Knowledge is painful

Some inspirations drawn from conversation with Prof Zhang Jie~

1)
Knowledge is painful -- both creating it and acquiring it.

Let's face it: most people dislike difficult stuffs, especially new things they do not understand. This is why studying, acquiring knowledge is so painful. It gets worse as you go up the education ladder.

Similarly, knowledge creation is painful. It is not uncommon to see a paper written 10 years ago published only now. That's why paper writing is not called 'search' but 'RE-search'. You have to write it, check through a few times and re-write it again. After that, when you send it for publication, they will check through and you may have to 're-search' and re-write a few more times before it is published. Knowledge creation is a long and painful process.

(Pretty logical explanation I would say, when we consider why many students hate studying. Of course, I don't deny that a rigid and competitive education system is partially at fault as well.)

2)
Those at the lower end of the knowledge chain gets paid more than those at the top of the knowledge chain.

This applies to every industry. Examples given are that of the dentist and the teacher.

The scientist creates the knowledge about extraction techniques and extraction equipments and passes it free of charge through journal articles. The dentist learns about it by reading the journal article online for free and acquire these new knowledge quickly. However, the scientist gets paid less than the dentist. The dentist is paid every time a patient visits and the dentist applies the new knowledge to extract the patient's tooth. However, the scientist is usually paid a smaller fixed salary. In fact, even though the scientist contributed to the knowledge creation process towards solving his own toothache problem, when he visits the dentist, he still has to pay!

The teacher in university teaches 4 modules or 500 students a year. In 10 years' time, he would have taught over 5000 students. However, the teacher's salary is a mere fraction of the earnings of these students. These students who can be working in any sector ranging from accounting to human resource management would be earning a higher income than the teacher because they are the ones providing the services directly to the consumers, even though they are applying knowledge acquired from the teacher!
(NOTE: TEACHER IS A NOBLE PROFESSION! =) )

(Since most of us would not be engaging in the knowledge creation process at the top, perhaps we can take some relief from this observation. Yes, we can still earn a decent living if not more. Poor teacher! =P )