How Much Do You Know?

In the 80’s Thomas K Landauer conducted a study—and factoring a 70 year life span, how much you learn versus how much you forget versus what one is able to recall, it turns out individually we don’t know very much.

The averaged human has a seemingly unlimited capacity to absorb knowledge, take in their surroundings and memorize bits of interest, but so much we are remembering eventually gets pushed off the end of the tape. And the information we are scanning turns into mere bullet points—fuzzy highlights of the unordinary we encounter any particular day. Our radar typically remembers the anomalies, not the familiar of the daily drive.

What someone was wearing or the details of a boring drive is not recorded sufficiently to know it. We scan for danger—and a typical day goes by without recollection. What day was that anyway? I use to do some fairly high level math—now I can’t understand my own notes. It went away when I left its utility.

The typical belief does not have enough facts to support it. It isn’t just religion either, but flat earthers, round earthers, scientists, politics, etc. This is why the world is enamored in belief—we can’t remember enough to know much of anything. Most belief is habit in the safety of routine. And yes, interpretation is full of conjecture as well.

Turns out at the climax of life the average person knows about 1 gigabyte +\- of information.

That isn’t much. It’s less than a low-end USB thumb drive. You know about $10 worth of digital memory. What we do have in our favor though is our ability to collaborate and share. This is where we get the power to do anything we collectively put our efforts to.

That is what forces us to tolerate each other. Watching the “Alone” series it dawned on me how working and living alone, the foremost experts in the field basically had a competition to see who would starve to death last. Nobody thrived. It takes a village of skill sets and beliefs to thrive.

Remember that post I did about the inverse square law of physics? It was one of my all-time favorites, yet I don’t remember much of what it said. I do remember Dave in the comments. Dissipated Energy

The Great Potential of Humanity

Religions, no matter how absurd are protected by law because they cannot stand on their own merits. This buffer allows absurdity to be honored as a virtue.

Religion has at every age kept the human mind in darkness and held it in ignorance of its true relations, of its real duties, and it’s true interests. It is but in removing its clouds and phantoms that we may find the source of truth, reason, morality, and the actual motives which inspire virtue—Jean Messlier 1704

What are the true interests of humanity and, what’s stopping us?

Foundationally wrong, religion nurtures self doubt. You are not “worthy to loosen his shoe” and but a vile sinner from birth, but ONLY through belief in Him? Without god you are nothing? I completely disagree. That is not the path my friends. The human being is quite possibly the most versatile and creative creature of all time. Misguided in this phase of belief, but by unbelief can “put away childish things” such as faith in a god that has yet to meet its objectives.

Man has proven quite capable, even dragging along the dead weight we’ve accomplished great things. Imagine if we all embraced discovery? Imagine if we truly loved our neighbor and collaborated in an honest reality? We are quite capable of taking care of ourselves. Man has proven quite resilient with his teaspoon of dust and sprinkling of consciousness, in spite of the extra baggage. We have the capacity to unite and become incredible, but it will never come by way of religious belief. They had their shot.