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Originally Posted by IGGYRULES
Who determines what we should know? Why should someone know what a lightyear is? How are they going to benefit society by knowing this? How will knowing this help them throughout their life? There are more severe problems that society and the school system in general need to address other than who was Tommy Douglas and the definition of a light year.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
Knowledge has intrinsic value; it does not have to fulfill a need or be useful.
That being said, the concept of a light-year is important in understanding cosmology, which is important in understanding how the universe began, which is important in understanding why, for example (and only for example, I am not interested in yet another creation debate), young-earth creationists are hopelessly deluded. That is just one example of how all knowledge is interrelated and how knowing seemingly "useless" facts and definitions in one subject deepens one's understanding in many, seemingly unrelated subjects.
People without the grounding in such knowledge often are prone to having utterly absurd beliefs about the nature of reality; the danger of this is, no doubt, obvious.
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This post states it nicely, and I'm going to report it for reputation consideration.
If you need to ask "why bother knowing something", then you're probably a lost cause already.