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In the extreme the knowledge-effect leads to judgmental pareidolia, which is the imposition of meaning and significance on things or events when they do not warrant it either to the degree that we grant or at all. This essay might be viewed as a lesson in normative epistemology or, more plainly, good judgemental housekeeping. Knowledge can corrupt judgement.
Though I shall stick to the expression ‘the knowledge-effect’, it might also be termed the knowledge-trap. The lead into the knowledge trap, and thus the knowledge-effect, is the false claim that more knowledge must be better than less knowledge for our ability to make good normative judgements generally and moral judgements in particular. Combining ‘normative judgements’ and ‘moral judgements’ I mean: how one should think about something, what one should do in respect of it, taking into account priorities, unintended consequences and risk, how greater a moral concern should be given to it, what morally speaking one should do in respect of it. That is to say, all that relates to it not simply the existing facts of a matter. Not all normative judgements are moral judgments, but all moral judgements are normative judgements.
Some may endorse the view that it is simply a matter of the more knowledge the better. But this is a mistake as it takes no account of the effect of knowing in circumscribed cases and knowledge capturing our attention, nor, and most significantly, it takes no account of the distorting effect of the distribution of knowledge on our normative judgements and moral judgements in respect of their appropriateness and proportionality.
It might seem obvious that our quest for more knowledge follows proportionately our interests and what we deem significant according to our judgement. But this is often wrong and indeed the reverse is the case. What we deem and judge worthy of our interest and of significance can be led by, and not follow, the knowledge we have of it. This leads us to apportion our attention not on the basis of judgement and values which may guide us to their true significance, but on the basis of our happening to be made aware of something through our knowledge of it.
Furthermore, this effect is often not a one-off, but one that grows in an accelerated and compound fashion. Knowledge begets knowledge serially. The reverse, crassly …
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