To know a lot about a few things or know something about many things. One makes you useful, the other makes you good at trivia games and impresses people until you're pressed for details. Just hit 'em with big words and random facts and then walk away.
You might call it Ikea knowledge. Affordable and with a beautiful exterior but ultimately it's just veneer on particle board.
I have often said my ocean of knowledge is broad, but also shallow in most places. But here's why I am fine with it. I have a natural curiosity about most everything, so I've learned maybe a first year college level knowledge of a great many disciplines. And I found over time, that all these disciplines are interrelated. There are connections that not everyone can see with a more narrow, but deeper ocean that may not be as vast.
I can speak to anyone who has a deeper knowledge than I of any topic, and even not knowing what they know, I can relate whatever they convey to maybe a discipline that is unrelated in the surface, but which helps me grasp what they what to share. I can then restate what I am hearing into a question to verify that I am grasping the concept, and I usually am successful in doing so, and it usually makes the person more enthusiastic to share more. It's great at bars and parties.
It also means that I can be seated with nearly anyone and relate to them, to coax them into sharing things they may not have otherwise, to gain a level of trust with them, and to make them feel valuable and in turn, make me seem valuable to them. And I can do this with another person with whom the first would find no common ground, and then be able to share with them both a understanding that they do have common ground, reducing conflict.
That doesn't perhaps seem like much, but when you can mediate between two opposing parties and bring them together by finding a common ground from which to start communicating and resolve conflict, that is a unique and relatively rare skill set, one which in its own right makes me useful.
I often think I would either make a fantastic preacher or politician. It is unfortunate I have no respect for a career as one, and no interest in a career as the other, and I leave it to you to discern for yourself as to which is which.
I'm actually terrible at trivia. But I love learning about a lot of different things, about most of which I'll never make expert status. I'm OK with that. And I'm not interested in impressing people in the first place. Maybe that's important.
Friend of mine was an apprentice and asked a lot of questions. His trainer told him; "If I told you everything I know and you added it to what you know, you would know more than I know."
I'm a trivia buff myself.Used to win all around Boston. If you have a strong team-its teamwork.
I try to know a lot about a lot of things lol