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Dear Bolu,
"We know more than we think we know just as we know less than we want to know"
Oscar Wilde
I've always adored the above quote because it is filled with sympathy for our ignorance and thirst for knowledge. "I know more than I think I do, so I'm not as ignorant as I think". Oh go on, Mr Wilde, massage our delicate egos, you dashing Irishman. It's a kind quote—one that tells you that you deserve more credit than you give yourself and it is okay to not know as long as you want to know.
I ask; how do we come to know things? Ah, simple enough. We do this by observation, reading, watching, listening, tasting, feeling, understanding and everything in-between. I ask; how do we know that what we know is true? Oh, this is not so simple, is it? How are you sure, for instance, that secondary colours are formed by mixing primary colours? Give it your best shot and try to answer. How are you sure that the earth is round? How are you sure that the formula, πr², accurately describes the area bounded by a circle? How are you sure that Mercury is toxic? How are you sure Jupiter has 79 moons?
These questions revolve around theories that we believe to be true. How are we sure they are indeed true? Well, you can try to verify them. If you grab a pack of poster paint and mix two primary colours together, you can observe the result and confirm if it's indeed a secondary colour. Easy, right? Now, how do you verify that the earth is round and not flat? Ah, your brain waves are charged. Images from space? Easily photoshopped, can't verify what you haven't seen! Timezones? You've lived in one city all your life, you can't honestly verify what you've not experienced.
You can pretty much trash any verification process that doesn't involve you doing the verification. The same goes for the area of a circle; how are you sure π is not off by 0.0001? Try to derive it. Can you derive it? Probably not. What about Mercury's toxicity? Have you included different doses of the element in the diet of lab rats to see what it does to them? If you've never even touched it, how can you be certain that it is toxic? And Jupiter’s many moons? Have you visited them all? Have you at least seen them with your naked or aided eyes? Probably not.
These theories have proof. They are factual and truthful in many regards. However, it's a bit tedious for you and me to attempt to verify each one of them. If we tried to verify all the "theories" we have ever been told, we'd never have time for anything else. We'd never advance as a species because we'd all be too busy trying to measure the dimensions of the planet or the surface area of the earth covered by water. Idly think about the many things you know and you'd realise that you've not verified most of them. How do you know for sure that Pelé scored that many goals? Unless you've seen a highlight of all his goals, you probably can't say for sure that he did. Yet, we believe he did. We usually take these theories as truths because there is an implicit belief that they have been verified by experts or professionals, whether it be in the field of physics, astronomy, medicine, language, history, etc.
Well.

Of course, these experts sometimes get things wrong—or at least not entirely correct. And that's fine. We thought the atom was indivisible till J.J. Thomson's experiments. Also, Newton's theory about gravity was a breakthrough in our understanding of motion and it was considered true for a long time. Einstein came around and distilled that truth by introducing us to his theory of relativity. Great guys, but who knows? That truth might change someday. These truths are distilled across generations and several timestamps. We learn new things, we discard the old ones, and the iteration continues. The process of replacing the new with the old is not often straightforward as change tends to be met with resistance. In a field like the sciences, however, there is some method to updating knowledge and it involves conducting experiments, trying to reproduce results, defending theses, peer reviews, and so on.
There is rigorous testing, and some politics, yes but importantly there is dialogue and we trust that dialogue. It is that trust that keeps us from verifying everything. Without confidence in the dialogue that happens, we would not be able to comfortably accept some theories as truths. When we accept these truths, they find their way into society's collective knowledge bank. So we know and accept that there is some part of our brain called the medulla oblongata that we'd likely never see or touch. We know sexy, talented sea beasts use echolocation but we'd sadly likely never see them in action. Thanks to this knowledge bank we all share, we are able to know these things and importantly, communicate. I can make a proposition and based on what's in that knowledge bank you can agree or make a counter-proposition. "No, bro, the sky isn't actually blue. It only seems so due to the magic of light reflection". Therefore, it is important that we talk about whatever we let into our collective knowledge bank because we cannot all verify every truth. We must dialogue to ensure that we are propagating the truth.
Even words and word definitions are an important part of that knowledge bank. Oh yes, we must dialogue about the means through which we dialogue about what should be included in the knowledge bank. We know and we are clear on what gravity is because, well, scientists have researched and dialogued for a long time about it. You might be part of that dialogue if you are a physicist, but odds are that you aren't. So you can only accept that gravity is what they say it is and when I mention gravity, you can tell with adequate precision what I mean. For certain things, however, it's not so clear what they are or mean, and because they affect us on personal levels, we are necessarily involved in that dialogue. We have differing opinions, experiences, and motives so it becomes pretty difficult to define certain things. What is hate speech? What is racism? What is misogyny? Is any non-conformist, opposing thought or idea born out of hatred for your sex or contempt for your skin colour? What definition of these things do we accept into our collective knowledge bank? If we were engaged in a discussion that involved these terms, and we couldn't even agree on what they even meant, it wouldn't make for much of a conversation, would it?
We all pull from this collective knowledge bank and it is for that reason I think we should all contribute to it by speaking. Yes, we may not be geneticists who map our ancestry by inspecting our genes and can tell after spinning a few centrifuges how closely related we are to Mansa Musa. We may not be palaeontologists who chart our history by unearthing fossil records and can tell without consulting any genealogical records about the bones of our bones and fleshes of our fleshes. We may not be experts in our fields or in the upper echelon of our domain of influence. But. But we have sub-domains where we are heard or capable of being heard. Our families. Workplaces. Teams. Social Media. We can negotiate some of the truths in our collective knowledge bank and I think we must because the truth is hardly static. It has some impermanence. It may be right, and enough for a time, but it needs to be continuously distilled. And it can only be properly distilled through dialogue.
So we must speak, and equally importantly, we must allow people to speak and listen to them. Conversations are important because it is through them that we chip off the little specks that blemish the truth. A good conversation is a largely safer route to seeing a bigger picture than a solo adventure. And these days yes, we talk more. Yes, we chat a lot. But we're much too unwilling to genuinely listen to and hear the point of others. And I think that does no good to our collective knowledge bank. If we keep mute and silent about certain ideas in our knowledge bank and confine our thoughts to the comfort of our minds, we might be wilfully leading folks who would pull resources out of that knowledge bank astray. Just as we can't verify truths in domains that are foreign to us, there are folks who can't verify the truths in our domains. We owe it to them to distill the truth. We owe it to them to speak.
Scientists dialogue about theories for a reason—they care about what is peddled as truth or fact. I think that like scientists, we should also be open to talking about things we know and have opinions about. Sure, we differ on a lot of topics. Faith. Morality. Culture. Sure, we may never see eye to eye on certain matters. But I think that we should not turn down opportunities to air our thoughts and hear other people out. We must do this to continuously renew our collective knowledge bank and preserve wholesome truths for whoever cannot verify them. So speak, dear friend. Speak.
Fin.
P.S:
I might have used truths and facts interchangeably in this letter. There might be fine distinctions between the two that I am unwilling—or perhaps more likely, unable to draw. Pardon me.
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Write you soon, merci !
- Wolemercy