Knowledge Is Communal Most of our knowledge resides in other people

Most of what we consider our knowledge is an illusion as, in reality, it is distributed in other people’s minds. Knowledge is communal.

Knowledge is communal

As described in The knowledge delusion, we know almost nothing individually compared to what we think we know. Most of what we consider to be our knowledge is an illusion.

Why don’t we know?

We can’t explain these things as we don’t need to know.

We rely on the minds of other people. It is a form of division of labor – a division of cognitive labor.

Most of what we consider to be our knowledge is an illusion as, in reality, it is distributed in other people’s minds.

Our knowledge is distributed. Knowledge is communal. We live in a community of knowledge.

If we know so little, how come the human species has been so successful?

It’s simple. For most things, it doesn’t matter what we think or what we believe if we don’t have to act on it, or it does not affect us.

We do not need to know how a toilet works in any detail to use it.

We can believe that the Sun orbits the Earth. It doesn’t matter unless, of course, you are a NASA scientist charged with sending a space vehicle to Jupiter. How many people in the world know how to do that — not many.

We all possess a little knowledge in one or two specific domains of expertise. We rely on other people for everything else but delude ourselves that we understand things when we don’t.

What about issues like human-made global warming?

So not knowing how a toilet works is not a big issue unless, of course, your toilet is broken and you cannot find a plumber with the knowledge to repair it.

But issues that affect our well-being, such as global warming and anti-vaxers, are a whole other ball game. More to come on this later.

Credit: This post draws on the work of Steven Sloman and his book The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone.

Detailed Resources

• Big Think: Humanity solved the “trust paradox” by going tribal — and paid a horrific price by David R. Samson (2023)
• Blog Post: Human Systems Are Almost Always Based On Trust by Dave Pollard (2023)
• HBR: Rethinking Trust by Roderick M. Kramer (2009)

Posts that link to this post

•  Reflections on the Future of Knowledge Management Societal Knowledge Management
•  Most of Our Knowledge Is a Delusion We know far less than we think we do
•  Social Reasoning The Argumentative Theory of Human Reason
•  What Does Greta Thunberg Know About Global Warming? Diddly Squat! The Knowedge Delusion
•  The Knowledge Delusion We know far less than we think we do
•  Distributed Cognition Not only is knowledge distributed, but cognition is also distributed
•  The Argumentative Theory of Human Reason We did not evolve to reason individually but to reason socially
•  Trust & Belief Formation Trust plays a critical role in forming our beliefs

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