“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” - Confucius
Previous articles[1] talked about Bitcoin and the cognitive biases that lead to misconceptions about Bitcoin.
Backing up a bit, we can look at the knowledge, or ignorance that contributes to these misconceptions.
It’s important to understand a bit more about ignorance so that we can understand the differences in some of the ignorant narratives around Bitcoin.
Most importantly, we need to understand that some narratives are from a situation of really not knowing, and some narratives are intentionally deceptive.
These narratives are perpetuating ignorance.
Have you heard of agnotology? Agnotology[2] is the study of deliberate, culturally-induced ignorance or doubt.
A book called “Agnotology; The Making And Unmaking Of Ignorance” by Robert Proctor sheds a lot of light on the subject.
The word “ignorance” has some pretty negative associations such as stupidity, narrowness, and willful denial of facts.
In reality, there are different flavors of ignorance and they can be on a continuum of positive to neutral to negative.
Proctor divides ignorance into three main areas:
- Something you just haven’t learned yet. Think of how much children don’t know, or how much more you know now than you did five years ago.
- Something that is the result of passive selection or culture or geography. You know this area well, but you don’t know that area well. A common example is the area of your occupation versus the area of a different occupation.
- Something you are manipulated into knowing as true or not true. The facts may be the opposite of the “knowledge” resulting from that manipulation.
Most people who know even a bit about Bitcoin are NOT ignorant about some of the directions I am going with this.
