you will find many members with little to no knowledge of how BTC actually works and still have thousends of merit
I'd argue you don't need to know how Bitcoin really works (on a technical level) to be able to use it, but I get what you mean.Quote
on the other hand, with a random example of Kano and CK who would be in the top 10 of the most knowledge and beneficial users to Bitcoin EVER only have a few hundreds earned merit.
Who? 
I assume they don't post that much. I'd love to see more posts of knowledgeable people, but if they don't post, they won't earn a lot of Merit (except for satoshi).