I would here like to illustrate that there is some subset of knowledge, x, that exists, or may exist, which we will never hold, because we will never be exposed to it, and/or if we were exposed to it, we would not understand it.
Within that subset of knowledge, there is some subset of knowledge that would cause us to reshape our beliefs in some way, as nobody contains a full perspective on the truth, so unless you’re a fanatical dogmatist, your mind is only conditionally set, and would change with new information. Granted, there are cognitive biases in place that resist belief updating, but our minds are dynamic computational systems designed to soak up new information from the environment, so the mere exposure to a novel idea, no matter how insignificant or disagreeable, by definition changes the contents of our minds, even if our outward sacred beliefs remain unaltered.
I call the subset of knowledge that we will never know “dark knowledge”. Similar to dark matter, we can’t see dark knowledge, but we can ascertain its existence indirectly. For example, we can browse the halls of the Smithsonian and envisage the futility of ever acquiring full access to the dark knowledge emanating from there. We can imagine the thermodynamics needed to obtain the information necessary to create one exhibit, including the knowledge held by the museums curators, and the knowledge held by the historians and scientists for whom the museum owes its existence. There’s even the knowledge held by the museum’s custodial staff. It’s knowledge that may not be very useful to us, but it still falls within the purview of dark knowledge, which includes all knowledge that we will never have access to, regardless of how useful that knowledge may be to us, and irrespective of our ambition to acquire it.
Unlike dark matter, which scientists approximate to be around 85% of all matter, dark knowledge is vast beyond our comprehension. The knowledge of how vast is itself a form of knowledge we may never know, but a reasonable estimate is that dark knowledge approaches astronomical levels, especially since knowledge “not yet created” as well as the knowledge that could theoretically be created, but never will, also exist within the realm of dark knowledge. Granted, there are some people who are genuinely experts in an area, so for them, within their field of expertise, dark knowledge may be far less, approaching 75 or 85% or less. But even for the experts, the level of dark knowledge approaches infinity when you include all subjects, new or possible but not yet created.
The takeaway from this is that the position you hold is temporary, and would almost certainly look differently if you had a supernatural grasp on all the world’s dark knowledge, created and not yet created. It’s a humbling perspective the moment you fully comprehend it. For those who can’t, i pity that you’ve never known what i know, because if you did, then you’d probably agree with me. Or maybe I’d agree with you. Or not. Either way, we would certainly know more than we do now.