July 12, 2021
The Difference Between Ignorance and Stupidity
Are stupidity and ignorance synonymous? Perhaps in some contexts, but the answer must be “no”. There is a clear difference between ignorance and stupidity, and understanding this difference can inform our interaction with other people. This is especially the case when this interaction happens online.
The reason I’m writing this post is – as any other – entirely selfish. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I’m happy if you can find something useful in Home for Fiction posts. But I’m writing them for myself. And so, a post on the difference between ignorance and stupidity serves as a reminder to myself; a conceptual compass that can help me navigate the frustrating reality surrounding me.
As I mentioned in an online discussion, I’ve reached an age where I have precisely zero tolerance for stupidity and dogmatism. However – and this I didn’t mention in that discussion – I still tolerate ignorance. Tolerating ignorance while fiercely distancing myself from stupidity is the only way – for me at least – to fight against stupidity while remaining relatively sane.
How Are Ignorance and Stupidity Different?
First of all, let me take a step back and reiterate the last four words of the introduction: “while remaining relatively sane”. If this sounds vaguely familiar, you’ve read it in my post on nihilism: “Nihilism is a major part of what has helped me remain relatively sane”. I mention this because there is a nihilistic component in ignorance versus stupidity, as we will see.
But, on topic: What is the difference between ignorance and stupidity?
First of all, notice how I have so far in this post first referred to ignorance and only then to stupidity. That is, at no point did I use the expression “the differences between stupidity and ignorance”. There was a reason for this.
Ignorance and stupidity are temporally bound.
What this cryptic phrase implies is that stupidity follows ignorance. In plain terms, the way I choose to define the two, stupidity is the result of… ignored ignorance. At this point, let’s clarify one thing: We are all ignorant in many things. I might have a PhD in English literature, but I have absolutely no knowledge (beyond a Wikipedia article) of virology, Keynesian economics, or astrophysics – to only name four of the 3,456,122Do you really need a tooltip to tell you that the number is made-up? 😉 subjects I am ignorant in.
So, what is the separating line between ignorance and stupidity?
Stupidity is Ignored Ignorance
As I mentioned above, I define stupidity as ignorance that is ignored. However, this does not refer to staying ignorant simply because the field is not directly relevant to you. In other words, staying ignorant in these… 3,456,122 subjects I mentioned, doesn’t make me stupid. I simply have no motivation, need, or capability (e.g. time or resources) to stop being ignorant in e.g. molecular biology.
Stupidity as ignored ignorance is much more sharply delineated, involving knowledge that you are offered but decline.
Let’s say Joe wants to paint, but doesn’t know how to produce green pigment from his existing ones. He is ignorant of the fact that combining blue and yellow yields green. But Mary comes and shows him. Five minutes later, Mary comes back and finds Joe frustrated, complaining how these pigments are useless, as they don’t include green. A bit puzzled, Mary shows Joe once more how to do it. To no avail, as she discovers five minutes later.
At that point, Joe is no longer merely ignorant. There are only two options:
- Joe is mentally incapable of understanding (for whatever reason; genetic, medical, or other).
- Joe is ignoring his ignorance. That is, he fails to address it.
It should be evident that the latter case involves purpose. It’s deliberate, in other words. For some reason – beyond the scope of this simple example – Joe decides to ignore his ignorance, defined here as a failure to address it. Perhaps Joe has a prejudice against mixing pigments, or perhaps he feels special when Mary wastes her time trying to help him.
My Personal Strategy in Dealing with Ignored Ignorance
Blocking it. That’s it.
I either make sure to stay away from it or, if it shows up near me, I block it, one way or another.
As you may remember, I’m not using Facebook or Twitter. I do use LinkedIn, but I also have a very low threshold in terms of blocking people who ignore their ignorance. This mostly includes conspiracy theorists, fanatics, and other such creatures.
I’ve come to realize, I just can’t help people who ignore their ignorance. And I’ve stopped caring about it, because it makes no difference and there’s no point in it – that’s the nihilistic connection I mentioned earlier.
But I do tolerate ignorance.
If I have no reason to believe a person would not respond to reason and logic, I can be very patient. I can explain politely, with respect, listening carefully, making sure I continuously check my own position in case I need to modify it.
But if I notice “Joe” continuing to complain that there is no way to create green pigment after I’ve showed him what happens when you mix blue and yellow, then that’s it. Life is too short to be wasted on stupidity.
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A while ago I told someone that “there is a big difference between not knowing and not wanting to know.” I told this to a republican relative who refused to watch a Michael Moore documentary about the Iraq war because he “didn’t want to make him even richer” (he was the manager of an insurance company, making it richer by denying as many claims as he could.). This example illustrates what I call ‘willful stupidity’ because its ‘victim’ is not unintelligent but refuses to learn facts that may inconvenience him (like stop eating meat or turn down the thermostat.) The man I was talking about wasn’t stupid at all, but morally corrupt and refused information in order to protect himself from the possibility of feeling guilty or, god forbid, inconvenience himself. This kind of stupidity, in my mind is the most unforgivable.
And precisely the kind I stay away from. I simply have no patience to deal with such people. Ah, what world we live in…
The truth, however, is that it has always been like that. It’s just that now idiocy has a voice. As Umberto Eco has said, idiocy used to be limited to the pub. Alas, no more.
PS. In a broader context it does qualify for short sighted stupidity because every antisocial activity, in the long run, hastens our march toward self destruction that will affect, if not him personally, but his children for sure.
There are people who manage to file their own tax returns, drive from one place to another, get their children from infancy to out of the house, and other such complex tasks, therefore putting them higher on the IQ curve than those who are incapable of this, but deliberately seek out a world which is not real, but in which they have the support of other people with the same views.
I don’t think they’re stupid, but I consider them ‘willfully ignorant.’ And dangerous. To me.
What has become patently obvious is that there are far more of them than we realized, and it is bad enough to affect the conditions in which the rest of us live.
Since they can’t be converted, they need to be contained. Your Joe can only be allowed in a world without grass, so he doesn’t need green. Green exists. Ignore it at your peril. The majority have been complacent – that is almost as bad as willfully ignorant, where the ‘almost’ indicates they CAN be goosed into action.
One of the greatest – albeit, also the most depressing – realizations of my adult life was when I realized what kind of people surround us. To be sure, the process was a gradual one, and I never cease to be amazed by human stupidity as well as malevolence. The two are indeed a dangerous combination.
I agree – but what a way to live! Ignoring the obvious because your tight little bubble is less scary to you. It’s easier to believe lies – medical personnel recount stories of people going to their deaths insisting they don’t have Covid-19 because it doesn’t exist.