Hi Mr. Kenyatta, its good to hear your voice.
I say, no. Facts are not knowledge. Facts are tangible. Since facts are made of matter, we cannot imagine them into existence, or imagine them away. The more important distinction is that facts are governed by natural laws.
Take my salade dressing for example. The fact is that oil and water do not mix. But if I shake my jar hard enough the oil will break into tiny droplets surrounded by air pockets, that will keep those droplets suspended in the water (like little innertubes). While the mixture will appear to be combined, the water and oil are still separated - all my shaking did was add air to the mixture.
Knowledge is how I know that oil and water don't mix, and what I need to do to make them into a salade dressing. The more knowledge I acquire, the more I can manipulate facts. For example, new knowledge is how I learned to whisk my salade dressings and achieve the same result as my jar shaking.
Like water and oil, keeping facts and knowledge separate in my mind helps me navigate the vagaries of life. It also helps simplify things for me.
Conflating facts with knowledge is a wicked form of manipulation. I've listened to knowledgeable people talk for an hour and not heard one single fact.
Tell me a fact and chances are I'm gonna fact check it. Facts do not change. The only thing that changes, is our understanding of facts. We call this understanding "knowledge".
Unlike facts, knowledge is fluid, like a river it is constantly moving, shifting, morphing, growing, shrinking, and changing course. The more knowledge we acquire and the finer our tools and technologies the more facts we acquire. The facts were there all along, we just could not see them before we made a microscope. Now that we have a microscope we have more facts to cope with and to work with.
Sometimes, the discovery of new facts frees us from knowledge that was nothing more than assumptions. Sometimes new facts outpace our ability to cope with them, leaving us feeling uncertain and afraid of everything and everyone.
How we feel is irrelevant, for the facts were always there, we just could not see them. And that, Mr. Kenyatta, is how I view our moment in human history. I know its depressing, but damn, the internet has given us access to history never known before. We are walking right on by gatekeepers, power brokers, wackos and idiots and discovering history on our own; and in the doing, we are changing the course of human history. Not just here in America, but all over the world.
Take heart Mr. Kenyatta, you are making a difference. Its a fact too small to see, so you and I will just have to know it.
