Is ‘I do not know’ a stopping point ?
If we were to re-examine history, we would find that at some point in time in the past, we knew about some things and we did not know about other stuff but over time we learnt things that made us more knowledgeable and wise. We could take a population of information and slice and dice the population into ‘I know’ and ‘I do not know’. We may have also observed that the same population could be sliced and diced using a different perspective into ‘others know’ and ‘others do not know’.
If we were to plot a matrix using the above information as a base, we would find a 2 by 2 matrix that had ‘I know’ and ’I do not know’ on one axis an ‘others know’ and ‘others do not know’ on the other axis. There would be four quadrants that could be defined as ‘I know others know’, ‘ I know others do not know’, ‘I do not know others know and ‘I do not know others do not know’.
We would notice that over time, the fourth quadrant comprising of ”I do not know others do not know’ would decrease and approach zero but may never become equal to zero, thanks to the advancements and innovations we witness in our everyday life.
One concept that helps this shrinkage of the fourth quadrant towards zero is the ability of the individual to ask questions. However; we may have noticed that during the questioning sessions, the answers may go from concrete well defined specific answers to not so concrete and perhaps generic sounding answers and then there may come a time when the answers approaches a plateau in the form of ‘I do not know’.
At that point, I think that the answer ‘ I do not know’ transforms itself into a stopping point and I specifically use the term a stopping point because there could appear innovations and advancements that could answer the questions at some point in time and the shrinkage may continue.
One question that may remain in our mind is at what point would the innovations and advancements appear?
My simple answer would sound ”I do not know”
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