The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf]

library.ias.edu

154 pointswallflower33 comments

Reminds me of a bit from Larry Niven's Protector:

> "We want access to Earth's records on the study of Mars. Hell, Garner, the Phobos cameras might already show where the Outsider came down! We want permission to search Mars from close orbit. We want permission to land."

> "What have you got so far?"

> Nick snorted. "There's only two things they can agree on. We can search all we want to - from space. For letting us examine their silly records they want to charge us a flat million marks!"

> "Pay it."

> "It's robbery."

> "A Belter says that? Why don't you have records on Mars?"

> "We were never interested. What for?"

> "What about abstract knowledge?"

> "Another word for useless."

> "Then what makes you want useless knowledge enough to pay a million marks for it?"

> Slowly Nick matched his grin. "It's still robbery. How in Finagle's name did Earth know they'd need to know about Mars?"

> "That's the secret of abstract knowledge. You get in the habit of finding out everything you can about everything. Most of it gets used sooner or later. We've spent billions exploring Mars."

Off topic, but I found it interesting that James Corey's Expanse series also has "Belters"

It's pretty much a standard term at this point in that category of sci-fi. For example, Ben Bova also calls them belters.

Are there any works of fiction where people who live in the asteroid belt aren't called belters?

I vaguely remember Lois McMaster Bujold writing a book about genetically engineered humans named Quaddies, since they have four arms (in lieu of two arms and two legs) who work in free-fall, but I think that was an interstellar series, and they weren't just in an asteroid belt.

> through-out the whole history of science most of the really great discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been made by men and women who were driven not by the de-sire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.

Came across this yesterday with the importance of curiosity in a video about education. [0]

> "Curiosty is the of engine of achievment."

[0]: https://youtu.be/wX78iKhInsc?t=6m21s

Have often wondered about this.

What does Internet do to curiosity? Or what happens when curiosity is quenched withing seconds of being aroused? Is the instant access to knowledge cutting short the thoughtful and deliberate pursuit of answers, a habit which might have been the hidden source of our great discoveries of the past...

I'm sure people have wondered this about the written word, higher education, etc. over the years, and society has adapted just fine every time.

If anything, there is now no end to the threads that can be pulled in pursuit of curiosity now that so much information is instantly accessible.

internet quenches curiousity if the question has been explored already... but the internet only contains information humans know about, the point of curiosity is to push beyond boundaries of human knowledge.

Good point. There is less room for deliberate practice when it comes to research. Otoh there is more room to practice problem solving and synthesis of new ideas. It appears to be a net win to me. So long as we make use of this opportunity, rather than spending the sudden surplus of time to read Facebook or other parasitic resources.

I can see it going either way. On the one hand, you may find people spend less time reinventing the wheel. On the other, they may lose the basic skills involved in pursuing answers to questions that aren't readily available, or even the habit of pursuing such answers altogether. Really, though, our collective knowledge has advanced so far that most meaningful inventions require extraordinary specialization and focus. That kind of focus only comes from a lifelong, passionate curiosity, not just the sort of passing fancy a google search can satisfy.

>What does Internet do to curiosity? Or what happens when curiosity is quenched withing seconds of being aroused?

For a substantial part of the population, this happens:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wiki-hole

If you have ready access to information, you hunger for more, because after you understand one concept or fact, you NOTICE all the other things that depend on that, be they new things building on top or inconsistencies in other fields conflicting with your new knowledge

And for the parody version of that, The Onion has put together this site. :)

http://www.clickhole.com

>For a substantial part of the population, this happens:

For an even more substantial part of the population, the "I'll pretend like I know things just because I can look them up in wikipedia or some such source" happens.

Which is great! The brain becomes relegated to the role of a cache instead of working as the whole of an individual's knowledge.

It's great to know what knowledge exists and where.

It's less great to think that you know something just because you could swear you have read it on the Internet once, which I think is what GP meant. It's not unusual to see people post bullshit because they think they understand something they've read on Wikipedia or a random blog or forum but actually they know shit about it.

