Ignorance by itself is simply the statement that someone lacks knowledge about a certain topic. Willful ignorance, on the other hand, is the deliberate, intentional effort to be malinformed (badly informed) because of laziness. Sometimes that's due to stupidity - a person's brain simply does not have enough ability to form abstractions that make up critical thought - but in most cases, it is due to not doing the hard work of gaining knowledge and challenging assumptions about their own internal world model, especially if changing that world model will make you less likely to be acceptable by one's in-groups.

I don’t know and I don’t care
Seriously, I don’t believe most of these people are stupid in a physiologically compromised way. It’s that they don’t want to go through the rigor of any sort of organized thought process. I further believe it’s a natural human tendency that will be our undoing. We’ve subcontracted a large part of our cognitive activity to algorithms already. I warned about this when pocket calculators first came out. I said, give it a couple of generations and people won’t be able to add 17 + 11 in their heads. The advent of PCs added to the relinquishment of thinking to algorithms already. Now, vast swaths of society, business, and industry are flocking to AI - and we’re just beginning to see the results of that.

Last edited Sat Jul 19, 2025, 02:48 PM - Edit history (1)

but it also has led to less reading and more dependency on technology these days. I think just in my lifetime of going from using a slide-rule, to a calculator, to now apps for even simple math. I'm pretty sure that AI (always makes me think of our present-day Secretary of Education 😁 ) will have really life changing implication on our society some good and some seriously dangerous for the masses.

It seems obvious to people like myself who have witnessed the world change so much. I just don't think any of this present day dystopian world would have been possible 60 years ago. ☮

BUT ... there is nothing to stop any any American of any color or political belief from going to their local public library. They can check out a book and read it for FREE and actually learn something.