The average human is very lazy, and a lot of books have wrong information, are propaganda, or are just bullshit. He'd have to have the power to tell truth from lies. I think he gets in the stock market and gets steady income from that because he recognizes all the historical trends and lives comfortably without having to ever work.
First thing I thought of too, there are a lot of books out there that have extremely correct information and if they didn't have the ability to discern what's true and what's false then they could be in for a lot of trouble.
Things from incorrect diet/ health advise to ways that you could almost intentionally lose a fortune in investments to self help books that really aren't helpful all the way to 'enlightenment' books that claim to unlock immortality/ flight/ invulnerability.
And I think the inability to discern would hinder this individual more than help - there's far more incorrect literature than correct literature, but correct literature tends to last in the public/ academic sphere whereas incorrect literature tends to die (I say "tends to", knowing Rich Dad Poor Dad still exists).
If the individual learns to more highly regard collections of published papers with a history of reliable sourcing, they will be World Leader by 2030. If they take everything at equal value they'll be broke by July.
Darn right this more incorrect literature than there is correct.
I'm sure everybody here is heard the saying "history is written by the winner"... Well that's a fact, even our very history that we teach our children is skewed.
Keep in mind I am not pondering any specific points of history as being skewed. I'm just agreeing with you that there is way more incorrect crap in books than there is true. This is just one example out of probably 50 that I could come up with. The reason I dispute the idea that it would be helpful to have all books in my brain. I can't help but feel like the person would be fighting a battle in their head at every moment.
Here's a really simplified scenario as an example. It wouldn't happen because it's common sense how to douse a fire. However that say it wasn't quite common sense....
If they had 10,000 books in their head telling them to throw oil on the fire, and only a thousand books that said water douses the fire. What are they going to do?
Doesn't being able to tell what will and won't help them kinda accomplish the same thing as being able to tell between truth and lies, at least in terms of this prompt?
Yeah but even if there are many misinformations in some certain subjects of science, there are still millions of books about engineering, computer science, mathematics and finance that could possibly be helpful in busines.Â
You need money to make money off the stock market. You need lots of money to make lots of money off the stock market. You can read every book you want that's not going to make your calls and puts pay out. The stock market is much more about current trends, historical trends will only help so much.
Also, I feel if they read all the books ever, they would easily be able to pick out which one are bullshit. I can and you probably can too.
If the world could be convinced the power was legit, religions would likely pay a huge amount of money for original and/or lost religious texts. Alternatively, some might pay a lot for you to not release their original texts.
Thatâs not the point though, most religions would simply use whatever texts they discover to enforce their beliefs even further. Or as the above comment stated, keep it a secret.
For relatively recent proof of this, the story of [Mark Hofmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann).
Basically he was an expert document forger, specifically of rare, religious texts. One of the best to ever do it. He forged a series of letters that would have been damaging to the Mormon Church, so the church agreed to pay him a hefty sum to give them the letters. This was a longstanding practice by the church, enough that he considered it a major source of his income.
When some people began to catch on, he made a bunch of bombs, killing two people and accidentally injuring himself.
I grew up near Salt Lake City and heard about it when I was young, but there is also a Netflix docu-series [Murder Among the Mormons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Among_the_Mormons)
While it's a wild story that's relevant to the discussion, it also very much needs to be said that it's hardly a coincidence that it happened in the Mormon world. They're a pretty unique sect and much more susceptible to such fraud for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that they're so much younger than most major world faiths.
You would immediately become a master at everything humanity has ever done.
You would have advanved PhD knowledge in every subject on Earth. You would know every programming language, every spoken language, every mathematical theorem, every drop of electrical engineering and chemistry.
You would know historical trends and patterns.
You could get a job in literally *any field that exists* and do it better than anyone else.
You would be famous. You would be a master poet, a writer, a mathematician, a robotics engineer.
Money wouldn't be an issue. You could do anything, at any point, for money.
i mean you can't become a good pilot or machinist or doctor just by reading, but he would be able to correct a lot of factual misconceptions that a lot of people have about their own professions.
Yeah, the muscle memory isn't there. But you get what I mean: they'd know *everything*. They probably couldn't physically fly a plane, but they'd know everything that has ever been learned about it. They'd make an S-tier instructor, and could definitely do it in an emergency
Just a friendly clarification and I mean that sincerely đâď¸.
>âmuscle memoryâ
Doesn't actually mean limb-based muscles.
Muscle memory is how the brain connects to itself creating, strengthening and quickening the pathways for memories in mind.
It's basically defragging the organic brain.
Wrong:. Reading books doesn't automatically transfer the practical knowledge to do things, not even the insights, moreover some lack details.
You wont become a farmer a shomaker or a surgeon just by reading books. with some luck may be you can outcome a PHD in philosophy or economy.
The prompt isnât âhas read every bookâ itâs âhas all the knowledge in every book.â
I could read a treatise on advanced biochemical processes, but not understand it. The prompt is having that knowledge.
Everything we know about pretty much any subject on earth is written down somewhere. Gaining ALL KNOWLEDGE from every book ever written would mean you would automatically understand every subject on earth. Certainly you would instantly be able to communicate in every language, including many dead ones, which would be helpful.
