Is the sum of human knowledge a fundamental right inherent to humanity?

[Mustard]

Now, I'm not talking about your day to day thoughts about what you bought at the store, who you engaged in coitus with last night, what your bank account number is, and what color your house is. That is personal info that is your business.

What I am talking about is recorded thoughts that can be learned for some noble purpose (even if it is just to learn more because you want to). Things that are obvious would include the sciences, religions, governmental policy, entertainment & arts, sporting events... and all of these things being both past and present mind you. In addition, should the withholding and/or censoring of information like this be a crime?

I personally believe that in order to further progress humanity, the next step is to give all of humanity access to the sum of recorded human knowledge. Whether people actively seek out that knowledge is naturally up to them to further their own education and personalities, but the access is what is key for me.

What do you think?

[Pox]

www.wikipedia.org

^check this shit out!

[Mustard]

Yay! Too bad anybody and their dog can edit wiki to suit their own personal agenda.

[Void]

What about information pertaining to the manufacturing of weapons?

[freegood]

I think it'd be a better gift to know nothing of human knowledge than everything of it.

Human nature and its history is pretty fucked up.

As for censoring knowledge, people do it all the time. Where does line drawn between good lies and bad?\


/pessimist

[Phil Theehor]

Great question, Sink. My kneejerk reaction was "yes". When I thought about it though, I have to say no-- at least in some areas.

A lot of scientific knowledge is rightfully classified as property. It was developed as the result of a commercial venture. The people who make (or fund) the advances are entitled to the fruits of their labor. Were you to suddenly start giving away all knowledge the moment it was developed, innovation would just about cease.

Yes, you would still have the altruistic or the inquisitive out there fighting the good fight, but commercial funding and all of the advantages that accompany it would cease. Suddenly, the few guys left searching for a cure for cancer are doing it in their garages at night and teaching chemistry to pay the bills.

[Insomniac]

But doesn't software programming work well that way? A bunch of amateurs bumbling around in their off time?

[Archetype]

For something to be worth anything, you have to work for it. Some knowledge comes with greater consequence, and needs a higher price.

[Phil Theehor]

But doesn't software programming work well that way? A bunch of amateurs bumbling around in their off time?

Great point. The Torvaldites do that out of love and/or interest. But would they all get together to build a better accounting software? Take that outside computers, who is going to study colon disease as a hobby? The glory projects like mapping the genome will get attention, but nobody is going to devote their life's work to studying ass function if they're not getting paid at the end.

[wonderllama]

Isn't there an inherent need for family elders to pass on their knowledge of times gone by in order to educate or improve the next generation? Well, depending on the family I guess.

Admittedly, the information is unlikely to include cures for cancer or keys to financial success on a global scale, but think about before we had distractions from family such as the internet and television. There was a communal feeling to families whereby knowledge was passed along the line. So the inherent element is undoubtedly to pass on knowledge, but probably knowledge gained or experienced rather than snaffled from the internet or TV.

This process has been muddied with the all too available sources of external knowledge moving in on the territory previously occupied by Gramps or Mum & Dad.

There is an obvious hunger for knowledge, and it would be a shame for it to be restricted to a privileged few, but I don't think knowledge should necessarily be fair game for all unless passed on by someone who is an expert, or whatever the suitable word is, in that area.

[Archangel]

I think it'd be a better gift to know nothing of human knowledge than everything of it.

Human nature and its history is pretty fucked up.

As for censoring knowledge, people do it all the time. Where does line drawn between good lies and bad?\


/pessimist

You sound like Leopardi. He said that the only way to be happy was to fall prey to illusions, to indulge in folly, and that knowledge was designed to destroy those illusions.

Every significance, fantasy, joy of existence is a construct of human illusion, because the ultimate knowledge is the awareness of futility, of nothingness; the more knowledge was gained, the more the illusions of happiness and meaning were stripped away. To him, progress was a continuous loss of happiness.

If you look at the rates of depression among academics, and the fact that all our advances have made us not one iota happier than the simplest primitive tribes, you could admit that the man has got a point.

