If you want to make fennel salad you need to balance its flavor by adding a little acid. Armed with this broad knowledge, a cornucopia of acid types opens up for you: an aged balsamic will offer a completely different flavor than that of an apple cider. Without the fundamental knowledge of acid's bigger concept, one might have only learned to add a specific vinegar as the secret to fennel salad's success.
To master an art we must first learn the broadest of concepts before we turn to the specifics.
Funneling from the broad to the specific finds its advantage in extending the possible. If you were designing a circuit and wanted to open the sound up, you might know to increase emitter or cathode degeneration values to get there. That knowledge would serve you well. But, a broader understanding of what you're doing would likely take your design farther because there would be more options available.
The broad concept is that lowering feedback opens sound. Understanding the broad then allows you to choose specifics, each with differing results. If by degeneration we get one flavor. If by loop values, yet another. Both lower feedback, each sounds very different.
A broad understanding is often more valuable than a more myopic tailored view of specifics.
The knowledge funnel is only as encompassing as the size of its broadest opening.
