Yes, a lot of the time hiding ignorance is more instrumentally useful than exposing your ignorance.
The first sentence talks about "living smart". The second sentence talks about "the way to be right, in the long-term". Those are two very different things. Relatively few people have the latter as a their core life goal and it would be a stretch to say that it constitutes 'living smart' even then. (Note: I'm one of them but that changes nothing!)
I suppose instrumental depends on whom you're exposing it to. :)
Scott H. Young is giving himself 12 months to complete MIT's computer science curriculum on his own, via MIT's OpenCourseWare.