Douglas Adams was right – knowledge without understanding is meaningless | John Naughton

Fans of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy treasure the bit where a group of hyper-dimensional beings demand that a supercomputer tells them the secret to life, the universe and everything. The machine, which has been constructed specifically for this purpose, takes 7.5m years to compute the answer, which famously comes out as 42. The computer helpfully points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings who instructed it never knew what the question was.

Does that mean we should not use Quantum Mechanics? Because although we use it everywhere in our phones etc. We don’t really understand it or the knowledge of it. We use it but we don’t know how it works.

That was Immanuel Kant’s insight, sir!

Understanding is knowledge of the Holy One and the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Proverbs9:10

This says a lot about some members of Parliament.

I would call competence rather than knowledge being good at predicting how a protein will fold. And nature is full of competence without understanding. Mosquitos and pathogens are extremely competent, without any understanding. 😉 See danieldennett, 'The evolution of minds'.

Applied knowledge is wisdom. If that helps.

What makes me skeptical about people who claim that understanding is more important than knowledge is that people making such claims tend to interpret 'understanding' to mean 'seeing things the way they do'.

Knowledge can teach you how to behave as though you understand, which helps lead you to understanding. Like 'Love thy neighbour as thyself', and 'don't be a shit'.

And on top a little knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge.

good read 😃

Well duh

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