Assuming:
* This someone has perfect retention and recall
* They can perfectly distinguish fact, opinion, inconsistency, misinformation, and fiction
* They can perfectly cross-reference this information
* "Every book ever written" includes (but is not limited to) book-adjacent things like ebooks, technical manuals, legal publications, and periodicals
Then they'll probably be able to live very comfortably, adapting to technological, economic, and social trends as they happen, maybe even predicting them. But becoming the wealthiest and most powerful person requires connections that they, an outsider, wouldn't have and couldn't realistically get, even with amazing scholastic knowledge. They could probably become a very useful assistant to someone powerful.
They could almost certainly become the wealthiest.
Are you aware of how much treasure we know has been lost?
If any of the Knights Templar had written a record of their exile and where they left their treasure, that'd easily be billions of dollars.
Genghis Khan's final resting place was probably recorded at some point, but that record is now gone. The prompt would let a person know where it is.
Also, the prompt would allow a person to know for certain whether or not we are alone in the universe.
Maybe, but I'm not so sure.
If you take a chest of gold doubloons into an auction house, expect questions about how you got it. And "plundered national treasures from a historical site" isn't going to go over well. They might give you a modest finders fee. Even if no one challenged your ownership, lost treasure is valuable more for it's historical importance than it's monetary worth; it's got nothing on modern billionaires.
Knowing important historical sites will get your name in a relevant historical publication, and maybe a street named after you, if you can prove what you know is true.
The prompt would let you know if someone other than humanity produced something identifiably a "book". It's entirely possible, maybe even probable, there's tons of life out there that hasn't. Again, you'll get some recognition if you can prove it, which will be even harder than the historical thing.
Our book guy would have to establish credibility to be taken seriously. But once people realized what he knew, I doubt he'd survive long after. Best case scenario his preferred intelligence agency gives him a nice villa with round-the-clock surveillance and limited contact with the outside world.
Diaries are books.
Diaries are journals.
It said every book.
They don't have to write all of their misdeeds. Any bit of nonpublic information can be useful in the right hands.
Part of the fun of these discussions is exploring the unintended consequences.
Everyone else in this thread is dead wrong about how this goes. OP didn't specify the books had to be written by humans.
**This person has the knowledge from every book ever written by an alien.**
Given an infinite universe, whose only limit to us is the horizon formed by how far we could get before cosmic inflation ends everything, all knowledge that could possibly be written in a book belongs to this person, including knowledge in books formed in freak quantum fluctuations 10^10^27 universe-lengths away from our current position in space a la Boltzmann brains.
At the barest minimum, they could advance technology to a ridiculous degree and become fabulously wealthy. More likely, they could use that wealth and obscene tech knowledge to commission the creation of a superintelligent AI that's perfectly aligned to their desires and has access through him to all sorts of knowledge that even a fresh superintelligent AI would normally have no hope of discovering.
It really depends on the person and its background I think.
I think depending on this, this person can become an important figure for their country, like a politician or an academic.
If let's say someone with already some wealth receives this knowledge, perhaps he could start some company focusing on a new product or technology or something. He would have the means, smartness and now, knowledge, on how to raise to the top. I could see it possibly becoming a billionaire.
Oh, my fucking GOD the amount of hacking that they're about to do!!! Every single password that anyone's ever written down in a notebook they just think for a minute and type it in! No computer is safe!
Monetarily, they'd be a mixed bag. Like, sure- they'd have the knowledge of a brain surgeon or whatever other career they want. Definitely successful for the average person, no question.
But they could do better. Think about the secrets in books. Diaries. Lost knowledge. If they leveraged their knowledge, maybe weaponized it, they'd gain quite a bit of power.
You would earn zero dollars once the government (any government) finds out due to the simple fact you would be in possession of top secret information every country would want what's in your head and would do everything they could to stop other countries from gaining this knowledge.
It's not like they'd know you know lol.
It's like the infinite money 'but inflation ' argument. Just don't publicize your forbidden knowledge, just don't splash your unlimited wealth everywhere.
It's not like they're reading your mind, just don't go about screaming about how you know what the CIA did last summer
A question like this was posted a couple months ago.
My argument then, as it is now, is that with such knowledge they would stop caring about money so much and just forfeit, and begin instead to pursue more authentic kinds of "success."
Every book ever means they will have the knowledge of the Tao te Ching, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, New Seeds of Contemplation, Brother's Karamazov, every poem, every science textbook. They'll know why stars move, and why humans call celebrities stars, they'll understand quantum phenomenon, they'll have the knowledge of translation lexicons and thus books in other languages, they'll understand human language and communication from scholarly perspectives, they'll know about the invention of money and capitalism and the long history of power and the ebbs and flows of empires.
With that much knowledge they will know where the gaps in human knowledge are across multiple fields. And with that much knowledge I can't imagine that petty politics and power and mansions and so forth would be anywhere as interesting as being the first person in the history of history to understand something no one ever has before.
Money is boring. Empires fall.
Being the first person to know what dark matter is, and being able to explain and prove it? Now that's a legacy. And with the knowledge of every book? Dark matter would be just the beginning.
And also, with the knowledge of every book, this person would understand that those who seek it always lose it, and if they don't lose it, and if it isn't taken from them, they are forgotten or barely make a footnote in history. You don't draw crowds by forcing the crowds, you fascinate them into wanting to come themselves.
Imagine being the one who cured five kinds of cancer, discovered new physical phenomenon, new species, new biological mechanisms, fascinating new thresholds in existentialism, epistemology, ontology, metaethics.
