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blossom comments on Don't Be Afraid of Asking Personally Important Questions of Less Wrong - Less Wrong
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Normatively there should be nothing wrong with being (perceived as) unknowledgable in a certain field as long as one tries to fix this.
However it is hardly news that people avoid situations in which they have to admit their lack of understanding, for which there may be many reasons, such as
People conflating lack of knowledge in a certain field with generally lower cognitive abilities, i.e. they may both believe themselves to lack lack cognitive abilities as well as believe that others will think they lack those abilities, which leads to
Perceived loss of status in one's social environment if others take one to be stupid (in a conflated sense)
Regret that they have not learned X when they think they should have learned X
etc..
Now none of these are very good reasons, but when did humans ever need good reasons to do something, when there are so many bad ones?
In what cases do you think "as long as one tries to fix this" applies?
I think that "as long as one does not vehemently refuse to integrate newfound knowledge into one's database and update one's beliefs" would be a better way to put it now and perhaps clearer too.
What I said before was probably too vague (or just wrong) because one can't really become knowledgable as to everything and I don't think that should be held as a point against them.
So it seems like you're talking about integrating knowledge, rather than seeking it. Is that true?
Yes, I mainly mean integrating knowledge. Which is not to say that I don't think people should not actively seek out new knowledge about all kinds of topics, but seeing how it's absolutely impossible to know even just a little about everything I don't think one can blame them for not seeking knowledge about a certain topic X. Unless of course X is something which by all means should be relevant to them.
Which is just to say it depends, I suppose.