It’s funny how the same phenomenon plays out across a bunch of different cultural or “knowledge-”spheres. The case with fashionable taste may be hopeless, but I wonder if there’s a way to help newbies to some domain distinguish between knowing-knowing in a library-heavy way and knowingness. Some people just really organize their knowing around books! And they by unfortunate coincidence give cover to those who can just pretend to do so.
This is such a good point, which I didn’t adequately address in my essay. How do we distinguish between mere knowingness, and the knowingness that’s just the normal and inevitable expression of a kind of real knowledge? I have no idea. They can look identical.
When I was in undergrad, I was thinking of maybe going to grad school and went to a panel of grad students and professors to hear a bit more. I remember one of the professors saying that because she hadn't had the educational background that a lot of her PhD peers had had, she felt uncomfortable when they started throwing names and book titles around. So she would go to the library and check out those books and read them to know what everyone was talking about, but then she realized that those people hadn't read most of those books, they were just exhibiting "knowingness"!
The funny truth about this experience—which happens to so many people—is that those who feel intimidated and run to the library to catch up get such a better education than the people who've already mastered knowingness. Imposter syndrome is a super-power for actually learning stuff!
I've encountered this to a degree on literary substack. I'm a slow reader, but I absorb whatever I read. Because of that, my literary breadth is fairly narrow. So I often find that when I speak deeply on a book, people do that Aristotle thing you mentioned, and bring up the author's broader corpus and some other obscure authors contemporary with the former. "What do you think of x?" they say, and I'm like, "man, I don' fuckin' know, but I'll check it out". The conversation dies pretty quickly
Yeah, it’s annoying. Sometimes people fall into knowingness out of admiration, though. Maybe when you speak deeply on a book, some of the people who start free-associating about other books are just channelling their desire to engage at the same deep level as you, but they don’t actually have a deep level to engage at, just a sketchy network of cross-references. So it might be secretly a kind of compliment when people respond that way? Or they’re just jerks. I dunno.
For me, Substack cultivates a fraudulent internal knowingness. I read about people who read books and somehow think that I know more as a result of that activity. Fortunately, my social circles do not include many opportunities for me to embarrass myself by demonstrating my fraudulent knowingness.
It’s funny how the same phenomenon plays out across a bunch of different cultural or “knowledge-”spheres. The case with fashionable taste may be hopeless, but I wonder if there’s a way to help newbies to some domain distinguish between knowing-knowing in a library-heavy way and knowingness. Some people just really organize their knowing around books! And they by unfortunate coincidence give cover to those who can just pretend to do so.
This is such a good point, which I didn’t adequately address in my essay. How do we distinguish between mere knowingness, and the knowingness that’s just the normal and inevitable expression of a kind of real knowledge? I have no idea. They can look identical.
When I was in undergrad, I was thinking of maybe going to grad school and went to a panel of grad students and professors to hear a bit more. I remember one of the professors saying that because she hadn't had the educational background that a lot of her PhD peers had had, she felt uncomfortable when they started throwing names and book titles around. So she would go to the library and check out those books and read them to know what everyone was talking about, but then she realized that those people hadn't read most of those books, they were just exhibiting "knowingness"!
The funny truth about this experience—which happens to so many people—is that those who feel intimidated and run to the library to catch up get such a better education than the people who've already mastered knowingness. Imposter syndrome is a super-power for actually learning stuff!
I hate this game.
I've encountered this to a degree on literary substack. I'm a slow reader, but I absorb whatever I read. Because of that, my literary breadth is fairly narrow. So I often find that when I speak deeply on a book, people do that Aristotle thing you mentioned, and bring up the author's broader corpus and some other obscure authors contemporary with the former. "What do you think of x?" they say, and I'm like, "man, I don' fuckin' know, but I'll check it out". The conversation dies pretty quickly
Yeah, it’s annoying. Sometimes people fall into knowingness out of admiration, though. Maybe when you speak deeply on a book, some of the people who start free-associating about other books are just channelling their desire to engage at the same deep level as you, but they don’t actually have a deep level to engage at, just a sketchy network of cross-references. So it might be secretly a kind of compliment when people respond that way? Or they’re just jerks. I dunno.
So it's not always that bar scene in Good Will Hunting—sometimes it's just people talking?
Indeed. Knowingness is not just separate from but crowds out knowledge: https://jacobin.com/2016/12/gary-johnson-aleppo-meritocracy-intelligence-politics/
For me, Substack cultivates a fraudulent internal knowingness. I read about people who read books and somehow think that I know more as a result of that activity. Fortunately, my social circles do not include many opportunities for me to embarrass myself by demonstrating my fraudulent knowingness.