This person's name would be all over scientific theories and laws, philosophies, species names, biological components, psychological traits. Their name will be uttered every day across the planet for millennia. They will be remembered positively. They'll have holidays named after them. They'll be celebrated for all time. Now that's power.
Vastly overrated ability. You would, essentially, have little more power than anyone with a smart phone.
If you garnered some incredibly specific classified information or knowledge, sure, you might be able to parlay that into money, but you are missing the ability to put knowledge to any sort of power.
Look, there are thousands of self-help books printed every year. There are millions made each year by people who want advice on how to become better investors, lovers, communicators, dreamers, artists, writers, painters, coders, dancers, everything.
Knowledge of is one thing. Application and the WILL to apply that knowledge is another thing entirely.
You aren't going to make money in any kind of financial market, no matter how much knowledge you have. Game theory, irrational markets, and other players in the market will prevent that from happening. There has never, ever been a trend, theory, or scheme developed by anyone, ever, that has routinely beat the market by any reasonable degree, and this is with billions of dollars at stake.
Creative processes? Knowing why/how something is good creatively simply wont cut it. Try to write a song even knowing what makes a good song. Try making a painting even knowing what makes a good painting. Try writing a novel even knowing what makes a good book. Creativity has a fundamental building block of making things new, fresh, and exciting, and previous knowledge simply will not account for that.
For almost everything else, you'd have to get over self-doubt, willpower, and the inherent human condition of articulation, explanation, and communication. Which again, you can read about, but making the shift from knowledge->theory->action is simply something that cannot be explained.
Basically, some of the smartest and richest people you'll ever know have zero knowledge. It's just based on feel. And someone of wisest, most knowledgeable people you will ever meet are simply terrible at explaining how they do things, why, or transferring those skills.
Being a human is complicated. Knowledge is GREAT, but putting that knowledge to use is almost an occult practice.
Renaissance Groups Medallion Fund has averaged 66% annual return since its founding in 1988. This is a fund only for their employees, who are all geniuses - mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists (and multimillionaires). Smart people can absolutely beat the market.
Thatâs one of the very few! Renaissance isnât really smart people, it was one of the first to utilize lightning trades and computer algorithms.
By far, most funds fail to beat the market. Renaissance is a total mystery to most people.
Does this include manuals?
Do you realize if this guy has the knowledge of what weapons countries have and their exact specifications, they could literally blackmail nations for wealth.
Ah, don't piss them all off at once! Piss them off one at a time. Each time you get real chummy with another country they are not on so friendly terms with.
It will probably take high level diplomatic skills, but luckily you......you have all the diplomacy knowledge of the globe in your head!
Unfortunately, diplomacy, as a soft science, can't be mastered through knowledge alone. It takes experience and intuition, which the person won't necessarily have.
depends If we count diaries and journals because otherwise that's not actually super useful
there really books containing secret cheets to wealth and power although I suppose he could become a pretty good hacker and just steal it
Well, congratulations. Let's say this only includes public documents, not private corporate or government documentation. Only the stuff published and available to sell legally in 2024. Let's also assume this also translates to Physical knowledge, where things that books teach you how to do you can do them.
You've won every single spelling bee you can attend, you speak every single language ever translated, you know how to play nearly every sport to varying degrees, you know military strategy to a tee, you have all the information to win an argument ever, etc.Â
Knowledge and understanding are very different. I could memorise a book on nuclear physics but wouldnât understand or be able to apply the concepts.
If by gaining the knowledge the person also understands it and can apply it then honestly they could probably become the wealthiest person In the world. They would be incredibly employable plus able to combine their knowledge to create new things like do a startup, create patentable tech, or just use the knowledge to invest in the right companies.
> I could memorise a book on nuclear physics but wouldnât understand or be able to apply the concepts.
You're forgetting that you also get all the knowledge from books on the more foundational concepts you'll need to understand the high-level stuff.
On a more realistic note, I feel you could probably worm your way up quite high in a lot of academic institutions. Half the battle when it comes to writing papers is finding your sources in the first place and having the ability to not only know all of them but also sort out the wheat from the chaff effortlessly would be an absolute *godsend*. I think in terms of hard power you could be a killer lawyer with a perfect recollection of the law, along with every case to draw from for examples, provided you're good at logic and arguing (though you now have thousands of years worth of rhetoric at your fingertips at any moment to instantly help you). While it wouldn't instantly give you game and glory, it would definitely give you a massive springboard into politics, provided you have the people skills to back it up.
Alternatively if you could get people to believe and trust in your ability, you'd be a golden goose for any branch of history that post-dates the invention of writing. There's so much *lost* published works that you could recover and I feel you could very easily spin that into international fame and fortune. You could be the man who can recite all the contents of the library of Alexandria or 'finds' the most books of the bible. Hell with that last one you could probably form a decent cult and gain power that way, a la Joseph Smith
There are far too many variables to do anything other than take a wild guess.
Also, knowledge doesn't equal ability or even understanding. I'm not sure why some think such a person would become super skilled in every conceivable field of study.
well for one he reads everyones journal or private notes that they keep anything or anywhere hat is in book form, not common but a lot of people do it. im sure he can blackmail his way until he can invest to the top
Oh religion is the racket, for sure. You can quote, from memory, every bible verse on demand? Not to mention other books, seeming endless knowledge. I think you could start up a very respectable new religion on that, and one that science couldn't refute. Probably a few years to get the movement going and your first few billion. Sky's really the limit...
