Knowing what you don't know

drgirth

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I'll get to the point of my post just below, but to preface it, I'll just say that, at 51, I'm going through some health and career stresses. I have a very good friend who is 18 years younger than I. She has weathered abusive relationships and cancer and is stronger than ever - things worse than I have ever had to deal with. She makes me realize that age and experience are not necessarily the same thing - it's only that with age one has a greater chance for the necessary experiences.

Now to the point and why I posted in this forum. To me, one of the greatest turnoffs in people - be it coworkers, friends, family, lovers, whatever - is when they don't know what it is they don't know. My friend has helped me to constantly look at things that way. It's a sobering aspect, but one, I think, that makes you a better person to everyone around you. It certainly puts one in ones place. I would rather be able to claim "Hey, I beat cancer!" than to claim "Hey, I have a big cock!" Like I said, it puts my meat in the persepctive it belongs.

Oh, and here is something one definitely learns with age: knowing what it is you will never know. Once you can let go of the fact you really will not know everything, it's quite a relief.
 

Osiris

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That's why you never discount anything you hear until you do the legwork. I try not to because you never know just who knows what. And as for age? Yeah, we older ones may have life experience on our side, but never discount the knowledge of youth.
 

cgttown

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Wasn't it Socrates (or maybe Aristotle...I just re-read them both so I don't remember which) who came to the conclusion that we cannot really know anything? Sounds absurd on the face of it, but the older I get, the better I understand the philosophy.
 

EagleCowboy

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That's why you never discount anything you hear until you do the legwork. I try not to because you never know just who knows what. And as for age? Yeah, we older ones may have life experience on our side, but never discount the knowledge of youth.

BINGO!! YES!! That's exactly it!! Always do your homework, and you never know what someone else knows because they probably aren't going to tell you.
"And a child shall lead them."
Kids see things in a whole different perspective than adults do. We should try not to lose that nor discount it because they're "just kids".
 

Osiris

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BINGO!! YES!! That's exactly it!! Always do your homework, and you never know what someone else knows because they probably aren't going to tell you.
"And a child shall lead them."
Kids see things in a whole different perspective than adults do. We should try not to lose that nor discount it because they're "just kids".

Case in point: My kids. I learn more from my kids than I do anything else.

My year old - Anything is possible if you keep trying hard enough... Or beat on it enough.

My four year old - That little things like squirt gun fights and summer in the pool are the bset things in the world.

My 14 year old - All the cheats to all the games I have and how he cracked them without going to Cheat Planet.

My 16 year old - Well... You can't fix stupid. :biggrin1:
 

Captain Elephant

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Rummy said it best:

There are known knowns.
There are known unknowns.
And there are unknown unknowns.

It's them last ones that get you in the shin every time.

I have always considered myself more ignorant than my fellow man until he proves otherwise. But I am forever hopeful that I learn from them rather than learn about them.
 

36DD

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My mom tells me that from the time I was a small child I was a wise old soul. Becoming older is great in the fact that you speak your mind...popular or not, I mean what is popularity anyway? Something admired mostly by youth who haven't found their voices yet. I think also,one of the greatest things in getting older is letting go, finding the hill you want to die on and never mind about the others. Age, one would hope, brings tolerance to cope with the lack of understanding and the judgements so prevalent in our society, but not the acceptance.
 

Osiris

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In looking at this forum, I quote the Hip Hop Master, Dr. Dre:

There are 3 types of people in the streets.

Those who don't know what happened,

Those who wonder what happened,

And people from the streets like us who make things happen.


What this means is most people I see on here are thinkers and open to being told, you are wrong. If they are, they take it. If not, they prove it.
 

Meniscus

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Wasn't it Socrates (or maybe Aristotle...I just re-read them both so I don't remember which) who came to the conclusion that we cannot really know anything? Sounds absurd on the face of it, but the older I get, the better I understand the philosophy.

You're thinking of Plato's Apology, in which the oracle at Delphi says there is no man wiser than Socrates. Socrates knew that he had no wisdom, so he went in search of wiser man, only to find that men who thought themselves wise would pretend to know more than they actually did. Socrates concluded that he was better off because, unlike other men, he was not ignorant of his own ignorance.
"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus

"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant." --Amos Bronson Alcott

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge." --Daniel Boorstin

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
--Will Durant


"I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth." --Molly Ivins

"Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards." --Anonymous

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." --Kierkegaard
Speaking for myself, when I was a child, I knew that I knew very little, and I thought my parents knew everything. When I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I was certain of many things, and sure that my parents were the most naive, ignorant people in the world. Now I am 36, and the more I learn the more aware I become of my own ignorance. I know that it was I, not my parents, who was naive and ignorant 10, 20 years ago, and although they don't know everything, I now realize that they know at least as much as I do, and probably a lot more.
 

EagleCowboy

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Osirus: You ain't kidding about the things kids will teach you.
My little 6 year old nephew seems to have a knack for electronics and fixing things unlike his mechanically declined father. I run Linux Fedora Core 6 on my computer and he was just *FASCINATED* that it wasn't windoze. In 10 minutes, he had it all figured out and how to do things it took me 3 years to learn. (simply because i couldn't find the information on how to do it.)

I'm still better than him at video games, though. :biggrin1: