Knowing more sometimes shrinks the sense of the unknown rather than expanding it.

Evidence

There is no one who does not understand their own world. Someone who understands very little, a child, for example, simply moves in a more restricted world than someone who understands a lot. However, an insight into the limits of understanding has always been part of understanding a lot: the recognition that the world outside, all those things we don’t understand, not only exists but is also always greater than the world inside. From time to time I thought that what had happened, at least to me, was that the children’s world, where everything was known, and where with regard to the things that were not known, you leaned on others, those who had knowledge and ability, that this children’s world had never actually ceased to exist, it had just expanded over all these years. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1203

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism of ‘the children’s world that just expanded’ as the cause of restricted understanding.
• XREF: connects to: Deep wisdom may lie in maintaining wonder rather than accumulating answers — , A Year of World Stories, 10898; Knowledge becomes less clear as it approaches life’s big questions. — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 66; Learning reduces uncertainty that is what motivated deference to humans — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 1294 (+4 more)

Related

• Knowledge becomes less clear as it approaches life’s big questions. (similarity 0.81)
• The fundamental question of why there is something rather than nothing marks the limits of knowledge tied to limits of mind. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Knowledge becomes less clear as it approaches life’s big questions. #contradicts (0.70) — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 66
• Learning reduces uncertainty that is what motivated deference to humans #corroborates (0.60) — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 1294