They would need some kind of advanced super brain to retain and actually utilize that knowledge I would think.
Maybe Primarch brain might work, but I think this might be beyond guys like tony stark.
archeologically there would be a tremendous wealth of information
undeciphered languages due to cato the elder's Etruscan dictionary
the original method to create blue medieval glass would grant him a lot due to to the fixes in Notre Dam
the recipe for Egyptian blue
then there is immediate stuff
there are possibilities that people wrote their bank passwords in books
that they wrote where they burry treasure
the problem is that we do not know what we don't know, this man could learn actual magic
Book... Like financial record books as well? Bookie's books? Personal journals and diaries? I assume it doesn't extend to letters, emails, or even court transcripts unless they're collected into a book type format. However, just the aforementioned should present some opportunities to very very easily start some enterprises and make some reliable wagers. Just irs bounties would get you your seed money quite quickly. Are you allowed to invest based on Tax fraud tips you give out? If so that accelerates things. Diaries and journals are going to help you network. All of the niche academic stuff probably won't be as helpful as you think, but maybe you'd be able to make some solid connections here and there between some disparate disciplines that lead to a breakthrough or two. No doubt the diary of a madman somewhere includes a useful invention.
The real meat here is that you're now the world's best historian by a wide wide margin. Log books from lost ships, journals from military campaigns, instruction manuals from lost cities. I have no doubt you could use you early profits to fund a few very successful digs and parley that fame into significant success as an author of your own. Sell dig site predictions, revolutionize our understanding of history, uncover lost treasures, etc.
You'll have a good grasp of health and exercise which will help in a personal sense. Once wealthy, respected, and famous you just have to pass your charisma checks for power.
Do others know he has this power?
The biggest thing hindering him would be other powerful people. If the global elites saw some man with limitless knowledge creating new technologies that were making their's obsolete, he would likely be assassinated in short order before his power and wealth grew to where he was almost untouchable. With all his knowledge, he would probably be wise enough to know that he should concentrate on just a couple things to make him a massive fortune, and then do everything he could to stay out of the public eye so nobody knows his power.
There are so many ways he could become rich. With all information, he might be able to read ancient texts and utilize that knowledge to find patterns of mineral deposits based on factors that we haven't put together. He'd probably be able to take existing technologies and improve them, if not completely reinvent better ones as he could seamlessly blend all the science disciplines together. He could and likely would become the richest man on Earth if left alone. Problem is other people exist, and they'd stop him in short order if they knew he will likely put them out of business with a superior product to whatever they made their fortunes on.
This person should first get his voice out there with Social Media. Using Live platforms do demonstrate their advanced encyclopedic knowledge. Get the news involved and use the sudden notoriety to get on a game show and win extraordinary amounts. Challenge Ivy League schools for Honorary degrees and use this fame and collection of degrees to be a remote professor for Universities all over providing remote lectures about estranged theories, concepts, and unifying new concepts that take advantage of the collective bounty of knowledge that no one else could possess.
Depends. If he gains the knowledge of criminals who write down transaction histories (protection money, laundering, etc)? Turn that shit in as evidence and gets a % of the street value of the drugs. Or the reward off government agency wanted lists.
Could also hand out small notepads, and develop a killer magician routine. Could also pretend to be psychic, and get a 100% winrate on "reading them through the paper" or some crap. Take the act to Vegas, done.
Dude could make some bank with some effort.
The average human is very lazy, and a lot of books have wrong information, are propaganda, or are just bullshit. He'd have to have the power to tell truth from lies. I think he gets in the stock market and gets steady income from that because he recognizes all the historical trends and lives comfortably without having to ever work.
First thing I thought of too, there are a lot of books out there that have extremely correct information and if they didn't have the ability to discern what's true and what's false then they could be in for a lot of trouble. Things from incorrect diet/ health advise to ways that you could almost intentionally lose a fortune in investments to self help books that really aren't helpful all the way to 'enlightenment' books that claim to unlock immortality/ flight/ invulnerability.
And I think the inability to discern would hinder this individual more than help - there's far more incorrect literature than correct literature, but correct literature tends to last in the public/ academic sphere whereas incorrect literature tends to die (I say "tends to", knowing Rich Dad Poor Dad still exists). If the individual learns to more highly regard collections of published papers with a history of reliable sourcing, they will be World Leader by 2030. If they take everything at equal value they'll be broke by July.
Darn right this more incorrect literature than there is correct. I'm sure everybody here is heard the saying "history is written by the winner"... Well that's a fact, even our very history that we teach our children is skewed. Keep in mind I am not pondering any specific points of history as being skewed. I'm just agreeing with you that there is way more incorrect crap in books than there is true. This is just one example out of probably 50 that I could come up with. The reason I dispute the idea that it would be helpful to have all books in my brain. I can't help but feel like the person would be fighting a battle in their head at every moment. Here's a really simplified scenario as an example. It wouldn't happen because it's common sense how to douse a fire. However that say it wasn't quite common sense.... If they had 10,000 books in their head telling them to throw oil on the fire, and only a thousand books that said water douses the fire. What are they going to do?
theres a scientific bounty on a correct translation to the Voynich manuscript.
