Boundaries of accessible knowledge
There is a limited area of what we actually know well enough to functionally rely on. The rest must be rejected.
* The terms below do not refer to any known or common terminology, but rather some personal definitions.
Collective knowledge is a vast, evolving pool of adopted shared experience. It forms through collaboration, discussion, and accumulated human insights. This pool is not static or fully knowable by any single individual, instead, it exists as a distributed and continuously changing network of ideas.
Individual knowledge is what a person internalizes from this shared pool, combined with their own unique experiences and insights. However, it is always distorted to some degree by personal biases, interpretations, and cognitive limitations.
Accessible knowledge is the portion of individual knowledge that a person can readily recall, understand, or apply. It also includes some collective knowledge that, while not immediately known, can be quickly absorbed when needed. Accessible knowledge defines the practical limits of what a person can engage with in thought and decision-making.
Inaccessible knowledge remains beyond reach due to missing foundational understanding, lack of exposure, excessive complexity, etc. While it may exist in the collective pool, it is functionally nonexistent for the individual.
Some related wiki articles:
Distributed cognition - argues that cognitive processes are not confined to the individual brain but are distributed across people, tools, and their environment.
Noosphere - philosophical concept referring to a sphere of human thought, or a collective consciousness, that encompasses and influences the Earth's biosphere. It's often envisioned as the next stage of evolutionary development, where human intellect and technology play a dominant role.
Epistemology - studies the nature of knowledge, its sources, limits, and justification, distinguishing it from belief and opinion.
Cognitive bias - systematic pattern of deviation from rationality in judgment, where individuals make decisions based on subjective factors rather than objective reality.
Linguistic relativity - idea that the structure and vocabulary of a language influence how its speakers perceive and conceptualize the world.