One can grab a book on quantum physics and read said book to a chimpanzee, now, does the chimp understand anything you said?

Fuck No. (#1)

You could theoretically train the hypothetical chimp to memorize the combination of symbols that represent the contents of the quantum physics book, and be able to type a copy of the contents of the book on a typewriter, but he will still not understand any of the gibberish that it was forced to memorize. Aside from irreparably abusing the animal to the point of psychosis, the knowledge that it gained was completely useless to poor little bobo. Quantum physics, sadly, does not make a chimp more capable of finding the best fruit in the jungle.

NOW

I have watched multiple videos on the topic of quantum computing, thanks to YouTube knowing that I like to stroke my ego by learning about scientific stuff that is beyond my comprehension, thus recommending me videos about it.

I know that a “qubit” is this thing that is always spinning, being in a state of one and zero(not sure what it means!) at the same time, and that’s good thing. If you “entangle” multiple qubits together and somehow are able to dominate the black magic that is the science behind it, you can create a computer that is capable of running modded Minecraft at a consistent 60 FPS, making it far superior to any super computer made by humans. Jokes aside, while the technology is very interesting, I cannot comprehend any real details behind its inner workings.

Is the knowledge of these facts useful to me?

Fuck no. (#2)

Do I understand what half of it means?

Fuck no. (#3)

I could spend all of my free time watching “fun facts” videos on YouTube about highly advance scientific topics, in which the host is a human whose intelligence and wisdom far surpasses mine in all measurements, and yet, 1 out every 100 pieces of knowledge I learn will be of practical use (the “1” being that one video were I learned that if you spin a shaken can of coke, it won’t burst and make a mess, like it would normally do). Maybe there is a far more important meaning to this seek of knowledge with no direct application to our daily lives, something less obvious that our brain instinctively knows.

My theory is that “Fun facts” or just general knowledge of scientific principles, history, etc, even if sometimes beyond our comprehension, expand our perspective on things, or so I believe, in the sense that trains our common sense to be able to recognize bullshit when we see it.

We all have a bullshit detector pre-installed in our brains, but it needs to be trained and fed information for it to work properly. I know that the earth is round, I know that is round because it spins, I know that it spins because of the gravitational forces acting upon it, so when some internet crackhead comes to me and tries to indoctrinate me into the cult of flat-earth, I can say “fuck no (#4)”. It might not be about the direct application of knowledge the reason as to why learning these bits of wisdom is important, but about building our bullshit sensor and avoiding idiotic decisions.

I might not know the exact specifics of how memory RAM works, but I do know that RAM comes on a physical piece of hardware, and that the nice Indian man offering me to download more of it from his website, is probably wrong about his perception of how it works (sorry nice gentleman, but RAM doesn’t work like that, you silly boy!).

Knowledge, while not obvious on it’s usefulness, it’s the closest thing we have to a cure to stupidity, so be a nice homosapiens and remember to take your medicine. Even the most intelligent humans out there are sometimes victims to their own ignorance. If you ever feel like you don’t need to learn more, remember that doctors use to think smoking was good for your health (but thankfully, they learned something new after a few dozen cases of lung cancer).

A fun fact a day, keeps the nice Indian man away.

Re-post if you want, I do not mind.

Credit is appreciated but not necessary.