[Archetype]

I think Heidegger said something about that too. Isn't Buddhism/meditation based on that? Just being and defeating ambition?

[vasili denisov]

What I am talking about is recorded thoughts that can be learned for some noble purpose (even if it is just to learn more because you want to). Things that are obvious would include the sciences, religions, governmental policy, entertainment & arts, sporting events... and all of these things being both past and present mind you. In addition, should the withholding and/or censoring of information like this be a crime?

I personally believe that in order to further progress humanity, the next step is to give all of humanity access to the sum of recorded human knowledge. Whether people actively seek out that knowledge is naturally up to them to further their own education and personalities, but the access is what is key for me.

What do you think?
Well, first in the thread title, the "human" in "human knowledge" may be redundant. Since all knowledge comes to us through the organization and theoretical analysis of information gained from human perception, all knowledge available to us is necessarily "human". That which falls outside of our senses, the metaphysical, cannot be termed knowledge at all.

There's also a contradiction in the thread title and the post since the title uses the word "right", which is a term specific to a legal contract. Agents have "rights" to certain things. This isn't a case of citizens' rights, but rather obligations, obligations which would override other behaviour. One problematic area is that information in any cutting edge research carries a competitive advantage. No company would support such an obligation that they are required to surrender such information in order that others have access to it. These restrictions on information may well have problematic aspects, yet they also permit a healthy corporate churn, providing the possibility of upstart competitors who have new and striking solutions to overtake older firms.

What I am talking about is recorded thoughts that can be learned for some noble purpose (even if it is just to learn more because you want to).
That any information can necessarily be employed for a noble purpose is a problematic one. It stumbles, somewhat, on literature that has a nihilstic intent like the novels of Celine or Henry Miller. A bigger stumbling block, would be information related to such things as the creation of bombs or viral agents. Such information is heavily restricted on the basis that no noble purpose can be associated with such things. They are deeply destructive tools, their use is utterly prohibited or allowed under very special conditions, and their access to the tools, as well as knowledge on how to develop them, heavily restricted.

If you wish to lift the safeguards, you either are of the belief that humanity is inherently good, and that no one on their own would use such weapons destructively, or you believe legal safeguards on use of the knowledge (development of bombs, say) would be restricted, though access to the information would not. The problem with this is that you are still restricting possible intellectual exploration (an unlicensed individual cannot conduct the lab work of building a bomb, only reading about it).

[kid_vidrio]

I suppose it is necessary to debate or at least, for the purposes of said discussion, to define what 'knowledge' is.
I don't think knowledge is the eminent domain of humans, therefore, in spite of it sounding somewhat melodramatic, I think it is worthwhile to quantify it as 'human knowledge', especially with regard to Sink's question.

With that said, it is rather Utopian to imagine where 'all that could be known would be available', ostensibly for the purposes of working toward a better humanity, (a golden future of unlimited clean power, no disease, and a balance of nature [meaning no over-crowding.])
Still, without some Utopian ideal, what are we working toward? I have always believed that humanity lacks a goal and will flounder until there is some commonality there. Eating, fucking, shitting and dying is a fine goal for insects and animals, but it leaves a thinking human, one would hope, feeling a little unsatisfied with life. It get's filled up with religion half the time, but thankfully that seems to be running its course.

In short, should it be a crime to withhold the info? I think we are making certain assumptions about human enlightenment with regards to the aforementioned Utopian goal or ideal and under those auspices (that we have a goal and are working toward it) I believe all knowledge should be available and withholding it should be illegal.

[Yelram]

Do you have an inherent right to copyrighted material? I really think we do, and I think eventually, the internet is going to completely destroy that whole concept.

[Phil Theehor]

I suppose it is necessary to debate or at least, for the purposes of said discussion, to define what 'knowledge' is.
I don't think knowledge is the eminent domain of humans, therefore, in spite of it sounding somewhat melodramatic, I think it is worthwhile to quantify it as 'human knowledge', especially with regard to Sink's question.

