The smog of ignorance: Knowledge and wisdom in postnormal times

Abstract

Using the Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy as a template, this paper explores futures of knowledge and wisdom. It suggests that Big Data is generating gargantuan information that would radically transform what we understand as knowledge. Emergent knowledge will be a combination of objective knowledge, as defined by Popper, and toxic knowledge, an amalgam of different verities of ignorances. Plain ignorance generated by fake news, alternative facts, manufactured fake science, false history, the paranoia of anonymous on-line mobs and ‘bullshit’. Vincible ignorance produced by knowledge that generations of scholars, philosophers, writers, novelist and religious thinkers have cautioned against – attempts to create a perfect human being, or autonomous weapons of mass destruction, or to cheat death, as well as racist algorithms, weaponised disciplines, and deliberate creation of chaos for political expediency. And invincible ignorance that is the outcome of our (western civilization’s) Unthought – things we have never thought simply because they are out of the framework of the dominant paradigms, myopic disciplinary boundaries, theories, principles, assumptions, and axioms. Emergent knowledge shrouded in the smog of ignorance will make the conventional exercise of wisdom almost impossible. If wisdom is defined simply as knowledgeable expert decision making based on experience, understanding and insight, then Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be perfectly suitable for the job. Indeed, some scholars and thinkers are already suggesting that AI can, and should, be the repository of all wisdom. This paper argues that postnormal times require a new order of wisdom capable of circumnavigating the smog of ignorance. We need to move away from the notion of wisdom as a repository of individual quality, the prerogative of sagely (mostly) men, to a more profound understanding: wisdom as a collective, communal, enterprise; a social and cultural quest for life we are losing in postnormal times.