I was talking to my wife the other day and complaining about people that I believed were being deliberately ignorant. My complaint was that people were proud of their lack of knowledge, they were bragging about not knowing anything about subjects. And when they were not, they seemed so self-assured and certain when they spouted off about subjects that they were not at all well-informed on. This did not seem to stop them from talking at length about it.
My wife's idea was that people that are stupid don't know it. She thinks that the people that you hear spouting ridiculous ideas (some of which are syndicated talk show hosts) have no idea how stupid they sound. She cited the often repeated idea that people liked George W. Bush because they thought he was a guy they could drink a beer with.
I see people being fed things that sound smart by talk radio, then parrot them back without checking to see if there is any basis of fact. They love to have sayings that sound like argument stoppers, something you couldn't possibly refute or contradict. Then they strut away like they just won a boxing match.
The problem with people with completely foolish ideas is that they can't be convinced otherwise. It does not good to argue or try to reason with someone when they have an idea in their head wrong. One of my favorite quotes is from Orson Scott Card's book Speaker for the Dead, "This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question."
The problem with realizing this problem of blindness is that it virtually assures you of being blind to your own stupidities as well as frustrated with others.
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