It is fine to be ignorant of a great many things; nobody has time to understand more than a few things deeply. But in those numerous topics on which we are not experts, we are nevertheless tempted to construct a coherent-seeming but illusory image of reality, and believe it with undue certainty. We are far too sure of ourselves when we have not earned it. Overcertainty is an anchor, undue inertia, dragging feet, when we should really be leaves on the winds of evidence.
To me it seems the importance of this cannot be emphasized enough! Two people may start in exactly the same place, and even be fed exactly the same information forever, but over the years, a person with belief probabilities deflated to an appropriately low level will end up much closer to the truth on a great many things. To carry around an anchor is to end up close to where you happened to start...but most likely there's nothing magical about the starting point. I guess I am really talking about the entirety of rationality, but awareness of ignorance would at least make false beliefs relatively benign.
Sadly, an enormously undervalued skill. In fact, in many contexts and by many people, it is _negatively_ valued. In this world, inertia is glorified, especially when it goes by the name of faith.
[In fairness, rationality is only seriously undervalued if you really care about the truth, and it seems there really _are_ other legitimate goals held by many. But most of the time people aren't really even directly aware of what goals they are inadvertently chasing after in the first place, and it is simply not clear what people would pick, in a truly clear-headed moment]
This got me thinking about how/why people end up with the life goals they do. I’ll discuss that in tomorrow’s post.
