It's not what I know about I don't know, it's what I don't know about what I don't know.
So, one of the reasons that I rarely reach zero unread articles on my Greader is that I'm subscribed to a lot of things. No, it's probably more honest and straightforward to just blame The Browser, but that doesn't really mitigate the point. Either way, I have a lot of interests. As of writing, i've got about 6 tabs open, ranging from a longitudinal study on happiness in The Atlantic, an article on smear tactics by Gordon Brown, a lovely poem in The New Yorker, the wiki article on copyright (which by the way is still happening, but i'm making a sort of series of installments rather than one thing) and Thinkin' Lincoln, which is hilarious and I blame Matt for sucking up what precious little time I have left devoted to eating.
This is crippling.
Recently, when I went climbing, Rob asked me during one of my more extreme bouts of enthusiasm on why I didn't go climbing earlier (i've only been doing it for about three weeks) on account of the fact that I enjoy it so much (it's true, it is incredibly fun). In addition to simple pragmatic reasons of scheduling conflicts, material constraints, etc, one reason that struck me wasn't that I didn't know I enjoyed climbing; it was that I didn't know that I didn't know. If someone were to ask me the question, "Do you enjoy climbing?", I could heartily respond, "Yes, I do very much enjoy climbing." But here's the rub: Nobody asked that question, not even me. I didn't know that I enjoyed climbing, because the question of climbing-enjoyment never occurred to me within my cognitive frame of reference.
Another example: The New Yorker publishes a wide mix of reportage, newsgathering, and fictional pieces such as poems and short stories. Ordinarily, i'm more interested in the reportage and newgathering stuff, and would generally skip over the fiction stuff. But (being somewhat of a knowledge 'completist') I read the fiction, because i'm afraid i'll skip over some incredible piece of writing which I would totally love and adore. Case in point: Jonathan Lethem. Having never heard of him before, I proceeded to read Lostronaut in The New Yorker, which has been one of the nicest examples I have ever read within the short story genre. It wasn't just a 'I know this Jonathan Lethem fellow who apparently writes good shit, I haven't read any, but I know of it', but rather a complete lack of knowledge of who Lethem is and what he does.
It is precisely this kind of serendipitous finding, this finding out of things that I didn't even know I didn't know, these second-order knowledge questions, these hidden knowledge questions, that bugs me the most and compels me to spend so much time on topics and even forms of writing that are so completely varied. I'm afraid that by subscribing to a select few fields of knowledge that I know I'm fairly interested in, i'm going to miss out on some other field of knowledge that I would completely love and adore and be willing to sacrifice someone else's firstborn child to it.
Now, I realise that this is a bit of a bogeyman argument: you can't constantly be asking the 'what if' question. I understand that most people are able to resolve this argument and move on with their lives, but I haven't been able to find a satisfying resolution to this problem that allays the worst of my fear of commitment and allows me some form of peace-of-mind. I intensely dislike the 'ignorance is bliss' argument, as I feel it is a even worse argument that the one I am proposing.
In a related and grandiose but completely untenable thesis, I have the idea that this is sort of what the current Age of Knowledge is all about. That is, modern day knowledge gathering isn't a case of 'What is the answer to question X?' but rather a case of 'What are the questions that need to be asked in regards to question X?' Case in point: metaethics. Whenever I start doing ethical thought of any kind, it inevitably flounders and sinks into the quicksand that is foundational ethics. Everytime I try and do ethics, I end up doing metaethics.
So, who knows? My crippling commitment to a lack of commitment will probably (has already, i'm wagering) end up marring my life, in ways I can't even imagine, due to the reasons detailed above. Is it possible to monetise my capacity as knowledgable oddball?
So, one of the reasons that I rarely reach zero unread articles on my Greader is that I'm subscribed to a lot of things. No, it's probably more honest and straightforward to just blame The Browser, but that doesn't really mitigate the point. Either way, I have a lot of interests. As of writing, i've got about 6 tabs open, ranging from a longitudinal study on happiness in The Atlantic, an article on smear tactics by Gordon Brown, a lovely poem in The New Yorker, the wiki article on copyright (which by the way is still happening, but i'm making a sort of series of installments rather than one thing) and Thinkin' Lincoln, which is hilarious and I blame Matt for sucking up what precious little time I have left devoted to eating.
This is crippling.
Recently, when I went climbing, Rob asked me during one of my more extreme bouts of enthusiasm on why I didn't go climbing earlier (i've only been doing it for about three weeks) on account of the fact that I enjoy it so much (it's true, it is incredibly fun). In addition to simple pragmatic reasons of scheduling conflicts, material constraints, etc, one reason that struck me wasn't that I didn't know I enjoyed climbing; it was that I didn't know that I didn't know. If someone were to ask me the question, "Do you enjoy climbing?", I could heartily respond, "Yes, I do very much enjoy climbing." But here's the rub: Nobody asked that question, not even me. I didn't know that I enjoyed climbing, because the question of climbing-enjoyment never occurred to me within my cognitive frame of reference.
Another example: The New Yorker publishes a wide mix of reportage, newsgathering, and fictional pieces such as poems and short stories. Ordinarily, i'm more interested in the reportage and newgathering stuff, and would generally skip over the fiction stuff. But (being somewhat of a knowledge 'completist') I read the fiction, because i'm afraid i'll skip over some incredible piece of writing which I would totally love and adore. Case in point: Jonathan Lethem. Having never heard of him before, I proceeded to read Lostronaut in The New Yorker, which has been one of the nicest examples I have ever read within the short story genre. It wasn't just a 'I know this Jonathan Lethem fellow who apparently writes good shit, I haven't read any, but I know of it', but rather a complete lack of knowledge of who Lethem is and what he does.
It is precisely this kind of serendipitous finding, this finding out of things that I didn't even know I didn't know, these second-order knowledge questions, these hidden knowledge questions, that bugs me the most and compels me to spend so much time on topics and even forms of writing that are so completely varied. I'm afraid that by subscribing to a select few fields of knowledge that I know I'm fairly interested in, i'm going to miss out on some other field of knowledge that I would completely love and adore and be willing to sacrifice someone else's firstborn child to it.
Now, I realise that this is a bit of a bogeyman argument: you can't constantly be asking the 'what if' question. I understand that most people are able to resolve this argument and move on with their lives, but I haven't been able to find a satisfying resolution to this problem that allays the worst of my fear of commitment and allows me some form of peace-of-mind. I intensely dislike the 'ignorance is bliss' argument, as I feel it is a even worse argument that the one I am proposing.
In a related and grandiose but completely untenable thesis, I have the idea that this is sort of what the current Age of Knowledge is all about. That is, modern day knowledge gathering isn't a case of 'What is the answer to question X?' but rather a case of 'What are the questions that need to be asked in regards to question X?' Case in point: metaethics. Whenever I start doing ethical thought of any kind, it inevitably flounders and sinks into the quicksand that is foundational ethics. Everytime I try and do ethics, I end up doing metaethics.
So, who knows? My crippling commitment to a lack of commitment will probably (has already, i'm wagering) end up marring my life, in ways I can't even imagine, due to the reasons detailed above. Is it possible to monetise my capacity as knowledgable oddball?
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