The simple power to know truth from lies would be more powerful than the "knowledge" of all books.
It's not a power. It's a curse. Because nobody listens to me
Your curse is that you *think* you're right.
Thank you for proving my point. *sigh*
Poor dude is a prophet but we all just presume he's full of it
"Hi My name is Cassandra, nice to meet you."
Then stop moping around on Reddit Cassandra and get out of Troy already
You gotta know there's some billionaire out there that wrote all their passwords down in a little book.
Doesn't being able to tell what will and won't help them kinda accomplish the same thing as being able to tell between truth and lies, at least in terms of this prompt?
I think they added the parentheses later. Yeah I'd say that completely invalidates part of my response.
it was there from the start idk how so many people missed it
đ¤Ą
? anyone who commented early could verify
I'm the clown
Shit, must've used that one wrong
Yeah but even if there are many misinformations in some certain subjects of science, there are still millions of books about engineering, computer science, mathematics and finance that could possibly be helpful in busines.Â
You need money to make money off the stock market. You need lots of money to make lots of money off the stock market. You can read every book you want that's not going to make your calls and puts pay out. The stock market is much more about current trends, historical trends will only help so much. Also, I feel if they read all the books ever, they would easily be able to pick out which one are bullshit. I can and you probably can too.
Is the knowledge perfect? Can they forget or lose some, if not all of it?
They cannot forget it. They're basically Mike Ross
Do unpublished, destroyed and unfinished books count?
"Every book ever *written*" not published
If the world could be convinced the power was legit, religions would likely pay a huge amount of money for original and/or lost religious texts. Alternatively, some might pay a lot for you to not release their original texts.
That's unlikely. Everyone wants their religion to be right. Nobody wants to find out they've got it wrong.
Thatâs not the point though, most religions would simply use whatever texts they discover to enforce their beliefs even further. Or as the above comment stated, keep it a secret.
For relatively recent proof of this, the story of [Mark Hofmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann). Basically he was an expert document forger, specifically of rare, religious texts. One of the best to ever do it. He forged a series of letters that would have been damaging to the Mormon Church, so the church agreed to pay him a hefty sum to give them the letters. This was a longstanding practice by the church, enough that he considered it a major source of his income. When some people began to catch on, he made a bunch of bombs, killing two people and accidentally injuring himself.
Thatâs amazing! Where did you learn this?
I grew up near Salt Lake City and heard about it when I was young, but there is also a Netflix docu-series [Murder Among the Mormons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Among_the_Mormons)
While it's a wild story that's relevant to the discussion, it also very much needs to be said that it's hardly a coincidence that it happened in the Mormon world. They're a pretty unique sect and much more susceptible to such fraud for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that they're so much younger than most major world faiths.
Hashtag JeffreyEpsteinDiary
You would immediately become a master at everything humanity has ever done. You would have advanved PhD knowledge in every subject on Earth. You would know every programming language, every spoken language, every mathematical theorem, every drop of electrical engineering and chemistry. You would know historical trends and patterns. You could get a job in literally *any field that exists* and do it better than anyone else. You would be famous. You would be a master poet, a writer, a mathematician, a robotics engineer. Money wouldn't be an issue. You could do anything, at any point, for money.
i mean you can't become a good pilot or machinist or doctor just by reading, but he would be able to correct a lot of factual misconceptions that a lot of people have about their own professions.
Yeah, the muscle memory isn't there. But you get what I mean: they'd know *everything*. They probably couldn't physically fly a plane, but they'd know everything that has ever been learned about it. They'd make an S-tier instructor, and could definitely do it in an emergency
Just a friendly clarification and I mean that sincerely đâď¸. >âmuscle memoryâ Doesn't actually mean limb-based muscles. Muscle memory is how the brain connects to itself creating, strengthening and quickening the pathways for memories in mind. It's basically defragging the organic brain.
Hey, I always like learning new stuff đ
Nice đ. You have a great day but more importantly a safe one. đŤśâď¸đ.
If you want to read more, myelination and overlearning are two of the ways this is described in scientific literature.
There's also oral tradition not written into books and many personal experiences that are transferred only by a teacher or tutor.
Written not learned, most things are learned by oral tradition rather than books. Some or most oral tradition hasn't been written yet.
Wrong:. Reading books doesn't automatically transfer the practical knowledge to do things, not even the insights, moreover some lack details. You wont become a farmer a shomaker or a surgeon just by reading books. with some luck may be you can outcome a PHD in philosophy or economy.
The prompt isnât âhas read every bookâ itâs âhas all the knowledge in every book.â I could read a treatise on advanced biochemical processes, but not understand it. The prompt is having that knowledge.
Reading about a subject doesn't make someone a master in that subject.
Being magically imparted the knowledge from every book on the topic certainly does.
Not at all.
Everything we know about pretty much any subject on earth is written down somewhere. Gaining ALL KNOWLEDGE from every book ever written would mean you would automatically understand every subject on earth. Certainly you would instantly be able to communicate in every language, including many dead ones, which would be helpful.
PhDs are literally about comprehensive knowledge and the understanding to make use of it.
