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The Difference Between Knowledge and Wisdom

Technology has brought many benefits but also risks. While it has increased prosperity and population, relying solely on technology to solve problems could be misguided. Technology's ability to help is limited and stems from human nature. Advances may outpace our ability to use them wisely. Examples like nuclear weapons show technology being misused, and our self-control may be weakening as easy access to information harms cognition and deep thinking. Relying only on technology risks repeating mistakes like giving fire to humans without also giving wisdom.

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33 views

The Difference Between Knowledge and Wisdom

Technology has brought many benefits but also risks. While it has increased prosperity and population, relying solely on technology to solve problems could be misguided. Technology's ability to help is limited and stems from human nature. Advances may outpace our ability to use them wisely. Examples like nuclear weapons show technology being misused, and our self-control may be weakening as easy access to information harms cognition and deep thinking. Relying only on technology risks repeating mistakes like giving fire to humans without also giving wisdom.

Uploaded by

rdmdelarosa
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Technology has never before played such a large role in our lives.

So far, that role has mostly


been positive — largely thanks to advances in technology, we’ve never been more prosperous,
there have never been more of us, and we’ve never been more at peace.
But the mistaken idea that technology can be relied on to solve all of our problems on its own
has become more and more common thanks to these trends.
The idea that technology might be more trouble than it’s worth, or that it may have catastrophic
consequences down the line, is nothing new. It’s a widespread theme in post-apocalyptic and
dystopian science fiction, genres which dominates sales both in the bookstore and at the box
office (The Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Terminator and Divergent series are just a few
examples from last year).
Meanwhile, both because it has been advancing so quickly and because we get so much value
from it in our daily lives, technology’s capacity to solve our problems can seem infinite.
But limits to what technology can do for us do exist. These limits stem from the very nature of
technology and how it relates to us as human beings, so they won’t go away as technology gets
more advanced.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom


There’s an old myth about how humans first got the use of fire — perhaps you’ve heard it before.
The story goes that the titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind after
taking pity on their weak and defenseless bodies. This angered Zeus, who chained Prometheus to
a rock where he had his liver torn out every day by an eagle (until eventually Hercules came
along and saved him).
The reason why Zeus punished Prometheus so harshly (as Plato tells it) is that fire actually ended
up harming humans more than it helped them. Fire represented technological knowledge, which
gave mankind power over its surroundings — the power to, for example, make it warmer and
brighter at night. The problem arose from what Prometheus didn’t steal, the part of knowledge he
couldn’t get his hands on: self-knowledge (i.e. wisdom) which would have given
humanity mastery over itself.
Handing mankind knowledge without wisdom was like giving kids matches to play with. They
started destroying themselves, and Zeus had to intervene before they burned the house down; he
eventually sent the rampaging humans the wisdom they lacked, restoring order. But the damage
had already been done, and Prometheus had to pay the price.
The point here is that, while technology makes it possible to do much more than we could
without it, it can’t help us decide what to do. So far, we’ve been wise enough not to make any
really bad choices, but what if, in the future, technology outpaces our self-mastery? What if, like
the mythical humans in the Prometheus story, we become the recipients of divine fire without the
wisdom needed to use it responsibly?
Some would argue that the events of the 20th century answered this question already. The
obvious example is the invention of nuclear weapons: fire (technically nuclear fusion, not
combustion) at its most destructive. The first detonation of an atomic bomb took place in July
1945, and a mere 17 years later humanity nearly annihilated itself during the Cuban Missile
Crisis. This was a near miss, and it easily could have happened. Others might point to the
degradation of the environment or the existence of biological weapons as clear evidence that
humanity is using its new powers unwisely. On the one hand, that self-mastery seems to be
weakening — it certainly hasn’t gotten noticeably stronger in the recent past. 
To put it another way, we really are playing with fire.

Fewer People Gain Wisdom


If knowledge is knowing a bunch of stuff, wisdom is being able retain and implement that stuff
in practical applications.
For example, we all have that friend who’s very knowledgeable about health, diet, and fitness.
“You shouldn’t eat that slice of pizza. It’ll make you fat.”
Yet that person is painfully overweight and clearly doesn’t follow his own advice. * I would
consider this friend somewhat knowledgeable.
Here’s the thing — knowledge is easy. Wisdom takes effort, trial, error, pain, blood, sweat, and
tears. That’s why there are so few people in this world who are truly wise. It’s a lifelong practice.
Knowledge is the more comfortable option.

Technology is weakening our power over ourselves


One worrying example is that technology may be having a negative effect on cognition. This
might seem counter-intuitive in the age of the search engine and the online encyclopedia, but as
it turns out, the internet is wreaking havoc on our ability to think clearly and retain information.
The author Nicholas Carr points out that “when we go online, we enter an environment that
promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the
Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower
thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.”
This picture is borne out by the data. A recent study found that Millennials aged 18 to 34, people
who spent their formative years online, were worse than people aged 55 and over at
remembering what day it is, where they put their keys, or whether or not they had showered. So
even though our access to information has never been greater, our ability to retain and apply that
information is declining — a trend so pronounced that even Google’s Eric Schmidt has
expressed worry that “the overwhelming rapidity of information… is, in fact, affecting
cognition”
https://medium.com/tradecraft-traction/why-we-can-t-rely-on-technology-for-a-better-future-
1aee9fd8e946

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