Category: Ignorance

When Has Naivety Benefited You?

Our society tends to view naivety as a weakness. Is there ever a time in your life when it was a strength?

Most of the time, not knowing the rules when you are working on a particular project leads to failure, and possibly even disaster. A lack of understanding can easily lead to a costly mistake. Learning on the fly is possible, but it takes time, skill, and luck to navigate.

Consequently, knowledge and experience is typically valuable and well-earned. Having been through something before, or having researched it and prepared fully can be invaluable.

However, there are occasions when ignorance confers a benefit. There are times when youthful enthusiasm, for instance, can make up for a lack of experience. Sometimes, not knowing how difficult a task is can allow you to try a method that a more experienced person might ignore. And sometimes an unconventional approach, more easily provided by a newcomer, is exactly what is needed.

Are there times in your life when your naivety or lack of experience was an asset? Starting out, did you accomplish things that you would never attempt once you knew more? Do you look back and marvel what you accomplished because you didn’t know it couldn’t be done?

Related questions: What experience helped you grow? Is more knowledge always better? When is it useful to fail?

Who Is Susceptible To Misinformation?

There are very skilled, well-financed groups attempting to spread misinformation across the world. Who is likely to be duped?

It can be very frustrating when someone you disagree with ignores logic and common sense. How can they believe something that is so obviously incorrect? They clearly are being fed a steady diet of misinformation, from politicians, news outlets, social media feeds, and so on. But why can’t they see it?

Of course, it is very likely they, or someone else who disagrees with you, is thinking the exact same thing. How is it possible, they ask, that you don’t see you are being lied to? They believe your social media feed is full of misinformation. The politicians you vote for deliberately tell lie after lie. News sources you follow are biased and don’t tell the whole story.

Surely both sides can’t be right. One side must be telling the truth, and the other is sadly deluded. And, of course, your side is the correct one. Theirs is the one filled with misinformation.

Need proof? Just look at the video clip of someone interviewing them, exposing how ignorant they are. It is sad they don’t see what has happened to them.

But again, those video clips exist on both sides of the political spectrum.

How can you be sure that your side is the correct one? What if it isn’t? What if the people spreading misinformation are not targeting just one side of the political aisle, but instead look to destabilize the entire system, left and right alike?

You probably believe the other side should be more skeptical of the information they are exposed to. But how skeptical are you?

Related questions: What is truth? How do you know who to trust? What beliefs do you have that might be wrong?

When Have You Had A Sudden Change Of Viewpoint?

As humans, we try to be consistent. However, sometimes circumstances lead to a sudden change of perspective. Has this happened to you?

One reason why this sudden change might occur is simply through collecting additional data. You might start out believing, say, that Columbus discovered America. You add more information to the picture, and then finally some piece of data makes you realize that it isn’t true.

Another way is a sudden re-framing of the data you have. An example of this is the move ‘The Sixth Sense’ with its twist ending. The revelation makes you reinterpret what happened all throughout the movie.

Sometimes, you can change your mind just by thinking about the situation. You might just realize — by yourself or with the help of someone else, like a therapist — that you were simply wrong. You never bothered to examine your beliefs, or were blinded by emotion or fear, or some other reason. But suddenly your error is exposed, and it changes how you think.

There are other ways you might change your mind quite suddenly. Has it happened to you? What led to the change? And how did you change the way you think about similar things because of it?

Related questions: What is necessary to change your mind?What beliefs do you have that might be wrong?How do you adopt new ideas?

What Is The Proper Level Of Engagement In National Politics?

National politics happens to get the major headlines, from the president to Congress to the Supreme Court. Should they?

Who gets elected president is a big deal. The presidential race, including primaries, debates, and a lengthy campaign season, is covered extensively by national and local media. And yet, individual voters have almost no influence on the president.

The situation is similar in Congress. A resident of a state can call their senator or congressperson, but even if that call is successful, the politician is just one of a large group.

It would seem that a person would be much more likely to make a difference at the state or local level than they would at the national one. In a town environment, one resident is a much larger percentage of the constituency. As a result, they wield much more influence. In addition, the issues at the local level often have a more direct impact on someone’s day-to-day life.

And yet, it is at the national level that most of the attention is directed. Many major media outlets have someone – or even a team – dedicated to covering the president. You may well know members of Congress, even those that don’t represent your district or state.

Overall, how much should we pay attention to events and people that are beyond our control? How important is it to follow what transpires over which you have little input? Is that being an “informed citizen” or are you spending your attention on something that doesn’t deserve it?

What is the proper level of engagement in national politics?

Related questions: Politics: local or national? What deserves your attention? Are you politically active? What is important?

What Are The Advantages Of Saying ‘I Don’t Know’?

Many people don’t like to admit that they don’t know something. However, there are advantages to saying the words ‘I don’t know’. What are they?

Knowing things is very useful. In fact, much of our society has been built around people knowing things. Engineers build bridges because they understand how materials behave. We have remarkably accurate warnings regarding extreme weather events because meteorologists understand how weather patterns evolve. And so on.

If knowing things is powerful, then the obvious corollary is that not knowing things displays weakness. Or so it might seem.

Indeed, we often behave as though that were the case. People often go through life projecting an air of certainty that, at times, might make it difficult to disagree or argue with them.

Naturally, this is a problem if they don’t actually know what they claim to know. That can be potentially embarrassing for them, or problematic or even dangerous for those around them.

So there is a time and a place for revealing your ignorance. After all, you only are ignorant until you learn, and learning often starts with the phrase ‘I don’t know’.

There are some things that are essentially unknowable. We can predict the future, but those predictions are just as likely to be wrong as they are to be right. Events happen all the time that catch experts off guard. Some examples include stock market crashes, sports upsets, medical diagnoses, and surprising political elections.

If you know something, it is important to state clearly that you are in possession of the facts. However, it can be just as important that when you don’t know, you say so just as clearly.

Can you think of benefits of saying ‘I don’t know’?

Related questions: When was the last time you said ‘I don’t know’? Know or don’t know? How do you deal with uncertainty?