I’d like to know, doesn’t seem the crux of the issue.

Knowledge is Power; it was the definition of the verb that stumped him. The fact that the only math he could comprehend was measured in $ and non-sense. Quantum mechanics might explain how TFG's irrational brain works, but I sure can't; it must be something like a really bad hallucinating AI application that throws rules of every sort to the universe's windsongs, perhaps approximating the knowledge of an invading alien screaming, "I come in peace" and, Jack, the guy is dangerously functionally insane to the world, something which the rational world has a hard time coping.