Lucky Guesses

A lucky guess does constitute knowledge. Although, I know I am setting up myself, for the other person to throw me into a catcch 22 with this belief, I really do think I can establish it. First, we will go for the low road. How do you know how smart you are? Tests. Generally, there are two types of tests in life. If it is a scholastic, or achievement test, it will probably be multiple choice. These for the quickest hit possible are called multiple guess tests, but forgetting that, the idea is to score as high as possible. It is assumed you can redo any test as well again. SATs and IQ tests both accept your highest score. If one person gets a 1600 or 200+ IQ by accident, it can not be changed. These people have set it up for a reason. You must not change. If you get it right by accident, it stays right.

Enough of this, let us go on to the scientific, concrete evidence. Knowledge is what you can justify. However,,look back to the beginning of science. People know what they know for to reasons. Either they were taught it, or they discovered it. When I was younger I wondered how and why leading scientist had to research. Research meant to look it up from various books. Even if they look through every book in the Library of Congress, the guy who wrote it, would know it, surely he would have already determined the cure. I realized later, they meant experimenting. Ok, off of the tangent. These expirements created knowledge. They researched to prove a theory. A guess is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a theory. A theory is believed; it is knowledge. E=MC2 is a theory. It's true. Chaos theory is true. There is no proof, it's just a guess.

A lucky guess means something else. Anything, if vague, can be considered true or false. Nothing is exact. Your in a fight with a student, granted a stupid fight, but he questions your intellegence by asking if William Henry Harrison was president of the US for the shortest time. To be vague and lucky, you can give two answers and both are right.

"Yes"

"Very good, he died after a month in office," or,

"No."

"Buzz, he died after a month in office, shortest of any president."

"Uhmm, actually Ickebod," inserts the teacher, "a man named David Rice Atchinson was technically president for one day." Either way, he would be right, it was only a technical presidency. Most items can be treated this way. There usually is the ironic exception, or trivia question. He is right no matter what he said. He thinks, it, its true, now he knows it. He's right. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is a lucky guess. Power is for the lucky guessers.