Token Knowledge

I have written before about intelligence, specifically the point that intelligence and knowledge are not equatable.  Intelligence is about thought processes not about what you actually think.  It is measured through abstract tests which assess your ability to comprehend complex concepts, not your level of prior knowledge.  Yet despite this distinction there seems to be a misbelief which is perpetuated that knowledge implies intelligence.  I can write a program that can list every single word in the dictionary, its meaning, and use in sentences, that doesn't mean that program would be intelligent, all it is doing is reiterating information.  Intelligence would be embedded into the program if it was able to learn new words for itself, comprehend their meaning, and use them in sentences without the programmer having to provide that information explicitly, but rather through self discovery and exploration.

There are a lot of people who cling to this idea that the more knowledge you attain the "smarter" you are, it's the driving force behind some forms of education which completely discard comprehension and simply test the student's ability to regurgitate what they were fed in class.  It's also the way in which people try to convince others of their intelligence and I see it quite a bit on social media and in real life in the way people speak and what they speak about.  While the facade can be quite convincing it occasionally cracks when you see people who think they know everything about a particular subject speaking with an authority that betrays the shallow pool of knowledge they actually hold on a subject.  These are the people who when questioned about the things they say aren't able to explain their point of view beyond a few stock question and answers, and ultimately the reason is because they don't actually understand what they claim to. 

For me personally this is easiest to identify when I see people speak about things I know quite a bit about.  As an example when I first went to University, one of the modules we covered was programming in Java.  I knew quite quickly who actually knew what they were talking about versus those who tried to convince others that they did.  As a disclaimer here I should point out I have written a book on Java, I have contributed to open source community development in the past as part of Open JDK.  I had a level of understanding that surpassed the module when I was at University, something which was quickly noted by the lecturer to the point where I was asked to provide support on student forums.  If you are wondering I passed the module at 95%, my 5% failure came from lack of documentation on my coursework, something which I have always found difficulty with.  I find it hard to draw a line between too little and too much.  That in itself will be apparent from many of the posts on this blog.

What I find the most interesting about this pretence is the concept of token knowledge.  That is to say, pieces of knowledge that people cling to and reiterate time and again to try and make themselves appear smarter than they are, the failure comes when they apply that knowledge to situations where it's not relevant at all.  Even when challenged on that point they still can't accept or admit that failure.  Situations like this often result in hostility or the base form of defence - personal attacks.  The reason they resort to personal attacks in those situations is because they themselves see it as a personal attack for someone to point out the fact they are wrong.

There's one example I find the most prevalent and that's the use of the word "ironic" and the perceived meaning of the word.  Those who understand the word rarely use it, which is in itself ironic since the vast majority of people who use it have no idea what it actually means.  This can be epitomised by Alannis Morissette.  She and Glen Ballard wrote a song called 'Ironic' in which there is a series of lyrics that detailed unfortunate events and instances of bad luck.  Lyrics such as: "Like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife" - not one of these lyrics is actually an instance of irony.  They are all simply bad luck and misfortune.  The irony to be found in the song is the fact that the title implies one thing, and the literal words imply the complete opposite.  That, is the definition of irony, yet you can see people who have heard the song or perpetuate the idea that things which are unfortunate or bad luck or bad timing constitute irony.  They are the people who misuse the word and demonstrate the cracks in their facade.  They are the people who think they do a good job of convincing others of their intelligence when in reality anyone who really is, can see right through the facade.