Dead knowledge

1. I was on a lunch today given by some people who were consulting for us. They were people from the Knowledge Industry.

Nothing really special. Just something I noticed about people who work for the Knowledge Industry and who do not usually come into contact with people who do things hands on - there is a lot of talking about stuff they read in the newspaper. They were talking about contractors and the circle line, and immediately I knew what they were going to say next - that some Swedish contractor had pulled out of its contract on a couple of stations on the circle line. Then they would talk about how construction costs were rising because of the bloody Indonesians being so anal about their sand. (I'm paraphrasing.)

(One of the persons was from Israel, and I unwisely commented that "you guys have probably more sand than you know what to do with". And then he said, "yes sand is a problem, and actually we do have to patrol and make sure that people don't go around stealing or harvesting our sand illegally", at which point I knew I had to shut up because we were this close to broaching the topic of Arabs and Jews killing each other.)

(Oh, another digression: Israeli guy was visiting China last week, and still really hyped up from climbing the great wall. So he said, "Why am I taking the challenge of solving your (insert big problem from our company here)? Because, it is there, like the great wall is there". I was thinking, yah fucking right. I'm different. Why would I solve (same problem he mentioned)? Because if I don't my boss will fucking kill me. Still, I shouldn't be criticising Jewish people. I learnt from history books that when the King of Siam wanted to insult the Chinese, they called us the "Jews of the East". )

Anyway I'm digressing. What I really wanted to say is that these Knowledge Industry people do have a tendency to just go parrot whatever's being out there reported in the news, and then there are many of them talking the same thing, so they confirm each other on their news sources, and whatever uncertainty there is that ought to be inherent in news reports it just gets swept aside. There is a high element of conformity of viewpoints there.

2. Sometimes after work I drop by at a nearby convenience store after work, get an icy frozen coffee / frozen milo and then take a direct bus home, sipping on it and reading a book as I go along. It's a nice way to go back, because the bus at that time is almost fully empty. (The downside is sometimes you get a non aircon bus.)

I put down a book that I was reading. It was a 500 page book and a library hardcover. It was printed on thick paper so it looked more impressive than it actually was. (I know that there are 800 page books that look smaller than that book.) Suddenly a guy I have never seen before started talking to me, and noticing the book that I was reading.

(I'll tell you how I end up reading books. Sometimes I will look around a bookstore, and a book will catch my eye. The thesis of the book can normally be summed up on the back page (or the front and back flap, if it's a hardcover with a jacket). And it's like in the movies with trailers, once you've read that, you already know 50% of what the book's about. But I will still want to read the book anyway. Sometimes. So I saw the book and I got it from the library. It was "House of War", which talks about the role the Pentagon plays in America being a more bullying force in the world than it ought to be. Yes, a lot of books say the same thing, but this one probably says it a little better than all of it, and this one talks about the entire history of the Pentagon. (Did you know that the foundation stone of the Pentagon was laid on SEPTEMBER 11, 1941, almost 60 years to the MINUTE before 911? Way cool.) About how it's secluded location in Washington DC allowed it to have too much of a mind of its own. (It's like your penis: it's yours but you don't really control it.) Plus there is plenty of history in here, so it actually backs up its arguments with real historical events instead of just launching a mindless tirade against "American Imperialism", so I thought it'd be worth reading.)

OK nevermind, enough digressing, this guy I never met before started talking to me, and he said, wow you are reading such a thick book. We got to talking for a while. He said he was interested in economics and oh by the way have you read "The World is Flat?". Or "Freakonomics"? Well for the more famous books I've read I have by the time I finished reading it memorised an executive summary for it.

("The World is Flat" - Thomas Friedman is usually very optimistic that globalisation is a positive force in that it levels the playing field for everybody and gives many poorer nations a chance to compete on an equal basis. While it is true that a lot of people are being pulled out of poverty and while he is right in many ways a lot of people will always be poor and they will always be stuck in poverty. People have always argued about whether market forces act to lift the poor out of poverty or they act to keep the poor and rich that way, and it's very difficult to settle this particular argument.)

