If I have one stick and someone gives me another, I have two sticks. Better than one, but two isn't that many.
On the other hand, if I possess certain knowledge (say, the fact that rubbing two sticks together in a certain way can start a fire), the value is fundamentally different.
Knowledge doesn't diminish when shared — it multiplies. When I share what I know, I still have it, and now so does someone else. And they might combine it with their own knowledge to create something neither of us could have imagined alone.
This is why alchemy failed as a paradigm — it treated knowledge like a physical substance, to be hoarded and guarded. The real transformation doesn't come from turning lead into gold. It comes from sharing knowledge freely and watching it compound.