> The brain becomes relegated to the role of a cache instead of working as the whole of an individual's knowledge.

I have a pile of physics textbooks sitting nearby but that doesn't make me a qualified physicist. Availability of knowledge isn't worth a thing if it's never been integrated into your mind.

I got bored a few weeks ago and made (a very basic!) something[1] to turn the wikihole into a big single article.

[1] - https://wikiflat.herokuapp.com/about

My pet theory is that social media and other 'feeds' of information slowly erode the desire for curiosity, because as far as your brain is concerned it's getting it's share of good feelings.

When I first started using the internet, there weren't many feeds and the way I navigated the web was to have an interest, an idea, a kernel of thought that I then chased through rabbit holes of information repositories.

The process has been flipped, and instead of us seeking out information we simply wait for it to be delivered. I suspect the same process is why many are content watching TV versus taking up hobbies. But the internet and smartphones means that feed of information is with us all the time, drip feeding "just good enough" bites of information all throughout the day, squashing curiosity.

There was a notable change in my thinking and clearness of mind when I stopped using social media, and I have very different habits for sites like HN now as well. I try to only use my phone when I have a clear purpose, not just to pass the time. With HN I still value it as a news source, but I understand I can suffer the same problems as other social media and so I try to make sure I just read the front page titles and find something to truly engage in, or else I leave the site for the day.

After cutting down on checking feeds I find myself having more time to think and I do find myself chasing curious thoughts around. Which is nice!

Absolutely agreed on the feeds issue. Unlike TV, the internet as a medium has the capacity to enable both unbounded discovery, creativity, production, etc. and unbounded consumption. Like TV, feeds and their ilk encourage pure consumption, but with little slot machine levers (like, favorite, retweet) that make you think you're contributing more than you actually are.

Overall though, it's all about how you use it, and many times it's a delicate balance and a constant fight against how these products are engineered to suck you in. But kudos for getting out of the giant casino that is social media!

I sometimes work in curious ways. Recently i have been printing the HN articles and reading them at random intervals like just before going for a jog,Thinking on one's feet is a wonderful experience

My account is that the Internet is cluttered. Attempts to organize the clutter create piles of knowledge, but those piles contain a variety of simple and complex information, vague and detailed, accurate and creative, and still the piles themselves are not organized. We've learned to sort through piles of information to identify what we want (or something close enough). I think it's exhausting. I'd like to see a curated internet directory that can direct users to quality information as a librarian would. I believe that would stoke curiosity more than the current typical experience.

My experience is that it's easy to waste tons of time on the Internet trying to learn how to learn things the best possible way when if you'd just spent that time on the first mediocre book on a given topic at your local library you'd have been better off.

I'm deeply skeptical of the overall value of the Internet even for those trying to use it for enrichment and not just entertainment/shopping. I'm sure some outliers manage super-powered learning with it, but I think for most it's more like a massive distraction of false work and wasted effort that occasionally yields bursts of high productivity, while being kind of crap on average compared with what could be done without it and without the distraction of an all-you-can-eat information buffet. Especially if you factor in the Skinner box nature of the modern Web and its ability (along with other hyper-available, giant-catalogue-at-your-fingertips entertainment, all also delivered over the 'net) to waste hours of time in seemingly the blink of an eye.

Two sides in my perspective:

One - those who 'grew up' in the habit of knowledge being somewhat scarce, as in, the best resource in the US was physically inside a Library (probably the 'Reference' section) - meaning the reward could be earned. The knowledge gained from Encyclopedias or Archives or Publications (ex: Time) built a large web of understanding over time. Not everybody retains a lot, but the art of learning Facts is pretty similar in the Internet age if one is careful about their sources...

