The “Knowledge Doubling Curve” is a lie, here’s why

[@bobdobbs8700]

Excellent research. The first time I encountered this idea was when listening to the Robert Anton Wilson lecture "The Acceleration of Knowledge'" in which he correctly attributed it to Georges Anderla, not Bucky Fuller. I think if you replace 'knowledge' with 'information', the hypothesis becomes much more plausible. Knowledge implies truth: scientific data, mathematical theorems -- wheres information is a much broader concept that would include not just genuine knowledge, but music, video games, porn, cat videos... At this point in time I have no doubt that information must be doubling several times a second; unfortunately most of it is just garbage... hardly distinguishable from noise.

[@DeclanMBrennan]

And in a sense Information= Incompressible Data - the internet's data with all the redudancy, waffle and possibly misquotes removed- this will likely be smaller than the raw data by orders of magnitude.

[@axisepsilon514]

I was always told human knowledge is doubling like an exponential function since middle school. I actually asked my teacher how the hell do you even quantify knowledge? Well, he hesitated to answer cuz he didn't know either. This really made me think how much information we have received is even remotely true, to begin with. Which is one of the reasons I got super into Mythbusters in HS lol

[@SineCalvin9]

Thank you very much for this video!!! My partner shared a clip with me from a documentary about “deep history” using the knowledge curve/doubling concept. The “in a world” narrator said that “by 2020[it will double] every 72 hours”. It used dramatic music and stock footage of industry and technology over the last century or so. I was openly skeptical, and began looking into that claim. How do we quantify knowledge? How could we gather data on that knowledge? Your excellent video gives me half of the answer, and you presented it well.

[@richardbutchko1391]

Nice work here. Very interesting. Thank you for your post. I have always wondered about how those who have advanced this idea define knowledge, who is currently measuring it, and how it is measured. They whole idea rings true for me at some level and I am inclined to accept that knowledge is increasing and doing so at an increasing rate. The exquisite specificity of it, however, presented as though it is the result of a mathematical formula referring to actual data>information>knowledge is misleading and confounding. Of course, while not stated, the knowledge-doubling idea tacitly infers the inclusion of computers in the process which also relates to Moore’s “Law” of the increasing rate of technological progress. Of interest to me when I looked at this a few decades ago was even though one accepts the premise of knowledge doubling, ancillary knowledge of how that knowledge is distributed and becomes known is likewise interesting. This, of course has to do with the evolution of the means of knowledge distribution. Beginning with the origins of language from the grunts and noises shared among proto-humans through knowledge shared as lore passed through oral traditions, to later, created in more durable form as the written word through the printing press, the large-scale distribution of writing though books, journals, magazines and the like to today’s near instantaneous globally shared electronic media knowledge, distribution is part of the formula for the increasing doubling rate of knowledge. With the advent of computer software such as ChatGBT, which do a fairly convincing job of manipulating vast amounts of data to distribution-on-demand as “new” knowledge, the rate of distribution of existing and newly created knowledge seems to go hand-in-hand with the doubling of knowledge per se. According to theories such as the “Tipping Point” as described by Ray Kurzweil, with his “Law of Accelerating Returns” John von Neumann’s “Technological Singularity,” Gordon Moore’s eponymous law on the doubling rate of the number of transistors fitting on an integrated circuit, et al. all point to the obvious idea that the knowledge doubling curve, technological advancement, etc., when projected forward in time eventually reach a point when advances occur at a rate measured in fractions of a second, eventually reach (absurdly?) infinitely small units of time when “something profound” will happen. Knowledge, it seems, cannot be knowledge without there also being a knower of that knowledge. For whom or to what will these increasingly vast amounts of knowledge become known? For humans, the total of knowledge that can be known, or accessed on-demand will appear a vast sea that will outstrip the faculties of the combined power of human brains on the planet. The next step would seem, logically, to be “machines” themselves that will be the “knowing” entities in that future time. Knowing then might resemble “omniscience,” perhaps? Science currently measures time frames in zeptoseconds. If the transformation of data-to-information-to-knowledge and the communication of such occurs in zeptoseconds, then the speed of light would dictate the limit of the size of any physical entity involved in this process. Mathematically, this process would have to be an entity much smaller than a sub-atomic particle. With our current level of understanding of the “doubling” rate of knowledge, we do not know whether that soaring upward curve on a graph is both infinite and inexorable-not only in our conceptual view but, particularly,in our given world of the actual.

