3 A. Wide as the Ocean, Deep as a Puddle
Taking a 101 in every class.
This is a spinoff piece from a previous essay I wrote for my own Substack, The Professional Amateur - in particular, this one called Do Not Read This. Have a look at it first, because it provides a lot of context and a clear example for what I’m about to talk about.
The Diminishing Marginal Value of Information
Don’t know? Google it.
For those of us who have access to the Internet and the time to use it, information is probably the fourth most abundant commodity in the world, next to air, water, and electricity. The Internet is full of information on any conceivable topic, in incredible detail, in text, podcast, and video form, whatever and however you learn best. Naturally, as it all becomes cheaper, the value of any individual piece of information decreases drastically. Knowing is no longer half the battle, as the GI Joe outro once said - these days, it’s the price of entry.
There has been a massive, exponential expansion in both the total human knowledge base (all knowledge) and the amount that each individual is expected to know to serve as a part of the world (common knowledge). Neither our lifespans nor our duration of formal education have increased to a commensurate degree, meaning that we cannot work backward and truly investigate most of what we know. Instead, we must take it on faith that what we are being told will simply work, or has already been investigated previously. Outsourcing knowledge acquisition to others in this way is how we have always gotten by - just that we are rapidly closing in on outsourcing 99% of it, if not 100%.
Wide as the Ocean, Deep as a Puddle
“Do you live under a rock or something? How do you not know!?”, you are asked, despite having no interest at all in the matter at hand. Before it was mentioned to you, you didn’t even know what a Kardashian was, let alone that they’re rich and famous.
The expansion in the required common knowledge to function as a member of a particular community may not be as massive as total human knowledge, but the number of communities one is involved in (whether you want to or not) has dramatically increased. Once, the affairs of your lord, your church, your family, and your village may have been enough to get you by. Add on your guild and your city if you lived in the city. Now there’s the family, the homeowners’ or building association, the county, the municipality/city, the province/region, the government, the “state of the whole world” as seen on the daily news. I haven’t even mentioned elementary school, high school, university/technical school, clubs at every level of schooling. Don’t forget your identity as a client of Bank X, Insurer Y, your loyalty card at Department Store Z, your account on App A (through Z), and so on.
While each of these individual identities might need you to do less and less, the aggregate amount of information that you need to be current with to keep up with your responsibilities only increases. Nowhere is this more clear than in the proliferation of password guidelines.
Some places have no password guidelines.
Others require at least 8 characters, 1 capital letter, and 1 number.
Others require at least 8 characters, 1 capital letter, 1 number, and 1 special character.
Others require 8-15 characters, at least 1 capital letter and 1 number, but no special character.
Others require all of the above and a different password every 90 days.
Not only do you likely have one account in each bucket, you can probably think of even more differences, particularly in two-factor authentication. I’ve encountered things like the following:
2FA using your phone to confirm your identity in case of a password reset.
2FA by sending a one-time password to your phone every time you log in.
2FA by sending a one-time password to your phone every time you transact.
2FA that only asked for my number and never bothered me again.
Is there a need for all these levels of security? Perhaps. Do I care to know? No. Do I forget these things and end up screwing myself when I need to change my password every 90 days and forget what I changed it to without the aid of a password manager? Yes, emphatically yes.
This is what I mean by “wide as the ocean and deep as a puddle”. Because people are spread so wide just learning the basics of everything they “need”, they often do not dive deeper into any of those things and develop true skill. In the same way that the different patterns of passwords and 2FA have a significance, lost on the average user, the many different fields, disciplines, and ideas of life cannot be consumed unless pre-chewed into easy-to-digest narratives, meant to be quickly popped into the head and stuck there forever. The advertising industry will be sure of that.
I refer you to my article on Communication Overhead for my more complete thoughts on this matter. There is an accompanying category, also linked below, best read bottom to top, oldest to newest.
https://argomend.substack.com/t/communication-overhead
The Thumbtack Model of Knowledge
While made in jest, this image pretty succinctly conveys my point. Somehow, in a world where self-education is easier than every, fewer people do it. The theory I have advanced above is that this is because of a sort of learned helplessness - that we no longer find our own way, because we grow accustomed to following the ways of others.
The natural reaction to this is to cater everything to the lowest common denominator, making it as easy and accessible as possible. Games get easier, including RPG mechanics and easier difficulty that brings down the skill ceiling. Niche products dilute away their less palatable elements for wider appeal. While often a good business move, at least at first, this strategy’s natural end is for everything to converge towards a single, central point - a samification of everything.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Audiences change, and media changes to suit audiences. Perhaps these are the complaints of someone whose tastes the audience has left behind, rather than someone who has changed with the times. In either case, I am sure of one thing - the thumbtack model of knowledge.
The Thumbtack Model of Knowledge is my attempt to get more precise than “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle”. A thumbtack has a long, sharp point under a wide mushroom cap. In the same way, we know a lot about the things we personally experience, enjoy as hobby, or work on as our profession (the tack), while knowing many other things at a surface level (the cap). It is my opinion that everyone, bar none, has relatively thumbtack-shaped knowledge. Highly educated or career professionals may have a longer/wider point and a narrower cap than others, more resembling a nail, while entrepreneurial generalists will have a wider cap and perhaps a shorter point.
This implies that we know about many things but know very few things well, meaning that the vast majority of the total of anyone’s speech should be considered less than well-informed and should merit some skepticism. Right at the same time where we are obliged to know more surface-level things than ever. In this situation, in order to function, how can one not simply expand their cap by taking things on faith, rather than reason? It is inevitable.
Let me know if that tracks with your experience.
One interesting item to note: every piece of information we access on the Internet, was put up there by some person. (It is a contemplation, I don't know the significance.) Now something called A.I. could also add things, or make them up on the fly. Of course A.I. is built on the foundation of masses of data put up there by some person. Or put there by an algorithm created by some person. The all the data accessed by the algorithm was volunteered by billions of people who incessantly carry a cell-phone, or take Zero precautions about surveillance.
With regard to passwords and 2FA: 2FA is not security. It is a way to tie everything you do to your legacy identity, the super-snoop. Where I live you need a government photo ID to get a SIM card, to have a telephone number. Nowadays, the provider takes an Iris-Scan also.
In operations of my legacy identity, transfer funds between my banks, I need an SMS on 2FA. With everything else I do, I have found other applications, that do not (yet) require 2FA. (Anyhow, I will never comply.)
About Learned-Helplessness: You're right, that everything is externalized, deferred to the authorities. When are you going to be your own authority? It's a huge topic. (Homogeneity. Be at-one with the crowd.) Commercially it is called "scaling", sell one thing a billion times.
The Thumbtack is a great analogy, congratulations. I am going to interpret it as the driving spike is built on personal explorations and experience. And the mushroom cap is external "borrowed-thought". I read 100 links on the net, and many sound good. But I adopt none of them and nothing changes my life. Or I struggle to internalize something (not mine), I do the practices (once in a while), make lists on the refrigerator or on my bathroom mirror, recite positive reinforcing affirmations, and:
Nothing goes in.
Whereas, on the point of the tack, everything is already internalize, as I become aware of it.
You may say "I went to college to learn this profession", (external). But now you develop much more on the job, than ever in a classroom.
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