With that said, it is rather Utopian to imagine where 'all that could be known would be available', ostensibly for the purposes of working toward a better humanity, (a golden future of unlimited clean power, no disease, and a balance of nature [meaning no over-crowding.])
Still, without some Utopian ideal, what are we working toward? I have always believed that humanity lacks a goal and will flounder until there is some commonality there. Eating, fucking, shitting and dying is a fine goal for insects and animals, but it leaves a thinking human, one would hope, feeling a little unsatisfied with life. It get's filled up with religion half the time, but thankfully that seems to be running its course.

In short, should it be a crime to withhold the info? I think we are making certain assumptions about human enlightenment with regards to the aforementioned Utopian goal or ideal and under those auspices (that we have a goal and are working toward it) I believe all knowledge should be available and withholding it should be illegal.

Beautiful ideal (and I say that without irony), but it's incongruent with human nature. While acknowledging the rare exception, your high achievers (in any walk of life) tend to be very competitive people. If you were to nationalize (no, globalize) the rewards of scientific pursuit (make them 'communal at birth'), you would remove the incentive for people to work towards these goals.

And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. People love to villainize pharmaceutical companies as soulless profiteering predators. Even if that's the case (it's not, they behave like any other publicly-owned company), I say "so what?” They earn their profits by providing solutions to real problems that did not exist yesterday. What's so bad about that?

So your drugs are expensive. Well, because of their work, you now have the option to buy that drug. You didn't have that option yesterday. What have they done wrong? Were it not for profit-motive and intellectual property rights, the guys who discovered these drugs would have never had their quest funded.

[gillkonam]

I guess I would seperate creative works from strict knowledge itself. Creative works are, in a sense, finite objects, meant specifically to enrich the social realm and retain fiscal rewards for their creators. It's an important distinction, as I think many might have a difficulty seperating them from knowledge, which is, to my mind, a much more fluctuating beast, meant to absorb and refine itself by the input of others. I would have to invoke Rorty's call to question everything as a specific imperative pointing toward the works of collective knowledge. Creative works should hold a specific shielding against mass exposure because they don't attempt to grow the knowledge realm, but rather capture a "screen shot" of some portion of it. I would also point to Foucault's ideas on archiving as a specific support as to why knowledge itself should be totally accessible to all, on the other hand. Scholars and others need to have access to the minuta of collected thought if they are to be able to explore revisions of whatever sector of "the literature" they are investigating. In short, knowledge itself must be made open for sourcing (which does include credit to original framers of ideas and theory), least structural stagnation began to ingrain itself into social understanding (I am a post-modernist, can you tell?). Some may consider certain forms of knowledge to be dangerous, but I think, in the end, allowing for interplay with all ideas is the only way to make sure that danger isn't selectively exposed to those who would seek to hide and abuse it. I liken this imperative to the use of Latin by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages: if the common man cannot understand the thought of scholars visavi their mere sequestering by some foriegn agent (the language itself), one cannot critique or own it at all, being subject merely to the shadowpuppets of others in the good ol' Cave.

[halfabubbleoff]

All right. I am going to try to limit myself to the question alone.
My initial reaction was one of a resounding YES when I first read the question alone. I have a deep hatred for ignorance. I do come from the school that "knowledge is power" and believe the world would be a much better place if everyone were more knowledgeable (not smarter, mind you).

However, I have to hit the brakes with the words "fundamental right". As the implications of the idea began to sink in, I realized how dangerous and unstable that could be. The sum of human knowledge is a dangerous, and often contradictory thing. Not only do you have the possibility of danger to others with the idea that the knowledge to build a nuclear warhead would be too easily accessible, but you deal with disproven concepts as well. Keep in mind, it was accepted medical knowledge that smoking was a good way to prevent, or even cure breathing problems. There are many works written on the health benefits of bleeding. What is to stop someone from using information such as this in a harmful manner?

You cannot eliminate these works, that works counter to the whole concept. You would have to rely on educating the populace in digging through a truly awesome amount of data in order to get the correct information. Think of how unwieldy it is for a technologically challenged person to find the correct answer to something using Google. Now multiply that exponentially. The greatest danger with making this information available to everyone is that there is just too much of it. As much as I hate to say it, I truly see the requirement that "experts" are necessary to act as filters to the general populace in order to get information where it can be best used.