...which leads us to Two - the "whatever the quickest answer is / validates what I believe, I'll go with it" mentality which manifests in stupid people spreading stupid erroneous things (ex: Anti-Vaccination "science") en masse because the Internet doesn't discriminate against idiots. Rather, it kind of enables them. I have a significant amount of contempt for people who behave in this manner, no matter their age group, and believe me, they're ever present up and down the roster from Millenial to Baby Boomer.

> Or what happens when curiosity is quenched withing seconds of being aroused?

Packages show up on the lawn it is astonishing how they appear.

They are astonishing surprises.

It’s what I ordered the cat food the espresso machine the two new tables.

Ordering things and how they appear basically I am a small-scale sorcerer.

On the road I press the button and the music goes.

Air conditioning gas pedal restaurant take-out etc.

It is my will being perpetually sated.

Pretend we are writing a fable in which a sorcerer always gets what he wants.

Consider what happens to a soul which always gets what it wants.

- Emily Bludworth de Barios, printed in FORKLIFT, OHIO issue #31, copied from their "INSPECT FREIGHT" page for this issue so I feel OK reposting it directly here in its entirety.

Humans are domesticated primates, and like all domesticated animals we demonstrate the canonical properties of neoteny, or the adult retention of childlike traits: physical traits like rounder heads, flatter faces, shorter noses, bigger eyes and shorter jaws, of course; but also and more importantly the cognitive traits of playfulness, curiosity, creativity and innovation.

Indeed, it is in many ways the explosion of cultural innovation and exchange approximately 50 thousand years ago that marks the distinction between archaic humans and modern homo sapiens sapiens, who spread to every habitable continent on earth and developed a wide variety of inventions to facilitate living in diverse climates. Archaic humans also had culture, of course, but nothing like the innovation curve that has characterized the period since then.

> and like all domesticated animals we demonstrate the canonical properties of neoteny, or the adult retention of childlike traits

What does domestication have to do with that? Artificial selection of those animals which retain such features? Why?

It's also worth noting that, at least according to my observation and what I've read on Wikipedia[0], human Asian people have various neotenous features too, from what I can tell more frequently or greater in number than people of other genetic make up.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny_in_humans#Mongoloids

Domesticated by whom, exactly? (assuming your theory is correct, the physical traits are advantageous because these make us cuter, but then again, cuter for whom? while other traits like playfulness come from not needing to fight/work for food because... someone else is providing it for us).

Is there a more thorough study of the scientific and intellectual productivity of people studying whatever they want and fooling around? This makes me wonder about the culture I saw in graduate school where many professors seemed spend more time getting funding and publications than research. Was there a time when it was different?

> This makes me wonder about the culture I saw in graduate school where many professors seemed spend more time getting funding and publications than research. Was there a time when it was different?

I don't have any objective data about how much time was spent on grants as a function of time, but just from talking to faculty (in astronomy and physics) the universal feeling is that they spend more of their time on grants and proposals than they did in the past. I am not entirely sure what the dominant cause is, but it is probably partly that grant overheads can contribute significantly to a university/college operating budget. It also wouldn't surprise me if the overall cost of doing research is increasing, owing to the need to obtain cutting-edge equipment which is generally not yet able to take advantage of economies of scale. Lastly, the size of academia has increased while funding levels have not kept up (this is particularly true in the past ~decade) so the available funding per researcher has dropped, making grants much more competitive. When grant acceptance rates drop below 10% (as is true in some fields), you have to spend a lot more time on the proposal to stand a chance of winning a grant, compared to how much time you might need to spend if the acceptance rate was in the 25-40% range.

I always think of number theory when the idea of uselessly abstract knowledge comes up - it was the purest of pure math for centuries and it was absurd to suggest that things like the nature of prime numbers and the divisibility of integers would somehow be applied in industry. Then computers and cryptography came around and now there's a 2 trillion dollar ecommerce industry that depends on prime factorization being hard so people don't steal your bank information.

Considering that I am currently procrastinating on HN, this is probably the last thing I need to read right now.

I apply the "One man's trash is another man's treasure" to knowledge.

My favourite source of useful useless knowledge:

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/

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