I read an interesting study the other day. Researchers studied the learning rate of individuals by examining name-number pair retention. Categorically those who had a large base of general knowledge learned at a significantly faster rate vs others. In fact, it was one of the largest contributing factors.

Another study posited that both true and false recognition enhanced stored patterns in the brain. In fact, those where the false recognition was based on a larger set of known information led to slower declines in retention vs sparse-but-true understanding. In general, recall itself is shown to enhance the stored patterns in the mind.

You can see how this would lend itself that false information reinforces false information networks; vis-a-vis our modern media dogmatist vs conspiracy landscape. False networks would crowd out the true, and render a mind to be unable to hold on to truth.

As I was studying my copy of GEB the concept of a critical mass of programs came up. It made me consider the critical mass of information itself.

Information connects in networks. If there is some set of true and false information, and it relates one to another, then it would make sense that as broad information is collected and stored relationally it would create a strata. These strata of understanding.

Truth and falsehood, in as much as human existence shapes the information that we have collected. It may not be universal truth, but it would be a constant as filtered through the human experience. An experience as developed by experimentation - which is the understanding of how to separate truth from falsehood.

Since all known information would fit, there should be clusters of interrelated information. Having a global understanding of the clusters, and then having a local understanding of how each cluster works would provide a framework for properly being able to take and utilize new information in a more efficient way.

I can profess that knowing many computer languages makes learning new ones easy. Having built hundreds of systems makes designing new ones trivial. I have heard that knowing several human languages makes learning a new one easy as well.

Conceptually each language has its own intricacies in how it relates thought. Each imperfect, but expressive in its own area, defines the categories of thought available to its speakers, and thinkers. As language shapes our minds, the categories of thought available would expand as more were understood; not just a peripheral learning of syntax but true understanding of meaning. Each local experience would be semantically embedded in the language itself.

I believe that this is why we have the occasional great polymath. These people are experts in multiple languages, and also broadly learned in human thought. Those who have a strong framework for understanding would have great ease at acquiring new information. At some point a critical mass of networked information would occur. I wonder what it would be like to experience being such a mind.

I hope someday to find out.