The Ignorance Issue

It's odd that otherwise intelligent-seeming people should prize their ignorance more than their knowledge... unless they can't tell the difference.

Let me open this essay with a caveat: I am guilty of clinging to all kinds of odd notions based on very little evidence. I have pet idiocies just like anyone else, but I like to believe that I am willing to engage in a little fact-checking every now and then... and not from just biased sources. I also understand the nature of the balance of memory, where when you are young you don't have much experience but you have to try to rely on your built-in BS filter in the face of peer pressure and adult indifference. As you get older, your memory gets clogged with remembered and half-forgotten images and data based on personal experience which have to be separated from 'knowledge' that you have 'learned' or read somewhere. Thus, it is possible for a 47-year-old to be just as confused as a 17-year-old. And just as ignorant. The curiosity of the teen has to be tempered by the years yet not abandoned by the middle-ager. Any preconception that remains untested by reality for five years must be tested or abandoned by the reasonably intelligent person. The reasonably unintelligent person, or that sort that finds their intelligence to be a burden, will spend a lifetime piling preconception on preconception, their brain cells mucked up with the results of decades of mental masturbation without a single thought actually being born... And some actually make a living at it.

More reasons why computers should come equipped with idiot filters:

1. 8:57 AM
What did the Romans think of Stonehenge?

by
Your Other Right Foot (appearing nightly without warning)

2. 9:57 AM
The influence of the poorly-played barre chord on teenage ovulation.

by
Your Other Right Foot (appearing nightly without warning)

3. 10:57 AM
Brush Up Your Shakespeare!

by
Your Other Right Foot (appearing nightly without warning)

4. 11:57 AM
Post-feminism, pre-feminism and the backlash to the forelash of gender politics among the privileged classes and no-classes.

by
Your Other Right Foot (appearing nightly without warning)