ETHICS etc.

N.B. IF LIKE DICKENS 'ALL YOU WANT IS FACTS', YOU MIGHT BE ADVISED TO SKIP ON TO THE LEARNING PART. THIS ENTRY IS, BY MY OWN ADMISSION, DRY AT BEST.

OK, so we’ve gone over the rules. Now for something a bit harder to grasp; the ethics of my Quest for Knowledge. The reason I’m logging this ties into the purpose of this project. I want to learn things in a regimented, driven, faintly tedious way because I feel that the point of learning has been forgotten. This video alone is proof positive that ignorance rules; people don’t seem to want to know anything any more (by the way I’m 24, so I’m not a curmudgeon looking down on the youth of today… not technically, anyway).

Knowledge has been dissected and disseminated to the point that it now floats around in the form of weird little ‘factoids’, pieces of information designed for quick, forgettable entertainment. Information is readily available like never before, but the desire to find it is minimal. Which brings me to my mission. I’m an ordinary person, living an ordinary life, with access to the same information as millions of other people around the world. What I want to do is cling to every last piece of useless information instead of letting it float off into the ether. I also wish to consider the very concept of learning; I intend to record things that I learn about myself and those around me, and how they affect my life.

This is where ethics comes into it. I am imposing a moral code to ensure that, should I complete my Quest for Knowledge, I have done so fairly and in the manner in which I set out (this whole thing is starting to drive me insane already – it’s only a bloody saying): The first point I would like to make is that the things I learn don’t have to be true, but I cannot be aware that they are false. Part of learning things is finding out that what you think you know is wrong (which is why QI is so brilliant). Secondly, the things I learn don’t have to be universally true. If I am listening to the radio and decide that Radio 1 has finally disappeared entirely up it’s own arse, it is neither literally nor figuratively true, but it is something I believe which I did not believe prior to that moment. Anyway, that happened a long time ago.

Another moral rule I am imposing upon myself regards the source of my acquired knowledge. This should probably have been a fully-fledged rule, but I found it hard to quantify. The basic principle is that, should I find a magazine or website with several permissible pieces of information, it wouldn’t be proper to simply return to it, day after day, even if I really was learning each piece of information for the first time. I must seek a new area from which to gain information each day. The problem is that I am bound to use a source on more than one occasion (for example, Wikipedia, and that bastion of commuter enlightenment, Metro). This, in my opinion, is different, so I will allow myself to do so.

I think that’s about it for morals and ethics. In order to monitor how my quest affects my life in various ways, I intend to complete an IQ test and general knowledge quiz before I begin. I’ll carry out new tests at the halfway mark, and again on New Years’ Eve. I don’t envisage being invited to any parties.

The Rules

So, learning something new every day. Sounds easy enough on paper. There will, however, surely be problems in completing my mission, whether practical (more of which later, no doubt) or otherwise. Focussing on the latter, I think some boundaries are required to rein in what counts as ‘learning something new’ in a ‘day’. Well, a day would be 24 hours, from midnight to 11.59pm. So that’s the easy bit part sorted. As for the learning part, there’s are three hard and fast rules in my opinion, and they are:

1. The information that I declare as learnt each day must be something that I have become aware of that day which I didn’t know before (look, I know it’s kind of self-explanatory, but it needs to be said)
2. The information that I declare as learnt each day must be something that I can comprehend and place in context; I cannot claim to have learnt a very complicated scientific equation because I don’t genuinely understand what it means. If, however, I learn that David Beckham likes Quavers, then all well and good.
3. The information that I declare as learnt each day must be constant. This is a harder one to explain, but for example I can’t put that I learnt that Radiohead are going on tour, because this isn’t a constant, ongoing truth; at some point, Radiohead won’t be going on tour. That’s not learning new things about the world, it is simply retaining topical and fleetingly useful information.

So that’s the rules. The things I learn have to be new, comprehensible and constant facts. Come back before the 1st when I’ll go into the ethics of learning (can you tell I did a philosophy degree? I got a 2:1 which makes me clever) and start limbering up for the Quest to begin…

The Quest Begins

There's a popular saying that claims 'you learn something new every day'. Well, I'm putting it to the test. Each day throughout 2008 I intend to learn something and record it on this very blog. The things I learn may be scientific facts, useless trivia or personal feelings; all that matters is that they are things that I did not know before that day. In this age of apathy and ignorance, I'm taking a stand. Join me!