Interesting treatment. I hate tracking, but I'll do it anyway...
?Compatibility and similarity are not the same thing.
You're somewhat correct - dependant upon the context - but this is not what I'm talking about. Granted, this is the most semantic discussion I've had in a decade, but there are still some very logical principles here. In fact, the only way - IMHO - to discern any truth in this discussion, is through logical truth functions. While knowledge and power themselves do not share symmetry, they may be individual elements of some higher truth (another discussion altogether). Notice my use of small "t" versus caps "T" in the word
truth, ultimately the understanding of fundamental Truth, even when it applies to
knowledge, is a personal determination and beyond the trivial scope of this message board.
I can see your point on the two not being similar or mirror images of one another (as a perspective). However, just because two things are not the same does not mean they are not compatible. Personally, I think knowledge and power in today's society are the same.
On an elemental level, what I'm saying is that knowledge and power are neither mutlually exclusive or mutually inclusive. There is a great deal of complexity here, which is why I applied some simple logic to my statement (notice the conditional). ie:
...
IF Knowledge=the accumulation of factual data
AND IF Power=the ability to develop spontaneous advantage over a competitor
THEN the accumulation of factual data /= the ability to develop spontaneous advantage over a competitor mainly becuase there are many other variables that lend themselves to the derivation of power which do not reside solely in the domain of knowledge. My example is
reason.
I should say that
Reason is the ability to logically manipluate knowledge in a manner unique to an individual which knowledge itself does not make that individual capable of, so that the two (
knowledge and reason) are in no way married in some nebulous definition conflict.
...
In most circumstances in society knowledge is compatible with power and is the key factor. You could even make the jump from there that knowledge is power, since we are relating it to the modern world society, and most people who follow that comment exclude backwoods wrestling. The 'power' I am referring to being in the modern world, not where brute physical force is the key. Last I checked on wall street and in the cubicles it wasn't physical force that got those individuals their jobs and power (although you should see what happens when people come in to work drunk).
I'm going to have to assume some of what you're saying here, largely because I'm confused as to why wrestling, brute physical force or coming to work intoxicated would have much to do with either knowledge
or power (other than being an expression of a lack of either or both). In reality, the definitions of both knowledge
and power here should be applicable to, and elements of, all
societies modern or not. Only by scaling your definition to fit the realm of
all acheivable levels will you find a significant degree of fact - it's at this point that the majority of the bias will be eliminated.
Knowledge can be used in different fashions...
You're right, which is why some degree of modeling should be applied to specific considerations of such conceptually malliable topics; note the stochastic logical process I used earlier.
...such as obtaining power over someone or obtaining power with someone. A person who has knowledge of an intricate system can use that knowledge to gain power over that system or individuals within an affected area. Same thing with going to college to climb the corporate latter or gaining knowledge to change a political system. Either way, its still the knowledge that lead to the power in every modern situation.... thus making knowledge and power in today's society one in the same.
This doesn't really make sense. You really havent illustrated why any of these things would lend themselves to power, nor have you defined power. Can you elucidate why knowledge of an intricate system would make one powerful? For the time being, forget about the other references and focus on the "intricate systems". Specifically, determine why knowledge of an intricate system brings power rather than the reasoning behind the structure of the intricate system, ie: the ability to design a completely unique intricate system via a process of resoning based upon your knowledge of other unique intricate systems.
For example: in 225BCE, practically any Greek schmuck could tell you what a parabola looked like, which is more than I can say for the average highschool sophomore. So, big deal, right - a parabola is a curve other than a caternary or a hyperbola on Euclid's plane, you knew that! you have that knowledge, and therefore you've derived some power from that knowledge? What does it mean to just
know something?
In 225BCE, it was Archameides who described the parabola as 4/3 the area of a triangle with the same base and vertex and 2/3 of the area of the circumscribed parallelogram. In other words, A, A + A/4 , A + A/4 + A/16 , A + A/4 + A/16 + A/64 , ... and thusly: A(1 + 1/4 + 1/42 + 1/43 + ....) = (4/3)A. Now,
that's power. He completely manipulated the known, and then understood, universe to apply a method of reasoning which measured the variability of functions that is fundamentaly the process by which we still base our understanding of variability - and its still only understood by the intellectual elite more than two thousand years later - and thats an elementary example.
Power is beyond even complex knowledge, it extends to understanding the fundamental processes behind that knowledge - part of such is the concept of
reason.
It could also be said that your
knowledge of an intricate system truly is a
fundamental understanding of the reasoning of the system, and therefore, your use of the term
knowledge shares symmetry with my use of the term
reason. The only disconnection in our arguments, then, would be found in our definitions of knowledge, and perhaps also in our definitions of power.
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(enter the game theory debate)
