Knowledge/Understanding

*Knowledge = data, Information.
Understanding = meaning, patterns in the data and Information revealing something deeper.

*A computer can store terabytes of knowledge,. i.e., data, and bring it to memory in a matter of milliseconds, and yet it is a dumb machine, unable to create anything original. It can only repeat what has been programmed into its memory.

*Not all knowledge is worth knowing.
To know every piece of Information ever printed on paper does not result in a deeper understanding. Most knowledge is not worth knowing, primarily when it is filtered through in others people's knowledge making the original inconsequential.
For example, I don't really need to read Marx when his vies are filtered through modern and postmodern thinkers.
Most obscure intellectuals and "thinkers" are worthless - not worth knowing. Nothing is added or substracted by not reading their original manuscripts, because if they were valuable they would have already been revealed or their ideas would have already filtered into modern thinking.

*Philosophy professors are not necessarily philosophers; artist professors are not necessarily artists... at least not worth studying or knowing.
To know about philosophy is like knowing about art, or may help in cultivating what talent is present but it does not guarantee that such knowledge will produce understanding.

*To know about and to understand what other minds thought, or said, about the world is not the same as knowing and understanding the world itself.

*To know about the representation does not automatically result in understanding what the represented is.

*Memory may be an important part of genius but it is not the most important part.
Memory simply stored data within which patterns can be discerned, it does not necessarily mean that these patterns will be discerned.

*Courage, and intellectual integrity, are just as important as knowledge and memory ion the emergence of genius.

*Genius, like strength and power, need not declare itself so. It is, and it is evident without ever having to say it. In fact, if it needs to say it, it most probably is not.

*True genius simplifies understanding, and can express it in multiple ways. false, pretentious, genius, can only display verbatim and through proxies. It needs mediating idols to prove itself, or to impress throes that can never know any different.
A man of power, in fact, will most often pretend not to be powerful, when among the weak and powerless, just as a genius will pretend to be simple, when among simpler minds.

*Deference and reference to genius does not make the source of said deference and reference its equal, no more than knowing a powerful man makes one powerful.

*The complex intentionally simplify and clarify; the simple intentionally complicate and obscure, just as the talentless artist can only create abstract art - art that cannot be compared to anything experienced.

I think a true emanation of the capacity for genius is to completely give oneself over to it, investing a total focus into a certain individual strength and then branching it out further into the world to expand in its power. The modern individual, surrounded by works of genius and who cannot produce any of their own, must reduce themselves to memorizing and reciting the ideas and works of those original creators who came before them as a way to compensate for their lacking. Moreover, they see the power of influence over minds that genius produces and so they naively equate intelligence and knowledge with power over others rather than themselves. Genius is power over oneself. The greater the power over oneself, like a fire, it grows larger and brighter, having a greater effect on the world and capturing the attention of more and more individuals to gaze upon it.

How do we validate knowledge?
By referring it to a shared reality - empirically.
How do we validate understanding?
By applying it in a shared reality - pragmatically.

Knowledge, data, within which we may find patterns of understanding, is only useful if it has real world applications.
Understanding is effective only in as much as it manifest in an individuals behaviour, his judgments and the choices he makes based on them.  
The objective, the goal, is the standard by which we measure knowledge.
The motive, the intent, is the standard by which we measure understanding.

Knowledge that cannot be used to come to an understanding is impotent.
Understanding that cannot be used to achieve a goal is useless.
Wisdom is knowing which knowledge is impotent, and which understandings are useless.

The value of knowledge, within which patterns of understanding can be found, is evaluated by how easily it can be expressed in multiple ways, or how it can be reduced to a form that can be understood by a simpler mind and used by a multiplicity of individuals, who then can validate its insights.

Nonsensical understanding, based on mystical, obscure, knowledge, cannot be expressed in any way other than with mystifying and obscurantist linguistics, and cannot be validated by third parties, unless they can replicate the state of mind that produced them, e.g., via some intoxicating, or mania inducing medium.

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Men collect Information, references they defer to - as obscure as possible - to conceal a lack or a fear for understanding.

Knowledge is the storage of data, i.e., patterns, in temporal sequential order, i.e., probabilities, determined by space/time possibilities.
Understanding is perceiving patterns in the data, necessitating - if they are to become useful - the projection of these probabilities.