7 ms·

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf]

141 points by jkuria 3y ago

MaxBarraclough 3y ago
This wants a (1939).
liangzhihaver 3y ago
Reminds me of this delightful passage from the outer chapters of the Zhuangzi (tr. Brook Ziporyn): Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Your words are useless.” Zhuangzi said, “It is only when you know uselessness that you can understand anything about the useful. The earth is certainly vast and wide, but a man at any time uses only as much of it as his two feet can cover. But if you were to dig away all the earth around his feet, down to the Yellow Springs, would that little patch he stands on be of any use to him?” Huizi said, “It would be useless.” Zhuangzi said, “Then the usefulness of the useless should be quite obvious.”
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  I don’t understand why the patch would continue to be useless; it’s all he has to stand on!
  - pkoird 3y ago
    But what does the patch stand on?
    - crocomama 3y ago
      turtles, obviously
      - Guthur 3y ago
        How far down?
        infoseek12 3y ago
        Turtles all the way down
  - amusablelemur 3y ago
    I think the point is; where would he go? The ground he is not using fills a purpose for the ground he is standing on.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dav_Oz 3y ago
  Searching for a short elaboration regarding "Yellow Springs" (地獄 - dìyù) [0] I ended up digging way too deep: >In this variation of Chinese mythology, there are 12,800 hells located under the earth – eight dark hells, eight cold hells and 84,000 miscellaneous hells located at the edge of the universe. All will go to Diyu after death but the period of time one spends in Diyu is not forever – it depends on the severity of the sins one committed. After receiving due punishment, one will eventually be sent for reincarnation. Diyu is divided into ten courts, each overseen by a Yanwang. Souls pass from stage to stage at the decision of a different judge Indeed very much useless! [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diyu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diyu
zvmaz 3y ago
> [...] most of the really great discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been made by men and women who were driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity. > "Curiosity?" asked Mr. Eastman. "Yes," I replied, "curiosity, which mayor may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking. It is not new. It goes back to Galileo, Bacon, and to Sir Isaac Newton, and it must be absolutely unhampered. "Curiosity" goes back to a few centuries ago, and in Europe? Short-sighted and eurocentric.
- PedroBatista 3y ago
  Curious if you could build a time machine, go back to 1939 and give them a earful.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  Shameful that this man living 100 years ago isn't as progressive as I am. He's saying it goes at least that far back, not that Francis bacon invented curiosity.
  - yterdy 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - kiba 3y ago
      It would also be incorrect to say that we're not sophisticated or developed. That's just false humility.
      - yterdy 3y ago
        We seem to be quite advanced wrt edge cases that the wealthy and influential are concerned with. In the interests of a good humbling, however, a short list of issues that we haven't eradicated: >Homelessness >Hunger >Slavery >Genocide As to our level of sophistication, also, a short list of scams that we've fallen for in living memory that have lead to civilization-level crisis: >A bunch of guys learn how to fly planes so that they can crash them into buildings in order to draw us into a war. >The aforementioned war. >Banks sell people loans designed to default, sell insurance on those loans, get bailed out when the loans default and insurance is due on the failing loans. >Governments promise that sort of shutting down in-person economic activity for 2 weeks will stop a disease with an infectiousness period of ~3 weeks that relies on person-to-person contact, while helping businesses that will benefit from an extended pandemic set up related operations >Something something Eurozone austerity And not in living memory, but rhyming nicely: >A bunch of guys shoot a small-time royal in order to draw us into a war. >The aforementioned war.
Jtsummers 3y ago
Past submissions with discussion: (there are some more with 1-4 comments, but no real discussion) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28121309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28121309 - Aug 10, 2021 - 23 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683298 - Dec 18. 2018 - 12 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775 - June 15, 2017 - 33 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305179 - July 28, 2012 - 22 comments
- dang 3y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28121309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28121309 - Aug 2021 (23 comments) The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23791427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23791427 - July 2020 (4 comments) The usefulness of useless knowledge (1939) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683298 - Dec 2018 (12 comments) A. Flexner – The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656457 - June 2017 (1 comment) The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775 - June 2017 (33 comments) The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305179 - July 2012 (21 comments)
BarbaryCoast 3y ago
"Of what use is a new-born baby" Michael Faraday, asked about electricity. There's also David Pye, and his thoughts on "useless work", and how that builds a better world. See "The Nature and Art of Workmanship".
gwern 3y ago
Interesting to contrast Flexner's great optimism about his https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study (which he founded) with the severe criticism the IAS has received from a number of scientists such as Richard Hamming: https://gwern.net/doc/science/1986-hamming#fame-working-conditions https://gwern.net/doc/science/1986-hamming#fame-working-cond...
chris_wot 3y ago
Holy run on sentence, Batman! "Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women-old and young-detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering?"
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  How would you rewrite it so that it was better? It seems perfectly fine to me. It's a single thought, why would it need to be broken up into separate sentences?
  - chris_wot 3y ago
    “In a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, is it not curious that men and women-old and young-detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering?” I actually think this helps me understand the sentence better. The use of “fact” is not necessary, and an example of a filler word. When I look at the sentence, it isn’t the length of the sentence, but the amount I had to parse. Taking out that word and reworking the sentence slightly made things clear to me.
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      That's a different kind of reworking than I though you had in mind when you complained of it being a 'run on' sentence.
- ColinWright 3y ago
  I didn't notice ... it reads perfectly naturally to me. Are long sentences always wrong? Should all sentences contain no more than ten words? If course not. Good writing requires variation, and is not simply the dolloping, piece by tiny piece, of single pearls of fact.
Animats 3y ago
If you get your useless information from some of the world's top scientists and mathematicians, it might turn out to be useful.
randcraw 3y ago
As Flexner was recounting to Eastman the many contributors to Marconi's unification of threads that led to radio, I was reminded of the recurring theme of James Burke's great TV series 'Connections' in recognizing the multitude of contributors who are so often overlooked as we grandly laud a masterwork as a solitary act of 'genius'.
- lqet 3y ago
  Burke would also agree that useless knowledge might be very useful in the future, because we simply cannot predict what might be useful in 2, 20, or 200 years.
atoav 3y ago
Uselessness is one of those attributes. Many things are totally useless until they aren't and predicting what will and what won't be useful means you are able to predict the future. Sure, one could imagine totally useless facts, but I could just as quickly imagine social situations in which they could be put to use. TL;DR: finding things that will be 100% reliably useless in the future is impossible

