Why are we so bad at sharing knowledge? As a society, it takes a really long time to integrate with culture, social cues, and pretty much every skill people need in adulthood. For most, it takes 18-22 years, at least within the convines of our society. There are outliers, the geniuses who graduate college at 16, but even they usually have a lot to learn from a social perspective.
If we were really good at sharing knowledge, I’d believe the time it takes to get people ready for adulthood would be a lot shorter than 18 years. Possibly a couple of days (if you have a machine like Neo in The Matrix) or more likely five to ten years. But it typically takes us 18 years to let someone off on their own.
Once you have “entered” adulthood, there are many more skills that need to be developed. Beyond the basics of keeping yourself fed, doing mundane chores, and getting enough sleep, you also have to put a roof over your head. For that, you’ll need to study (whether in college or via online material) a skill and find employment doing it. Skills are called “hard skills” for a reason. They’re very hard to develop.
Is it good for society to make things so difficult we can’t easily share knowledge? Currently, our best system is to reward people who bring the most prosperity (profit) to the most people. When you create value for others, you are rewarded with dollars. This breeds competition, and gives people a chance to improve on what they deem as opportunities. Those who succeed, bring more prosperity to the system and are handsomely rewarded. Those who fail, lose the money they tried to improve an opportunity with but gain valuable information. This information can then be used to find another opportunity for improvement. This is what we call an entrepreneur.
But, the only reason opportunities exist is because of imperfect information. If we were able to share knowledge better, wouldn’t we also live in a better world?
I’m not sure the answer to any of my questions but I am happy to live in a world where your ability to improve other people’s lives brings yourself an improvement of your own.