("Freakonomics" - the thesis that abortion is responsible for the lowering of crime rates in the US during the mid 90s is a particularly controversial one. The author discounts a lot of alternate theses which don't sound like there's a whole lot wrong with them. The broken window theory. The economic recovery. Better policing. So maybe the effect of the changing structure of the demographic does not have as large an effect as he thinks it does. However the main idea of the book is still a very compelling one because it makes us think a little harder about cause and effect and shows us that the most obvious theories are not necessarily the right ones.)

OK, end of digression. So we had a nice chat, and I discovered that his name was very similar to mine. That was interesting. Then on my own accord, we exchanged name cards. Once I got his name card, I saw that he was a sales man (for "smart money managing" or some shit.) So either he was selling some financial product or something. Of course there's an ulterior motive for everything. So I don't know if I will get a lot of spam from him. When I was paying for my frozen coffee I ended up fumbling for my change, and he just stepped in and paid it for me. Now this was suspicious. But not that awkward because at least there was an excuse for him to do it. (ie we had a nice chat.) But I don't want to be a pessimist. It was a pleasant encounter so we'll leave it at that.

3. I'm going to get to my main point now, so sorry that you had to read the above shit. Later on, I reflected upon my mode of gaining knowledge, which is through books. They say (I don't have winstar here) knowledge from books is dead knowledge. Which is true. I think about "House of War", and "freakonomics", "The World is Flat". How do I know that stuff is true? I just accept a lot of the arguments made, maybe challenge at the most 5% of it.

Then I'm eating a fish that my maid cooked. I didn't fuck a member of the opposite sex so that I could lay eggs and give birth to the little fish. That was fish mama. I didn't feed the fish. That was the fish itself growing and finding its food. I didn't catch the fish. That was poor old fisherman who has to go out further and further to sea everyday because the ocean is running out of fish. I didn't distribute the fish. That was wholesaler, fishmonger, and my poor parents who go to the market every weekend. And I didn't cook the fish, that was my maid. I don't do anything other than open my mouth and watch the fish disappear into it.

Similarly it's like knowledge from books. It's too easy. Sit back, iced coffee in hand, slurping it on the bus. (See, I get air con and transport at the same time.) I give my brain a nice workout so that it's fit and toned like Andy Lau's chest in "Running on Karma". It's just served on a plate for me. People criticise our education system as spoonfeeding, but if I were to go out and read stuff myself it's not spoonfeeding. That's letting me off a little too easy, it's just spoonfeeding, once removed. I'm not seeing things with my own eyes. I'm not looking around and stitching together information from a thousand different sources. (This by the way is not an exaggeration. Some books I've read have bibliographies with that many sources.) I'm just opening my mouth and waiting for the fish to go in.

And maybe it's just the way that people read things, they will tend to accept around 95% and only question 5%, until they are presented with a contrasting account. Like some managers I know who will do the same stuff they did the day before and have their own blind spots. Some of them are hands on people with a persistent refusal to embrace theory (or maybe we say they are too busy). Others are stuck in their ivory tower all day shut up in their rooms, and not walking around and feeling the air for the wind. I am forced to be fair so I will criticise them both. But I think I must also criticise myself.

Then again, I don't know. I'm a fairly conformist person but I will have some rather quirky viewpoints. The Knowledge Industry way where people just parrot out information is really disturbing and I think that I might have problems fitting in there if I tried. I remember arriving at my current workplace and people seeing me as a nail that need to be hammered in but eventually giving up because this nail does not get hammered in easily. So one half of them is like "hey that's interesting" and this other half is like "shut the fuck up" which should be I think a fair assessment of things.

So what's the moral of the story, after all this shit? I need new skills. I've eaten enough fish that I can probably criticise somebody's cooking with some moral authority, and I can tell you the difference between a good fish and a bad fish. But I need new skills. I need to know how to cook fish, buy fish, maybe I might even need to learn how to fish.

I could be like that guy who just came up to approach me. It's not really like I dispensed some pearls of wisdom to him, but I did have to go through quite a few oysters to get that. And he could have used his friendliness to get more useful info out of somebody else. Maybe I ought to pick those skills up.