“I know nothing.”
That was the famous catch phrase of Sergeant Schultz
when pressed by Colonel Klink on Hogan’s
Heroes. Of course, he said it with a
thick fake accent and perfect comic timing.
His proclamation of ignorance must have paid a lot of bills. It has similar comic effect today when used
by politicians although it doesn’t pay any bills but rather allows them to continue
life unfettered by the criminal justice system.
But I digress.
You know, Socrates was right on the subject of professing
ignorance. He went to the Oracle, which
told him he was the wisest man. And the
father of western thought wrestled with this for a while and finally produced
the greatest pearl of wisdom ever to grace the mind of a man. Briefly stated, he said that if he was indeed
wise, it was only because he knew he did not know - a sentiment that would
plague freshmen college students for ages.
It’s not knowing something that is important, but knowing your
limits. Brilliant! Any tactician will tell you that it isn’t
where you’re strong that is the problem, but where you are weak. And if you don’t know where you are weak,
that can be deadly.
So…how do I determine what I don’t know? I suppose if I add up all that I do know and
subtract that from the sum total of all knowledge, I’ll be left with a
remainder of what I don’t know. There’s
only one problem with this theory, and that is simply that I don’t know the sum
total of all knowledge. By definition
it’s mostly things I don’t know. Even if
it was just one thing that I didn’t know, who knows how big that one thing
is? I think it would be safe to say that
the sum total of the universe of knowledge, right down to “What color was
Socrates’ underwear?” approaches an infinite amount.
Got your brain in twist yet?
Let’s perform a simple mathematical operation. Let’s get a percentage of the universe’s
knowledge that I have. That’s
simple. I simply divide the amount that
I have, however small, by the sum total which is approaching an infinite
amount. Reaching way back into my bag of
finite knowledge I pull out some screwy calculus from Mr. Hively’s 12th
Grade AP Class. When dividing an amount
by another that is approaching infinity, the answer is (drum roll please):
zero. Not close to zero…but actually
zero. (And you thought you’d never use
that calculus.)
So there you have it folks.
My percentage of knowledge is 0%, making it fact. I know nothing. Perhaps you’d like to substitute your amount
of knowledge into the equation and see if you come up with a different answer…
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