The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

“Knowledge is power,” wrote Francis Bacon. But Bacon’s vast knowledge did not keep him from taking bribes and falling into disgrace. Clearly, Bacon’s knowledge did not have the power to save him from himself.[a.] What Bacon overlooked, we now make explicit: Knowledge is useful in the service of an appropriate Model of the Universe[b.] , and not oth

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A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious

subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of

consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the

origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds... this is all great stuff. Wond... See more

the same qualities that make knowledge a virtue can also turn it into a vice. Knowledge shapes. Knowledge informs. It creates frameworks, labels, categories, and lenses through which we view the world. It acts as a haze, an Instagram filter, and a poetic structure under which we live our lives. These structures are notoriously hard to beat back, an

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Perhaps the key to finding the illegible margin is captured in Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Amos Tversky’s quip: “the secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

Because you’re looking for something which is hard to see, you have to have some sort of “tinkering budget” ... See more