141 points by jkuria 3y ago

This wants a (1939).

Reminds me of this delightful passage from the outer chapters of the Zhuangzi (tr. Brook Ziporyn): Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Your words are useless.” Zhuangzi said, “It is only when you know uselessness that you can understand anything about the useful. The earth is certainly vast and wide, but a man at any time uses only as much of it as his two feet can cover. But if you were to dig away all the earth around his feet, down to the Yellow Springs, would that little patch he stands on be of any use to him?” Huizi said, “It would be useless.” Zhuangzi said, “Then the usefulness of the useless should be quite obvious.”

l33t7332273 3y ago
I don’t understand why the patch would continue to be useless; it’s all he has to stand on!
- pkoird 3y ago
  But what does the patch stand on?
  - crocomama 3y ago
    turtles, obviously
    - Guthur 3y ago
      How far down?
      - infoseek12 3y ago
        Turtles all the way down
- amusablelemur 3y ago
  I think the point is; where would he go? The ground he is not using fills a purpose for the ground he is standing on.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dav_Oz 3y ago
Searching for a short elaboration regarding "Yellow Springs" (地獄 - dìyù) [0] I ended up digging way too deep: >In this variation of Chinese mythology, there are 12,800 hells located under the earth – eight dark hells, eight cold hells and 84,000 miscellaneous hells located at the edge of the universe. All will go to Diyu after death but the period of time one spends in Diyu is not forever – it depends on the severity of the sins one committed. After receiving due punishment, one will eventually be sent for reincarnation. Diyu is divided into ten courts, each overseen by a Yanwang. Souls pass from stage to stage at the decision of a different judge Indeed very much useless! [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diyu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diyu

zvmaz 3y ago

> [...] most of the really great discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been made by men and women who were driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity. > "Curiosity?" asked Mr. Eastman. "Yes," I replied, "curiosity, which mayor may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking. It is not new. It goes back to Galileo, Bacon, and to Sir Isaac Newton, and it must be absolutely unhampered. "Curiosity" goes back to a few centuries ago, and in Europe? Short-sighted and eurocentric.

