A benefit of relegating the generation of knowledge to society at a whole is that each person is then relieved of the burden of keeping it all in mind. Modern knowledge-building has largely been taken from the hands of individual intellectuals and trusted to networks or institutions like science that produce new facts at a rate never before seen in human history. That is not to say that there are no longer knowledgeable individuals, certainly there are, and we have developed an increasing number of cognitive heuristics to identify them when researching new ideas. Signals of expertise include pieces of paper that indicate achievement in the most rigorous institutions of learning, publications in journals that are meticulously reviewed by other experts, and competitive success in the development of products for markets where truth dominates falsity. Heuristics and signals help lead us to good information quickly; that is, to the most reputable people and institutions that have developed knowledge that we would like to make use of despite our inability to create it on our own. Our society depends on the success of these people and institutions, and the comfort with which we repeat the simple, standalone facts we learned in school (which often took loads of time, money, and brilliance to generate) reflects our confidence that they are indeed functioning well.
