Thinking It Through

If you could build a machine that preset all available knowledge to you (perhaps near birth) so that you did not have to do all the work yourself, would you consider this a bad thing, or a good thing?

I guess this asks, would this undermine an important tenant, that you are best to find your own answers... What do you think?

Is it the truth? Then finding your own answers doesn't matter, unless you are trying to find answers other than truth.

You will not miss out on experiencing reality by posessing fact.

If it is the truth, than I would consider it a good thing. Because even after people have found their own answers, or especially after this, they could often use a healthy dose of the truth.

But standard school settings do exactly this already as it is anyway, albiet far slower, they provide information without you "fnding your own answers". And they tend to peddle bullshit.

We probably already have the capability to access "collective information" through mental capacities that are currently suppressed, due to many reasons, some likely intentional and nefarious.

Why do you think animals are more instinctually in tune with the world and inherent knowledge at birth over man? And why do ancient civilizations hold "secrets" beyond our understanding to this day?

I think it may be possible animals may use things like simpler language, and more effective body language, such that key instincts are strengthened more easily.

My answer to my own question would probably lie with an answer somewhere between 'yes' and 'no'. It may be useful to have certain things automatically uploaded, which contrasts with other things.

For example, finding the one you love vs. knowing how to calculate an approximation of a square root to many places. I'm not I would be comfortable just being told to believe something that is emotionally based. But, I guess the question here is "Do you consider emotional feelings as knowledge?"

I am wondering wether you consider this machine to be like the ones you see in movies where the alien downloads all of our worlds information through some means and learns about us in a matter of minutes?

Because if you were to be given a device which gave you information at birth it would mean nothing. You need to have the natural learning and growing period over time for that information to be of any use.

But lets says you could skip all that with your machine and have us be able to "know" everything as babies or young children from a collective data bank.

The next question would be, where did this data bank come from?

Would you be happy for Communists, or Muslims, or Christians, or Neo Cons, or new agers, or scientists or anybody else to have control of what goes into the machine and therefore into your head at birth?

The masses are already being conditioned, but at least with the time it takes now, we have the ability to escape this preconditioning.

So the biggest question would be, from where is this information taken from?

If it was from a benevolent source, I would say yes. Because to me knowledge equals power.


Im assuning your main question you asked yourself when pondering this revolved around wether "experincing" something ourselves was fundamental to "knowing" something.

But since its a hypothetical and you can create a machine that is impossible to create right now, then hypothetically, you would also be able to give the "knowledge" and "instinct" that only comes with expeince with that info also.

Imagine, if we could do away with all those years doing all those trivial things that EVERY human goes through again and again, only to come to the same conclusions at the end of it all? (like dont put your hand in the fire or you will get burnt.) We could spend our lives pursuing far more important things.

Data banks that could speed up our learning time so we could spend more time adding to that data base would be a good invention.

P.s.
I was wondering if the post about The Matrix, which had the lines below refering to God being one universal consousness; discovering and learning and knowing "all" by us humans living our lives and then giving our experinces (good and bad) to The Great Data Base in the Sky, was your inspiration for this thread?

"This seems to be a perspective which answers the age-old question, "If there is a God, why does he allow such terrible things to happen?" It is all for our learning of lessons we could not comprehend in any other way than to experience them either firsthand or through others."

No, not inspired by Matrix or Matrix thread...
It also wasn't really a God post either...

It was more, the idea that something is better when it is more personal. Also, that something is done 'better' when done by yourself.
But, in writing this reply, I had another thought... That individualism is at stake, and I guess (and from an old mathematics area) that sometimes there is more than one answer to a question...

My question is would this machine preset the knowledge as facts?

In my mind there is a big difference from knowing a fact and knowing how to do something.

Ex: 1+1=2 fact and actually having the ability to add.

Declarative knowledge vs. Procedural knowledge

Ah if such a machine was made it'd be tricky, and soon out of date, as something new would be discovered, something else rejected ect. I think it would be bad, because at no time in history, that i am aware, did anybody possess all knowledge about everything, so say this machine was made today, it would posses info that may be proven wrong in ten years time. So i dont think it would be such a great idea, also it would take away any innocence a child possesses by given him/her knowledge about the realities of life. Taking away the stages we go through as we grow older.

IMO we are these machines you describe, but we are filled with borrowed nonsense and ideas and it bogs us down, makes us retarded.

All knowledge learned will bring future expectations, and when reality takes an unexpected turn you will be at an absolute loss, you will
crash like a computer because you have no real experience to fall back upon.

Without having expectations of borrowed knowledge,infinite possibilities in the future exists, and all turns lead to understanding.

Fear of the unknown comes from borrowed knowledge, if such a machine exists these people would be absolutely terrified by reality.
If a machine by definition is a process, then it exists already and the state of the world today is the result.