I am fully in agreement with Sink about one thing. There are those that would benefit greatly from the idea. Looking back at human history, and seeing just how dangerous a little knowledge can be in the wrong hands, makes me fearful of how this idea could go horribly wrong. I would love to live in a world where this idea would work, and I hope that one day, humanity can rise to that point.

[Septic_Porpoise]

fundamental rights are tricky to me. i'm honestly not sure if humanity even has any. rights are something that man achieves only after he has spit upon the rights of others to achieve what he wants. after we have murdered and/or conquered the people that are in our way, we start creating a society where these things are frowned upon. they're like a pet goldfish. you care for it, and feed it, and give it whatever it needs to survive and be happy. you create value in it by making small sacrifices to help it. but, when the bills are too much and you can barely even afford to feed yourself, the fish gets flushed. survival always comes first.

it's the same thing with rights. right now we have more freedoms and rights than any other time in history, but only because the planet is populated by pussies. things might start making a pretty drastic change here in the forseeable future. america won't be the 800 lb gorrilla anymore.

modern warrior nations don't exist right now. there are modernizing (not modern) semi-warrior nations, but nothing like it could be. globalization works right now (haha, kind of anyways) due to there not being a bad guy. economics has been our weapon of choice because it is easier and less offensive somehow. but when a modern society starts picking up the knives again, things will start to shift. and fundamental rights will shift with it.

citizens will be called upon to "make sacrifices" for the greater good. rights will be lessened in order for our governments to survive. human knowledge will not be given freely. it will be hoarded, because knowledge is a weapon. when there is a real bad guy on the planet (terrorists don't count for multiple reasons), things will revert to how they were when man still had balls. he'll have to grow strong again to survive, and he will not be giving out fundamental rights in such high numbers.

so, i guess to sum up my long ramble... no. human knowledge is not a fundamental right. it is far to fragile of a thing to be so. anything that has to be given to someone is not a right. it is a gift.

[CunningRunt]

Now, I'm not talking about your day to day thoughts about what you bought at the store, who you engaged in coitus with last night, what your bank account number is, and what color your house is. That is personal info that is your business.

What I am talking about is recorded thoughts that can be learned for some noble purpose (even if it is just to learn more because you want to). Things that are obvious would include the sciences, religions, governmental policy, entertainment & arts, sporting events... and all of these things being both past and present mind you. In addition, should the withholding and/or censoring of information like this be a crime?

I personally believe that in order to further progress humanity, the next step is to give all of humanity access to the sum of recorded human knowledge. Whether people actively seek out that knowledge is naturally up to them to further their own education and personalities, but the access is what is key for me.

What do you think?

Check out your local library sometime. You'll be amazed what you find.

[gillkonam]

So maybe shift fundamental right to intellectual responsibility? Is it not the collective responsibility of those who seek knowledge to promote it and promulgate it? Thinking maybe along the principles Fahrenheit 911 proposes, is it not the duty of the knowing to make sure that knowledge is preserved for future generations? Is there a better way to make sure individuals have access to knowledge in the future than to make sure access to scholarship is never hindered by unneccessary obfuscation?

[halfabubbleoff]

...Thinking maybe along the principles Fahrenheit 911 proposes, is it not the duty of the knowing to make sure that knowledge is preserved for future generations? Is there a better way to make sure individuals have access to knowledge in the future than to make sure access to scholarship is never hindered by unneccessary obfuscation?


Bonus points for the Fahrenheit reference. That is a good point and one I can get behind.

It is sobering to think of how much knowledge has been lost over the centuries due to apathy, inattention and neglect. I'm not about to advocate the idea that every person memorize works of literature, but the core idea is a noble one.

Not everyone needs access to all knowledge, but the destruction of it is truly a nightmare. It could doom us to repeat past mistakes, miss warning signs of potential catastophies, or be denied great works of beauty, joy and hope.