Some of our mental tools only appear to be useful. They are not actually good for anything. Here is an example. I was reading an article in which the author said that a recent talk he had heard was ‘filled with wisdom’. It may be that he was able to discern wisdom. It may be that he was also able to discern that the speaker was able to communicate that wisdom, but how was he able to quantify the volume of wisdom in a talk? For that matter, how was he able to calculate the total holding volume of the talk?
A little further in his article he refers to a statement as being ‘very wise’. So I deduce that wisdom has classes that can be compared. There might be trivial wisdoms and superlative wisdoms. Do they take the same amount of space in a talk?
The question also arose in my mind, if I receive a wisdom while listening to a talk, is the talk less full than it was before? Also if wisdom has volume, I need to be careful to only take the highest quality, low volume wisdom to prevent myself from being over burdened by it.
The author made no mention of the effectiveness of a wisdom. For example if I take a good quality wisdom and place next to, or in contact with a good quality idiocy, what happens? In other words, what is the volume of good of all the wisdoms? Do I need a certain quantity to do something, and is it used up in some way?
These quantitative and qualitative examinations of wisdom don’t yield much in terms of a volume if insight.
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