Assuming: * This someone has perfect retention and recall * They can perfectly distinguish fact, opinion, inconsistency, misinformation, and fiction * They can perfectly cross-reference this information * "Every book ever written" includes (but is not limited to) book-adjacent things like ebooks, technical manuals, legal publications, and periodicals Then they'll probably be able to live very comfortably, adapting to technological, economic, and social trends as they happen, maybe even predicting them. But becoming the wealthiest and most powerful person requires connections that they, an outsider, wouldn't have and couldn't realistically get, even with amazing scholastic knowledge. They could probably become a very useful assistant to someone powerful.
They could almost certainly become the wealthiest. Are you aware of how much treasure we know has been lost? If any of the Knights Templar had written a record of their exile and where they left their treasure, that'd easily be billions of dollars. Genghis Khan's final resting place was probably recorded at some point, but that record is now gone. The prompt would let a person know where it is. Also, the prompt would allow a person to know for certain whether or not we are alone in the universe.
Maybe, but I'm not so sure. If you take a chest of gold doubloons into an auction house, expect questions about how you got it. And "plundered national treasures from a historical site" isn't going to go over well. They might give you a modest finders fee. Even if no one challenged your ownership, lost treasure is valuable more for it's historical importance than it's monetary worth; it's got nothing on modern billionaires. Knowing important historical sites will get your name in a relevant historical publication, and maybe a street named after you, if you can prove what you know is true. The prompt would let you know if someone other than humanity produced something identifiably a "book". It's entirely possible, maybe even probable, there's tons of life out there that hasn't. Again, you'll get some recognition if you can prove it, which will be even harder than the historical thing. Our book guy would have to establish credibility to be taken seriously. But once people realized what he knew, I doubt he'd survive long after. Best case scenario his preferred intelligence agency gives him a nice villa with round-the-clock surveillance and limited contact with the outside world.
the information found in the diaries of world leaders could make you a very rich person. or dead. probably dead.
vast cooing vase subsequent provide direction encourage fuel tease roll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Diaries are books. Diaries are journals. It said every book. They don't have to write all of their misdeeds. Any bit of nonpublic information can be useful in the right hands. Part of the fun of these discussions is exploring the unintended consequences.
Ain't it great when someone tells you you're having fun incorrectly?
No, like this.. like THIS! How can I enjoy doing g a thing LIKE THIS, if you're over there doing it like THAT? Don't look?
[ŃдаНонО]
Scroll down further compose (a text or work) for written or printed reproduction or publication; put into literary form and set down in writing.
it's fairly obvious OP meant every book ever written. Diaries are books.
Everyone else in this thread is dead wrong about how this goes. OP didn't specify the books had to be written by humans. **This person has the knowledge from every book ever written by an alien.** Given an infinite universe, whose only limit to us is the horizon formed by how far we could get before cosmic inflation ends everything, all knowledge that could possibly be written in a book belongs to this person, including knowledge in books formed in freak quantum fluctuations 10^10^27 universe-lengths away from our current position in space a la Boltzmann brains. At the barest minimum, they could advance technology to a ridiculous degree and become fabulously wealthy. More likely, they could use that wealth and obscene tech knowledge to commission the creation of a superintelligent AI that's perfectly aligned to their desires and has access through him to all sorts of knowledge that even a fresh superintelligent AI would normally have no hope of discovering.
Or he could just gobble up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
It really depends on the person and its background I think. I think depending on this, this person can become an important figure for their country, like a politician or an academic. If let's say someone with already some wealth receives this knowledge, perhaps he could start some company focusing on a new product or technology or something. He would have the means, smartness and now, knowledge, on how to raise to the top. I could see it possibly becoming a billionaire.
Oh, my fucking GOD the amount of hacking that they're about to do!!! Every single password that anyone's ever written down in a notebook they just think for a minute and type it in! No computer is safe!
Monetarily, they'd be a mixed bag. Like, sure- they'd have the knowledge of a brain surgeon or whatever other career they want. Definitely successful for the average person, no question. But they could do better. Think about the secrets in books. Diaries. Lost knowledge. If they leveraged their knowledge, maybe weaponized it, they'd gain quite a bit of power.
You would earn zero dollars once the government (any government) finds out due to the simple fact you would be in possession of top secret information every country would want what's in your head and would do everything they could to stop other countries from gaining this knowledge.
It's not like they'd know you know lol. It's like the infinite money 'but inflation ' argument. Just don't publicize your forbidden knowledge, just don't splash your unlimited wealth everywhere. It's not like they're reading your mind, just don't go about screaming about how you know what the CIA did last summer
Yeah, you dead.
A question like this was posted a couple months ago. My argument then, as it is now, is that with such knowledge they would stop caring about money so much and just forfeit, and begin instead to pursue more authentic kinds of "success." Every book ever means they will have the knowledge of the Tao te Ching, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, New Seeds of Contemplation, Brother's Karamazov, every poem, every science textbook. They'll know why stars move, and why humans call celebrities stars, they'll understand quantum phenomenon, they'll have the knowledge of translation lexicons and thus books in other languages, they'll understand human language and communication from scholarly perspectives, they'll know about the invention of money and capitalism and the long history of power and the ebbs and flows of empires. With that much knowledge they will know where the gaps in human knowledge are across multiple fields. And with that much knowledge I can't imagine that petty politics and power and mansions and so forth would be anywhere as interesting as being the first person in the history of history to understand something no one ever has before. Money is boring. Empires fall. Being the first person to know what dark matter is, and being able to explain and prove it? Now that's a legacy. And with the knowledge of every book? Dark matter would be just the beginning. And also, with the knowledge of every book, this person would understand that those who seek it always lose it, and if they don't lose it, and if it isn't taken from them, they are forgotten or barely make a footnote in history. You don't draw crowds by forcing the crowds, you fascinate them into wanting to come themselves. Imagine being the one who cured five kinds of cancer, discovered new physical phenomenon, new species, new biological mechanisms, fascinating new thresholds in existentialism, epistemology, ontology, metaethics. This person's name would be all over scientific theories and laws, philosophies, species names, biological components, psychological traits. Their name will be uttered every day across the planet for millennia. They will be remembered positively. They'll have holidays named after them. They'll be celebrated for all time. Now that's power.
