Ignorance is defined as a lack of knowledge. You can be an smart person but be ignorant in certain areas. About forecast, John Maynard Keynes said “We simply don’t know.”
There are three kinds of ignorance
Ignorance can be divided into three types:
- Self-knowledge Ignorance is when one knows that he or she does not know.
- Meta-Ignorance is not knowing that you don’t know.
- Paranoid Ignorance is the belief that one knows something that one does not know, and most of these views are wrong.
Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “There are only two kinds of people who try to predict the future: those who know nothing, and those who don’t know they know nothing.” “People!” This sentence really hits the nail on the head.
Ignorance breeds fear
Albert Camus wrote in his novel “The Plague“:”The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened.”
Paul-Henri Thiry, French philosopher, once said “Man is superstitious only because he is afraid (craintif); he fears (craint) only because he is ignorant“
Self-knowledge is the most important
Socrates famously said: “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”, he also said: “I know that I know nothing.“
Bertrand Russell once said “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
Closing words
John Kenneth Galbraith said, “There are two kinds of forecasters: those who are ignorant, and those who do not know they are ignorant.”
In Plato’s Apology (sections 21d–23c), Socrates describes how the Oracle at Delphi proclaimed that no one was wiser than Socrates. Socrates, puzzled by this, went around questioning people who were reputed to be wise. He concluded:
“I am better off than he is—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know.”
Recognizing your own ignorance is the only true wisdom.
“The degree of a person’s emotions is inversely proportional to the amount of facts he knows; the less you know, the more out of control your emotions become,” Bertrand Russell said.
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