Feeding My Ignorance

We all - inevitably - view the world through a series of prejudices and biases.  This is not a criticism, merely a fact.  Just yesterday I clipped an article to OneNote which listed "58 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up Everything We Do"!!  In addition to these inbuilt mistake inducing biases we also have our own personal list of "things we know" that colour every move we make.

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The following quote from Michael Huemer was what started my thoughts towards this blog entry:

Highly intelligent people can think of rationalizations for their beliefs in situations in which the less intelligent would be forced to give up and concede error, and highly educated people have larger stores of information from which to selectively search for information supporting a desired belief. Thus, it is nearly impossible to change an academic’'s mind about anything important. . .

Wow - an argument in favour of ignorance.  Now, the title of this blog can be read two ways - Ignorance can be seen as a space which needs to be filled - hence the feeding.  In this reading, the blog's raison d'etre is to (ultimately) eradicate that ignorance - one little bit at a time.  Conversely, feeding tends to often mean "fatten up" - and therefore the blog is simply a way of increasing my ignorance.

The quote suggests that the state of "ignorance" is actually a rather useful place to be in sometimes.  An awareness of our own ignorance will surely help us avoid the trap of the "academic mind" that Michael Huemer was describing.   I am sure that it will always remain difficult to "change my mind" about some topics, however I would also hope that I will remain open to suggestions about where I am wrong and I hope that my awareness of the cognitive biases at least gives me some protection against them!!

What is sometimes interesting is that we fall foul of these biases even when we are looking out of them - even worse - we will realise that we are falling foul of them and ignore that fact.  There have been many times that I have caught myself out on that one.

Still, I am glad to find another seeming paradox - that is - it sometimes helps to be ignorant if you are know too much......