PedroBatista 3y ago
Curious if you could build a time machine, go back to 1939 and give them a earful.
oh_sigh 3y ago
Shameful that this man living 100 years ago isn't as progressive as I am. He's saying it goes at least that far back, not that Francis bacon invented curiosity.
- yterdy 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - kiba 3y ago
    It would also be incorrect to say that we're not sophisticated or developed. That's just false humility.
    - yterdy 3y ago
      We seem to be quite advanced wrt edge cases that the wealthy and influential are concerned with. In the interests of a good humbling, however, a short list of issues that we haven't eradicated: >Homelessness >Hunger >Slavery >Genocide As to our level of sophistication, also, a short list of scams that we've fallen for in living memory that have lead to civilization-level crisis: >A bunch of guys learn how to fly planes so that they can crash them into buildings in order to draw us into a war. >The aforementioned war. >Banks sell people loans designed to default, sell insurance on those loans, get bailed out when the loans default and insurance is due on the failing loans. >Governments promise that sort of shutting down in-person economic activity for 2 weeks will stop a disease with an infectiousness period of ~3 weeks that relies on person-to-person contact, while helping businesses that will benefit from an extended pandemic set up related operations >Something something Eurozone austerity And not in living memory, but rhyming nicely: >A bunch of guys shoot a small-time royal in order to draw us into a war. >The aforementioned war.

Jtsummers 3y ago

Past submissions with discussion: (there are some more with 1-4 comments, but no real discussion) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28121309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28121309 - Aug 10, 2021 - 23 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683298 - Dec 18. 2018 - 12 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775 - June 15, 2017 - 33 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305179 - July 28, 2012 - 22 comments

dang 3y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28121309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28121309 - Aug 2021 (23 comments) The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23791427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23791427 - July 2020 (4 comments) The usefulness of useless knowledge (1939) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683298 - Dec 2018 (12 comments) A. Flexner – The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656457 - June 2017 (1 comment) The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775 - June 2017 (33 comments) The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305179 - July 2012 (21 comments)

BarbaryCoast 3y ago

"Of what use is a new-born baby" Michael Faraday, asked about electricity. There's also David Pye, and his thoughts on "useless work", and how that builds a better world. See "The Nature and Art of Workmanship".

gwern 3y ago

Interesting to contrast Flexner's great optimism about his https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study (which he founded) with the severe criticism the IAS has received from a number of scientists such as Richard Hamming: https://gwern.net/doc/science/1986-hamming#fame-working-conditions https://gwern.net/doc/science/1986-hamming#fame-working-cond...

chris_wot 3y ago

Holy run on sentence, Batman! "Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women-old and young-detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering?"

kwhitefoot 3y ago
How would you rewrite it so that it was better? It seems perfectly fine to me. It's a single thought, why would it need to be broken up into separate sentences?
- chris_wot 3y ago
  “In a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, is it not curious that men and women-old and young-detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering?” I actually think this helps me understand the sentence better. The use of “fact” is not necessary, and an example of a filler word. When I look at the sentence, it isn’t the length of the sentence, but the amount I had to parse. Taking out that word and reworking the sentence slightly made things clear to me.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    That's a different kind of reworking than I though you had in mind when you complained of it being a 'run on' sentence.
ColinWright 3y ago
I didn't notice ... it reads perfectly naturally to me. Are long sentences always wrong? Should all sentences contain no more than ten words? If course not. Good writing requires variation, and is not simply the dolloping, piece by tiny piece, of single pearls of fact.

Animats 3y ago

If you get your useless information from some of the world's top scientists and mathematicians, it might turn out to be useful.

randcraw 3y ago

As Flexner was recounting to Eastman the many contributors to Marconi's unification of threads that led to radio, I was reminded of the recurring theme of James Burke's great TV series 'Connections' in recognizing the multitude of contributors who are so often overlooked as we grandly laud a masterwork as a solitary act of 'genius'.

lqet 3y ago
Burke would also agree that useless knowledge might be very useful in the future, because we simply cannot predict what might be useful in 2, 20, or 200 years.

atoav 3y ago

Uselessness is one of those attributes. Many things are totally useless until they aren't and predicting what will and what won't be useful means you are able to predict the future. Sure, one could imagine totally useless facts, but I could just as quickly imagine social situations in which they could be put to use. TL;DR: finding things that will be 100% reliably useless in the future is impossible