Growing in a garden without knowledge

So we all know of the story of The Garden of Eden? It's a nice allegory for the nature of mankind arising from the Earth and beginning to do what mankind does: accumulate knowledge.

But, there's something more to that story.

If you came to a crossroad, where one path went off a cliff, and the other led to where you want to go, would you ever chose to drive off the cliff? No, because the knowledge you have limits the choices you can make. But, suppose there was a fog, and you had no knowledge of what was down each path. You would have the freedom to choose either.

Dropping the cliff analogy, is there anything to gain from making choices without knowledge?

Yes. If everyone makes the same choices at all crossroads, everyone will wind up in the same place. Since the experiences we have on our unique path create the solutions we will see to solve problems, it becomes disadvantageous to have such a limited range of perspectives.

If everyone in the world suddenly transformed into Albert Einstein, the world would collapse within a week. It doesn't matter how much of a genius he is, the needs of the societal machine we are in requires a vast amalgamation of skills and perspectives.

Our culture is and has been deliberately crafted so a small portion of the population has knowledge (think eye in the pyramid), and a large portion is raised without knowledge. From a collective survival standpoint, this means that a large portion of the population is acting as a sort of random number generator, granting the whole of us with a much larger range of novelty to work with to solve problems.

Humanity is in effect a supercomputer made from all of our minds communicating with one another.