Information is not knowledge
When you read about a country you have never visited, or see pictures of it, that is not an experience — it is information. A cookbook gives enough information to cook food, but unless you actually experiment and practise, you do not really know how to cook. People who lack this discrimination think that information is a kind of knowledge. Sometimes it is, but unless it becomes your experience, it is not knowledge.There is no such thing as intellectual knowledge. There is either information — which amounts to no knowledge but only points toward it — or there is direct knowledge. As soon as you assume that you have something intellectually, the ignorance becomes even deeper, now hidden behind what you call intellectual knowledge.
Nature of information
Information is itself an experience, and it comes in the form of symbols. Written or spoken, these symbols have meaning, which means they are low-entropy structures. Information always points to an experience; if it does not point to an experience, it is not information.Write letters of the alphabet on little pieces of cardboard, shuffle them and throw them on the floor. They are scattered symbols with no meaning — a high-entropy structure, not information. But arrange them to spell cat or dog, and the same letters, arranged differently, become a low-entropy structure that points to an experience.
Limitations of information
- It can be right or wrong. That is why you do not trust information; it can be misinformation.
- It is not indirect knowledge. There is no such thing as indirect knowledge. You receive the direct experience of the information (the words/symbols); you do not receive anything indirectly.
- It depends on interpretation. Information is only as reliable as your or someone else's interpretation. A name spoken in a language you do not understand points to an experience but is useless to you. This is why old books, whose languages and symbols are lost, are so easily misinterpreted — sometimes deliberately.
- It can be deliberately concealed. A lot of effort has gone into both preserving knowledge and concealing information. Ancient books were often encrypted, which is why they look like poetry or meaningless metaphors.
Ungrounded information
Some people go on collecting information of all kinds, calling themselves students or knowledge lovers, having memorized numbers, places and names. There is so much unfounded information in their memory that it produces only confusion. Cross-question such a person once or twice and the garbage appears. Far from making a person intelligent, a lot of information without a foundation of direct experience and logic actually reduces the intelligence.What is not a means of knowledge
Because information is unreliable, none of these are valid means of knowledge:- Parents, friends, relations — being good-natured or caring does not make them reliable; they may themselves be deluded.
- Leaders and authorities — most are corrupt; the powerful want to dominate and enslave.
- Experts — reliable only within their own field; trust in experts is exploited daily.
- Schools and universities — they give skills and information for a degree, not knowledge. Real knowledge comes through experience.
- Media, books, internet — anybody can say or write anything. The more reputed the outlet, the more chance it is misused.
- The wisdom of the masses — many people saying a thing does not make it true. It takes only two or three people to convince you of a lie.
- Old age / ancient books — old means old, not true. Authors are nameless, dead people; you cannot verify it.
- Great traditions and institutions — these are often devices of mass manipulation, feeding on gullibility.
- Common sense — if a few sentences are true, the rest must be true is common nonsense. Cunning people mix two or three truths with a lie, just as a few drops of poison in milk will kill you.
- Indoctrination — the most dangerous of all.