Animish Sharma

Keep the knowledge free and mind curious

These are my own opinions, if you disagree with them then I dont really have a problem with that.

Curiosity keeps the door open while knowledge shows us what lies beyond it.

As someone who has learned extensively from the internet whether through FreeCodeCamp's tutorials on the Internet or MIT OCW's course, I think it is time I address this topic. For the past few weeks I have been noticing a pattern. Knowledge is either being destroyed or restricted. A few articles I have come across are AI Companies destroying books, Library being Destroyed for new building or Scientific Articles are paid.

Why are we restricting or destroying knowledge at all ? In a world where people want to learn, highly specialized knowledge can be extremely expensive. How is an ordinary person supposed to pay for it? In a world where corporate employment seems to have become the end goal for many people (and placements are treated as the ultimate goal) why are we not letting the people access the knowledge that might help us in general. Why is no one talking about making this knowledge free. "A substantial amount of foundational, influential, and specialized scholarly knowledge remains behind subscription paywalls, which can materially restrict access for researchers and the public." Refer

In a world where closed models are being operated without public knowledge, and where corporate secrets are becoming increasingly important, why are we restricting knowledge that could eventually contribute to human development? And why is no one asking questions about it? Knowledge is supposed to be free and accessible to all, We all have the right to learn and understand about certain topics. One argument for paywalling research is that publishing and maintaining scholarly work costs money, but this raises a larger question: who should bear that cost? what is our government doing and should not we be concerned with politics. Because politics govern where the money is going to spent, how fund allocation should be done and I feel every person in this world should be concerned with politics and who leads the general populations and what their ideas are but we will cover this someday else.

If pay walling knowledge is becoming a norm then a person who genuinely wants to learn and know about things might never be able to which kills the curiosity of the learner. Are we really killing the motivation and drive of people who might one day become the next Tao or Einstein? Already our system is too rigid for these people to exist. Killing their curiosity or charging them with huge amount of money is one of the evilest things that I can think of.

Let's talk about the system, we all agree that our current system (INDIA) is full of crap. If 10 million people are taking JEE in the hopes that one day they would be able to sit in a government college then it is already fucked to the point where I cannot imagine, not even JEE, the schools in which we are teaching children to know stuff that the eq of a general circle is x2+y2=1. No one really teaches them to ask, question, understand. Why does x2+y2=1 describe a circle, why not x2−y2=1, why does the first eq describe the circle and what makes the second one incorrect ? Why are we telling people simply to memorize this? Why aren't we teaching them to ask questions? If students learn from rather "How does this work and why does it not work the other way ? What if I do this to this, what will I get ?". People who are willing to ask questions will go much further in understanding core concepts of things rather than people who just accepts that "oh this is how this works, yeah great!". The whole point of knowledge is to help humans understand ‘why things work the way they do,’ not just ‘this works because this is how it works.’

Throughout my whole life I have asked questions, why do I need to give certain input for some certain output, why does this algorithm works and I feel when you get the grasp of the subject you realize how many things we actually do not really know in our life. Curiosity is what makes people question out of the box, Curiosity is what leads to invention, not the memorization of things because with AI you do not really need to remember anything, you need to understand that why does this work. Every great researcher I have ever met in my life is a curious student. And I want to teach kids in a way that they can ask questions and figure out things on their own. If we can teach kids such that they do not have to memorize that the eq of circle is this, instead they can answer why is the eq of circle x2+y2=1 then we have succeeded in teaching them how to think outside the box.

Once you start thinking outside the box, you start wanting to know more about things that is where knowledge comes in, If we give a curious mind access to knowledge, it can produce something valuable, something that will be beneficial to all of us rather than just accepting and memorizing that this thing works because it does. Why is no one talking about open knowledge and curious minds, why are we suffocating our next generation to memorize things that they are meant to understand, Why can't we give them the equation of a line and then ask them to reason their way toward the equation of a circle ? Why is no one teaching these kids in a way that they can question outside the box, so that they can think on their own, that they can receive knowledge on their own. I would consider myself successful if I could teach even 10 students to ask, to question and to understand how everything works instead of them memorizing facts and I would continue to work in this direction until I am here.

Thank You
Animish Sharma