Re^2: Coming Down From The Pedestal

[chester]

But if we know nothing, then how do we know we know nothing? More importantly, if Socrates knew nothing, then why are we still quoting him? :) (Please forgive my semi-pointless semantic arguments, I'm just in the mood.) I know more Perl than my grandmother; I know less Perl than Larry Wall. I'm pretty certain of that. Where I fall in between is a harder question (likely closer to grandmother-country), but I think it's good to be realistic and objective.

So far as the original post, I don't like saying "people smarter than me"; I'd rather say "people better than me at Perl". It's unlikely that anyone is better than me at everything. No one is the best at everything. Very very few people are the best at anything. And even if you're the best at something, there's always still room to grow. I agree that it's good to keep that in mind. Talking with someone better than me at something of interest is always a wonderful experience, to me.

[Courage]

When you think you know some area, you become less opened to new knowledge in this area, so in result it appears you'll not learn new, and will know less afterwards.

The more you're in position you have not enough knowledge, the more attention you'll be paying to otherwise unnoticed details, and when having actual knowledge, multiple times increases quality of final work.

Socrates's sentence was just generalization of this phenomena.

Try this idea on your self and you will notice personal effectivity boost. (I did).

[Aristotle]

FWIW, a better translation of that quotation might be:

The only true wisdom is in knowing that what you know is nothing.

The difference is less subtle in Greek, which has several different words that are canonically translated as “nothing,” but differ in connotations. (Its vocabulary is rife with such near-synonyms, whose precise associations are nigh impossible to preserve in translation to most languages.)