There isn’t always a binary yes\/no answer to the question “Do you know so-and-so<\/i>?” Rather, there is a continuous range of correct responses to this question, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0.<\/p>\n
There are people I’ve known all my life, and others that I have known for decades. In the latter category there are some people I knew for decades but then completely lost touch with.<\/p>\n
Can I actually claim to know those people? Or do I really just know a younger version of them — a version that in a sense no longer exists? In any case, I don’t think that kind of “knowing” rises all the way up to 1.0.<\/p>\n
Then there are the people I know only from professional conferences, or as friends of friends. They know who I am, and I know who they are, but there are vast swaths of information that we don’t know about one another.<\/p>\n
And after that are people I’ve met only once. Maybe we had a conversation which stuck in my mind. That is a kind of knowing, but much nearer to 0.0 than to 1.0.<\/p>\n
Finally there are the people with whom I have shared some sort of social situation, but with whom I’ve had at most a brief and meaningless conversation. If they are famous, my fragile ego might be tempted to say “I’ve met so-and o.”<\/p>\n
But wouldn’t really be honest. On that superficial level I’ve met a lot of famous people. But I seriously doubt that they have the faintest idea who I am.<\/p>\n
And I’ve noticed that of the people whom I really know (nearer to a 1.0 than a 0.0) who happen to be famous, I tend to forget entirely that they are famous. Which is probably a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There isn’t always a binary yes\/no answer to the question “Do you know so-and-so?” Rather, there is a continuous range of correct responses to this question, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0. There are people I’ve known all my life, and others that I have known for decades. In the latter category there are some people … Continue reading “Degrees of knowing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27219"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27220,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27219\/revisions\/27220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}