Friday, December 28, 2018

The Flaw in My Woof

It is beyond mind-boggling the amount of information available to us, today, and the speed at which it can be delivered. Video that would have taken months or years to procure is in all reality just at your fingertips. Knowledge is only limited in speed by your ability to use those fingers to type.

There's no excuse for ignorance, anymore.

Why, then, are people ignorant? Why don't they see the fruitlessness of the questions they repeatedly ask and the easily disarmed arguments they make? With almost all of the world's information in unequivocal form and the knowledge to use it readily accessible, why can't people agree on things that should be settled with no difficulty?

You can find a lot of information about group-think, cognitive dissonance and other phenomena. Those can give us a partial answer or are at least partially responsible for some of the misunderstandings. Pair this with intellectual laziness and you'll get most of the way there. Still, though, why wouldn't you just put forth the minimal effort it now requires to know you're right about something before you try to correct someone else, or at least qualify your opinion without disregarding someone else's?

There probably isn't an easy answer. One thing to note is that when we proffer our ideas, we generalize too much, thinking of one particular person upon which we base our line of logic. The opinion we have of that person can create a mindset that skews the whole idea. Chances are pretty good it's not going to edify anyone. That will have to be addressed, one would suspect, in any solution.

There will probably never be a solution, though. It may be that too significant a portion of the population is unwilling to or is incapable of comprehending the concepts in question. In such a case, the only option for those who find it difficult to enjoy ignorance is to isolate themselves and try to be as inconspicuous as possible.