Knowledge is experience
Imagine that you have always admired recipes from a certain chef. You never tried them but know everything there is about them. You have watched how he prepares all his recipes several times and know the ingredients inside out. You also have extensive knowledge of the cookware and about temperature and cooking time. Let’s say that you finally got your hands on all the components to try out one of his recipes. You follow exactly all his steps, but you find out that application is very different from theory. The cake you made was not as soft as expected, was burnt at the bottom and tasted very bland. Now the question is where the fault would lie. If all conditions were the same then the only logical explanation would be the lack of experience. I wonder at this point whether the “knowledge” on cooking was simply information without value yet.
What I am referring to is at what point does information become knowledge. Of course this will also depend of the context. For instance if is difficult to determine the smell of something from simply reading about it. In reality, once you smell it you will have real knowledge of it. This might also help when dealing with facts. They may say that milk is good for you. After consuming it, you might get symptoms of lactose intolerance. You can therefore use your new knowledge to disprove the information that milk is good for you.
What I am trying to reach in the end is that real knowledge can only be achieved through experience. Anything before that are theories and speculations. The same experience can also lead to different outcomes, even when the conditions are the same. For instance, the grief experienced when losing a loved one is difficult to measure and people usually have different ways to deal with it. Therefore the knowledge obtained can differ from person to person. This brings another point of discussion. How do we give value to the knowledge obtained and whether it is reliable? In this context it can very very subjective and may not work with another person dealing with grief.