All Problems Are Due to a Lack of Knowledge

There is no such thing as a problem that can’t be solved

This short essay is intended to transform your understanding of the word ‘problem.’

I expect the word recalls the last specific problem you had to deal with: the time you had to change a tire in the middle of the desert; difficulties getting a plumber in the next week; issues you needed to go to therapy for. Or perhaps societal problems like poverty or climate change.

Most would define ‘problem’ as any situation they don’t like.

In the technical sense, a problem is a contradiction between two theories you hold about reality.

It might seem tendentious to apply words like ‘knowledge’ and ‘theory’ so broadly. Academics are often justly accused of trying to squeeze the whole of human activity into their beloved frameworks. Life is an experience, not a concept.

But, looked at the right way, knowledge extends far outside the cerebral cortex, reaching into all parts of the universe.

Knowledge

The physicist David Deutsch has said that knowledge is ‘substrate-independent.’ Knowledge is not inherently different whether it’s contained in a human mind or a book, or when embodied in the design of a new technology. The only thing that’s different is what knowledge each contains.

Along with all other living things, humans are made out of knowledge: the particular form we call ‘genes.’ Genes embody knowledge about the environments our ancestors lived in.

It is a characteristic of all knowledge that it tends to cause its environment to make copies of itself. So for instance a good book will inspire people to pass that on whether by talking about it, writing similar books or building technology based on the knowledge in the book. Likewise genes cause their environment to make more copies of themselves, usually by building a body which can survive and reproduce. Hunger, anger, desire, and anything else we could possibly feel are determined by what our genes “know.”

This requires a separate essay, but I suspect that conscious thought is a mechanism for correcting errors in our knowledge. Your system detects that something is wrong and refers the problem upstairs. Conscious thought has the ability to create new knowledge, which is the type we need whenever our computer program-like genetic knowledge fails to achieve its desired effects.

Problems

Problems are contradictions between expectations and reality. They tend to register as a feeling of unpleasant surprise. Reality itself contains no contradictions; the problem exists because you don’t have the right knowledge.

Examples:

• If you have social difficulties, it’s because you lack some important knowledge about how meaning is exchanged between individuals.
• Fear of taking action can be a result of not knowing the importance of falsification to the growth of knowledge. The more you’ve ruled out, the more you know. That’s Logic 101. You need to fail often to refine your understanding of what works.
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to be failing partly because the Russians didn’t know how much military support the West would provide. Historically, the value of spies is a good indication of what knowledge can do.

Conclusion

In ‘The Beginning of Infinity’, David Deutsch convincingly argues that the growth of knowledge is infinite. Any physical environment that can exist can be “simulated” in the human brain to any degree of accuracy. That is to say that there is no limit to knowledge, which means that no problem is inherently insoluble.