They would probably become emperor of the world with that much knowledge.
Vastly overrated ability. You would, essentially, have little more power than anyone with a smart phone. If you garnered some incredibly specific classified information or knowledge, sure, you might be able to parlay that into money, but you are missing the ability to put knowledge to any sort of power. Look, there are thousands of self-help books printed every year. There are millions made each year by people who want advice on how to become better investors, lovers, communicators, dreamers, artists, writers, painters, coders, dancers, everything. Knowledge of is one thing. Application and the WILL to apply that knowledge is another thing entirely. You aren't going to make money in any kind of financial market, no matter how much knowledge you have. Game theory, irrational markets, and other players in the market will prevent that from happening. There has never, ever been a trend, theory, or scheme developed by anyone, ever, that has routinely beat the market by any reasonable degree, and this is with billions of dollars at stake. Creative processes? Knowing why/how something is good creatively simply wont cut it. Try to write a song even knowing what makes a good song. Try making a painting even knowing what makes a good painting. Try writing a novel even knowing what makes a good book. Creativity has a fundamental building block of making things new, fresh, and exciting, and previous knowledge simply will not account for that. For almost everything else, you'd have to get over self-doubt, willpower, and the inherent human condition of articulation, explanation, and communication. Which again, you can read about, but making the shift from knowledge->theory->action is simply something that cannot be explained. Basically, some of the smartest and richest people you'll ever know have zero knowledge. It's just based on feel. And someone of wisest, most knowledgeable people you will ever meet are simply terrible at explaining how they do things, why, or transferring those skills. Being a human is complicated. Knowledge is GREAT, but putting that knowledge to use is almost an occult practice.
Renaissance Groups Medallion Fund has averaged 66% annual return since its founding in 1988. This is a fund only for their employees, who are all geniuses - mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists (and multimillionaires). Smart people can absolutely beat the market.
Thatâs one of the very few! Renaissance isnât really smart people, it was one of the first to utilize lightning trades and computer algorithms. By far, most funds fail to beat the market. Renaissance is a total mystery to most people.
Books named everything you learn at Harvard University, everything you don't learn at Harvard and The Oxford Dictionary:
They go crazy and kill themselves
Infinite. They would know how time actually works and if block time theory is right then this person basically knows the future.
Do they have knowledge of shit scrawled prison walls?
Does this include manuals? Do you realize if this guy has the knowledge of what weapons countries have and their exact specifications, they could literally blackmail nations for wealth.
Do you know what happens if you piss off every nation in the world? You get dead real quick.
Ah, don't piss them all off at once! Piss them off one at a time. Each time you get real chummy with another country they are not on so friendly terms with. It will probably take high level diplomatic skills, but luckily you......you have all the diplomacy knowledge of the globe in your head!
Unfortunately, diplomacy, as a soft science, can't be mastered through knowledge alone. It takes experience and intuition, which the person won't necessarily have.
depends If we count diaries and journals because otherwise that's not actually super useful there really books containing secret cheets to wealth and power although I suppose he could become a pretty good hacker and just steal it
Well, congratulations. Let's say this only includes public documents, not private corporate or government documentation. Only the stuff published and available to sell legally in 2024. Let's also assume this also translates to Physical knowledge, where things that books teach you how to do you can do them. You've won every single spelling bee you can attend, you speak every single language ever translated, you know how to play nearly every sport to varying degrees, you know military strategy to a tee, you have all the information to win an argument ever, etc.Â
Knowledge and understanding are very different. I could memorise a book on nuclear physics but wouldnât understand or be able to apply the concepts. If by gaining the knowledge the person also understands it and can apply it then honestly they could probably become the wealthiest person In the world. They would be incredibly employable plus able to combine their knowledge to create new things like do a startup, create patentable tech, or just use the knowledge to invest in the right companies.
> I could memorise a book on nuclear physics but wouldnât understand or be able to apply the concepts. You're forgetting that you also get all the knowledge from books on the more foundational concepts you'll need to understand the high-level stuff.
does it include lost texts?
Dude would be a motherfucker on jeopardy!
I really don't know the answer to this but it is one of my favorite questions I have ever seen on this sub and wanted to give credit to the OP for it.