[@MimiMortmain]

I really like your editing :) It makes a topic I didn't know I would be interested in super interesting! The main thing I was thinking throughout the video is the historiographical perspective of progress and human advancement. That idea was super popular in the 20th century and it still is now among people who might not think about the history of history too much. The thing that made me never buy this theory is that it's obvious to me that so much human knowledge has been lost. It's not a straight exponential doubling but a wavering graph where, yes, we know more about the world each year but we also collectively forget things. The knowledge we've lost can range from the mystery of what Stone Henge was used for to languages that are no longer spoken/taught to skills that we no longer use. There is a movement to get back this knowledge, which is party what historians are for. There are groups aiming to preserve little-spoken language and to teach people traditional skills (eg uncommon methods of weaving) so they are not lost. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that human knowledge isn't a straight progression like the theory suggests. We're constantly learning new things and forgetting things that don't seem necessary anymore. It makes it seem like people from the past were less knowledgeable, and therefore intelligent, than us now, but really I would bet they may have many useful skills and knowledge they could teach us!

[@superscript9367]

That’s a great point! Yeah it’s a surprisingly bold claim for something as complex as “human knowledge”. Thanks for adding the perspective that human advancement was a super popular idea in the 20th century! I hadn’t thought to link that in but it certainly helps to explain how this proliferated so easily.

[@ronenshtein7083]

Subbed because of the p-adic videos, but can we get an update on this, please? What a cliffhanger haha

[@RONIT7RONEL]

Amazing. Very intriguing - and presented perfectly

[@StylishHobo]

Great video. However, this is the first I've heard of this. The reasoning is funny though. "Measure all human knowledge between 1 BCE and 1000 BCE" How? With a time machine and mass telepathy?

[@superscript9367]

😂😂😂 That’s something I found funny when I began my research as well. Very few people seemed concerned with how to actually quantify human knowledge. I’m not sure where this comes from originally, but some people online claim that it was calculated by counting the number of “major scientific discoveries” over different periods of time. So definitely not very scientific...

[@GeneBellinger]

It's an exponential growth curve, isn't it?

[@yurineri2227]

I heard about this for the first time today, a was skeptical so I decided to look around and as expected, it wasn't the super scientific claim people were claiming it to be, thanks for making the video 😁

[@paulfoss5385]

If I have a book, but I don't read it, then I have information, not knowledge. Measuring the amount of knowledge in the world cannot simply be a measure of data, but of living conditions, access to higher education, and the freedom of people everywhere to pursue their interests. This makes knowledge a good thing to want to increase, but it could never be "doubled every 12 hours", unless they average person spent less than 12 hours learning in their lifetime.

[@maynardtrendle820]

Well done sir! A great topic-- and an intriguing mystery. I used to reference this dumb thing all the time...

[@superscript9367]

As did I! I was quite surprised at just how far back the rabbit hole went considering I’d heard so many people tell me this over the years

[@maynardtrendle820]

Yes. I think everyone with even a passing interest in this stuff has confidently asserted this too many times🤣. I haven't heard it in a while though. Maybe everyone has started to wonder, like you, just where this conversational gem was mined.⛏️💎 Now, onto p-adics!

[@lorenzodossantos1111]

AI doubles every 3 months, do a video on that disaster

[@bimil8724]

Good video, invest in a microphone.

[@milobar100]

Mate, a millennium is 1000 years, no-one has been claiming anything with respect to 1000 years, it's only the last 100 years that has been spoken about.

[@superscript9367]

That’s simply not true. There are numerous sources that apply the idea of “knowledge doubling” to thousands of years in the past, as well as extrapolating it to thousands of years in the future. Further, the point of this video is simply to trace back the origin of this belief, and demonstrate that it’s roots are much more complicated than most people cite it as.

[@premsundaralingam7985]

so........