Slow Havamal: 27

[kylec]

In the 27th verse, a fool is advised to keep his mouth shut around others. No one will realize his ignorance if he stays quiet. Nor does the fool realize his own ignorance even as he rambles on.

This verse reminds me of the popular quote, often misattributed to Twain: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” It may have been inspired by Proverbs 17:28 “Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.” The sentiment seems popular among both Christians and the Old Norse. Most people would agree that fools should shut up. Our problem is recognizing when we are the fool.

We have a Socratic problem. Socrates’ wisdom, according to himself, came from the fact that no one knew anything, but he was the only one who realized that he knew nothing, and therefore he knew one more thing than most men. We all have knowledge, but what is it? Our sense perceptions are a running simulacrum of the world around us cobbled together by the mind. These include our memories, which are to a large part constructed as we go, rather than recalled like a recording. Whatever we might know, it’s specific to the individual, as all individuals experience even the same things slightly differently. When we try to communicate knowledge, what we’re doing is arriving at some agreement with another as to what of our individual experiences we can leave out, and what we can claim to share.

We are mapping an unknowable territory. Knowledge is a symbolic representation, but not the thing itself. So even one with a massive breadth and depth of knowledge is still working with an incomplete map, albeit more detailed than others’. In that sense, we are all always the fool.

When it comes to sharing knowledge, I discussed the Dunning-Kruger effect last week—the overestimation of our expertise. This is probably what the verse is referring to. A fool learns two things more than nothing, thinks himself an expert, and hurries to show everyone else what he knows. But the wise man, who’s been in his shoes, remains silent. Even though he has more information, he realizes how incomplete it is in the grand scheme.

We can’t do much more than refine our foolishness. Anything we claim to know is a Swiss cheese model. The best practice is to learn, but profess as little as possible. The wise man recognizes the limits of his knowledge, and so is always open to that knowledge being modified, qualified, and expanded. To know is simply to repeat some limited set. To learn is to experience, and change according to the feedback from the environment, which requires due attention. We can’t learn when we’re running our traps.