.

So much for reason. Yet I have no intention of falling into the irrationalist trap of either arguing that there is no objective reality, or finding oneself in the awkward position of being unable to explain the progress of the scientific tradition. I am quite comfortable in my belief that rationalism in general has yielded many great accomplishments, even if I disagree with its fundamental assumptions.


The Rejection of Authority

Rationalism has fostered an environment of great learning and progress not because of its guarantee of a certain truth. As Kant argued in his essay on the Enlightenment, the best of rationalism has embodied itself in a rejection of authority as a source of truth. Karl Popper put it succinctly in his essay, "On the Sources of Knowledge", stating that "there are all kinds of sources of our knowledge, but none has authority."

If you believe that certain knowledge can be found in authoritative sources, then you are unlikely to be too critical of those you perceive as authorities. This perspective of course ignores that even the decision on who is supposed to be considered an authority is a judgement call that falls on every individual themself--and no authority can be turned to for answering this particular question, since you would obviously face the same problem of judging who that authority would be. The doctrine of authority, when taken seriously, becomes an infinite loop.

In practice, it has just meant deference to traditional authorities. These authorities range from clergy to scientists and "experts".

What traditional rationalism has done has not been to provide a crystal ball of Reason through which we can perceive the manifest truth; instead it has given us a moral faith. A faith that authority cannot be invoked to create certain truth; that we must judge for ourselves, as individuals, what it is that should be believed about the situations we face. Where this moral faith has loosened the deference to authority, an interesting phenomenon has occurred.


The Knowledge Economy

In a world where anyone from the least educated amateur to Einstein can have their theories criticized, and in turn produce criticisms and theories of their own, what you will see is an increasing number of independent conclusions being put forward. This is especially the case where literacy is high, and where there exists a medium for replicating printed works. Innovations such as the printing press and the internet have obviously been revolutionary where this particular aspect is concerned.

As more and more independent conclusions are produced, and most significantly, produced in writing, it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish oneself among the crowd of potential points of reference that individual readers will have to choose from. As a surplus of literature becomes available relative to the amount of time that people can devote to reading, the amount of attention that any given source receives shall vary incrementally with the value of its content, as well as the ease with which it can be found.

Value is here defined in the Marginalist sense; a source's value to one person may differ from its value to another. A mathematician may have more use for an article containing a new proof than a layman who lacks sufficient points of reference to make heads or tails of it.

Ease of access is an important factor as well; if a man in London would find value in a particular article, but it is only published in a local Seattle newspaper, then neither he nor the article will benefit from the attention he would willingly devote to reading it, were he aware of its existence.

In a larger sense, we can say that the most valuable sources will be those which provide the reader with the points of reference of the highest quality in a manner which requires the least amount of effort to understand.

What this means in an increasingly competitive scholarly environment is that each scholar will have to give much more in order to get the slightest bit of notice. As people distinguish their works by citing sources of information, the pressure to provide ever more citations will grow. As numerous citations become a common expectation, the pressure to explain how the sources support one's argument in greater detail shall also emerge and grow.

In extreme cases, such as in scientific journals, we see that it is commonly expected that authors put the effort into utilizing sophisticated methodologies to quantify one's arguments, and describing such methodologies in an open and transparent manner.

Here we see numerous varieties of reference points coming to the fore. Initially there is simply the perspective of the author, which should by no means be discounted. Expanding one's understanding of the different perspectives out there is, in my humble opinion, a valuable endeavor in it of itself. Beyond that are the citations, which in essence is a list of further reading one might do on a given subject—one that the author invested time in putting together so that the reader would have a much easier time locating the sources than they would otherwise. Even if the sources do not support the author's perspective in the slightest, he has increased the value of his work by investing in source data and making it available to his readers.

Justification of how the sources are used by the author provides further points of reference as to the nature of those sources, as well as to the author's own thought process. Going the extra mile and detailing methodology provides the reader with the idea of a process that may be useful to them; perhaps even more so than it was for the author himself.

In short, the main benefit of discussion and argumentation is that it increases the stock of points of reference available to the individuals involved, and in the case of written and recorded works, it increases the stock available to all of mankind.

This is no different than our understanding of voluntary trade in the Economy of Goods and Services. There, a voluntary exchange only occurs if both parties value what they are getting more than what they are giving.

The same thing happens in the Knowledge Economy. As I have described elsewhere, a scholarly article is often the result of investing time in research and gaining experience. The final result is points of reference that are easier for the reader to acquire than it was for the author to acquire them. In exchange, the author hopes to gain the attention of readers--which may then translate into support for further labor within their specialty. For scientists and scholars are just as much a part of the division of labor as anyone else.


Tradition is Our Foundation

I have formulated the bulk of my theory of Knowledge Economy above, and I would like to end with one final thought.

Though rationalism at its best has taken the form of a rejection of authority, at its worse it has been an attack on tradition itself.

Without tradition, there is only ignorance. As has been discussed above, math and science are themselves resting upon tradition. Without the bank of ages, the number of points of reference left available to us is reduced to nearly nothing beyond merely sensory observations

Thus Descartes' journeys into the purification of his beliefs from the assumptions grounded in tradition was a fool's errand from the start. His "proof" of his own existence, demonstrated supposedly through pure reason, would be devoid of any meaning without the context of a tradition of language and logic.

Tradition is not a static and oppressive thing; it is simply a framework, one that has grown and mutated with the contributions of each generation. Nor is tradition an "authority" in the sense that has been discussed--no amount of tradition can allow the individual to escape his responsibility to use his own judgement. Even the decision to defer to someone else's conclusions because they have traditionally been the authority requires the individual to make a judgement call.

There are no certain truths to be found, not from tradition, nor from reason. For that reason, "The Knowledge Economy Hypothesis" is perhaps a misleading title; no belief ever truly rises above the level of a hypothesis. Yet for my own part I feel there is still much work to be done, and I intend to pursue further work on this subject in the future.