Knowledge Might Not Be Power

Hey guys, thanks for the reviews on the last post. This week we will talk about an old cliché “Knowledge is power”. The phrase “scientia potentia est” is a Latin aphorism meaning “knowledge is power”. It is commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England.

Almost everyone has come across this phrase at some point in their life whether it’s from a teacher or an argument between Cersei Lannister and Petyr Baelish (Little finger) in Game of Thrones, this phrase is widely used but is it actually true?. Let’s define Knowledge.

Knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association. It could also be defined as the fact or condition of having information or of being learned.

On a broad scale there are two types of knowledge, they are Explicit and Tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is simply knowledge that can be transferred, put on a paper or taught and Tacit knowledge is the knowledge gained by experience, it is almost impossible to put on a paper, that type of knowledge where you say, “I don’t know how but I just know”.

As someone that always preaches about how important knowledge is you might be wondering why I say knowledge might not be power. It is because there are many factors that contribute to the quality of knowledge someone has. A key term to note in all the definitions I went through of knowledge was… drum rolls…… Information. But Albert Einstein said

Information is not knowledge

Knowledge is drawn from information. The information gathered while reading or learning has to be authentic for quality knowledge to be gained. So why is power attributed to knowledge? For instance, people visit a Doctor because the Doctor has a knowledge that they don’t have which could give the doctor power in such a scene.

When it comes to strategy, everyone knows that Intel is the most important weapon because knowledge gathered from Intel is used to plan attacks and counter attacks. You can spend hours working on the wrong Intel, representing them in different ways and abstracting vital points and at the end of the day the knowledge gained will be useless.

At this point I say, The right information is power “Bene sit potentia Information“. I don’t know why I had to put it in Latin but it now seems ancient. The importance of information can’t be over emphasized. Deriving knowledge from the wrong or phased out information will be little or no power in your hands.

So let’s stay updated and as much as we seek knowledge, let us verify our information to be sure it is solid. Whether you are getting the information from a school or a conversation, know that knowledge obtained from the wrong information is Noise.

About what Albert Einstein said, what type of knowledge do you think he was talking about? Alright… gotta run. 🙂