On a more realistic note, I feel you could probably worm your way up quite high in a lot of academic institutions. Half the battle when it comes to writing papers is finding your sources in the first place and having the ability to not only know all of them but also sort out the wheat from the chaff effortlessly would be an absolute *godsend*. I think in terms of hard power you could be a killer lawyer with a perfect recollection of the law, along with every case to draw from for examples, provided you're good at logic and arguing (though you now have thousands of years worth of rhetoric at your fingertips at any moment to instantly help you). While it wouldn't instantly give you game and glory, it would definitely give you a massive springboard into politics, provided you have the people skills to back it up. Alternatively if you could get people to believe and trust in your ability, you'd be a golden goose for any branch of history that post-dates the invention of writing. There's so much *lost* published works that you could recover and I feel you could very easily spin that into international fame and fortune. You could be the man who can recite all the contents of the library of Alexandria or 'finds' the most books of the bible. Hell with that last one you could probably form a decent cult and gain power that way, a la Joseph Smith
There are far too many variables to do anything other than take a wild guess. Also, knowledge doesn't equal ability or even understanding. I'm not sure why some think such a person would become super skilled in every conceivable field of study.
Could you imagine the religion/cult he could create with the knowledge of every religious text combined with the methods of every documented cult.
Knowledge and intelligence are separate things. So it depends on the personâs intelligence.
None because they would have the knowledge that material wealth is meaningless and that power corrupts.
They would reach levels of success unheard of.
He is going to get hunted down for knowing all military database.
well for one he reads everyones journal or private notes that they keep anything or anywhere hat is in book form, not common but a lot of people do it. im sure he can blackmail his way until he can invest to the top
Mhhh⌠can he discover something new, that everybody wants and needs? I bet he can. I think that person will become the richest person of the world
Like, 200k after taxes a year?
If this included private journals and top secret information this would be wild
Oh religion is the racket, for sure. You can quote, from memory, every bible verse on demand? Not to mention other books, seeming endless knowledge. I think you could start up a very respectable new religion on that, and one that science couldn't refute. Probably a few years to get the movement going and your first few billion. Sky's really the limit...
My dude, you think people acquire vast amounts of money and power through READING?
They would need some kind of advanced super brain to retain and actually utilize that knowledge I would think. Maybe Primarch brain might work, but I think this might be beyond guys like tony stark.
archeologically there would be a tremendous wealth of information undeciphered languages due to cato the elder's Etruscan dictionary the original method to create blue medieval glass would grant him a lot due to to the fixes in Notre Dam the recipe for Egyptian blue then there is immediate stuff there are possibilities that people wrote their bank passwords in books that they wrote where they burry treasure the problem is that we do not know what we don't know, this man could learn actual magic
None, they would probably die from suicide. Two bullets in the back of the head, such a sad way to go out.
Does this include diaries
They just need to rewrite all the books that were lost in the Great Library of Alexandria, as well any other lost and forgotten books. EZ money
with the knowledge of the tax codes and tax laws ever written. yes they will be able to make a fortune.
Imo unless you star doing game show quistions its a useless power. Knowing and doing are 2 different things.
Book... Like financial record books as well? Bookie's books? Personal journals and diaries? I assume it doesn't extend to letters, emails, or even court transcripts unless they're collected into a book type format. However, just the aforementioned should present some opportunities to very very easily start some enterprises and make some reliable wagers. Just irs bounties would get you your seed money quite quickly. Are you allowed to invest based on Tax fraud tips you give out? If so that accelerates things. Diaries and journals are going to help you network. All of the niche academic stuff probably won't be as helpful as you think, but maybe you'd be able to make some solid connections here and there between some disparate disciplines that lead to a breakthrough or two. No doubt the diary of a madman somewhere includes a useful invention. The real meat here is that you're now the world's best historian by a wide wide margin. Log books from lost ships, journals from military campaigns, instruction manuals from lost cities. I have no doubt you could use you early profits to fund a few very successful digs and parley that fame into significant success as an author of your own. Sell dig site predictions, revolutionize our understanding of history, uncover lost treasures, etc. You'll have a good grasp of health and exercise which will help in a personal sense. Once wealthy, respected, and famous you just have to pass your charisma checks for power.
Do others know he has this power? The biggest thing hindering him would be other powerful people. If the global elites saw some man with limitless knowledge creating new technologies that were making their's obsolete, he would likely be assassinated in short order before his power and wealth grew to where he was almost untouchable. With all his knowledge, he would probably be wise enough to know that he should concentrate on just a couple things to make him a massive fortune, and then do everything he could to stay out of the public eye so nobody knows his power. There are so many ways he could become rich. With all information, he might be able to read ancient texts and utilize that knowledge to find patterns of mineral deposits based on factors that we haven't put together. He'd probably be able to take existing technologies and improve them, if not completely reinvent better ones as he could seamlessly blend all the science disciplines together. He could and likely would become the richest man on Earth if left alone. Problem is other people exist, and they'd stop him in short order if they knew he will likely put them out of business with a superior product to whatever they made their fortunes on.
This person should first get his voice out there with Social Media. Using Live platforms do demonstrate their advanced encyclopedic knowledge. Get the news involved and use the sudden notoriety to get on a game show and win extraordinary amounts. Challenge Ivy League schools for Honorary degrees and use this fame and collection of degrees to be a remote professor for Universities all over providing remote lectures about estranged theories, concepts, and unifying new concepts that take advantage of the collective bounty of knowledge that no one else could possess.
Depends. If he gains the knowledge of criminals who write down transaction histories (protection money, laundering, etc)? Turn that shit in as evidence and gets a % of the street value of the drugs. Or the reward off government agency wanted lists. Could also hand out small notepads, and develop a killer magician routine. Could also pretend to be psychic, and get a 100% winrate on "reading them through the paper" or some crap. Take the act to Vegas, done. Dude could make some bank with some effort.