Ignorance

Thursday

Tibor Fischer

Ignorance, madness or folly – what exactly constitutes stupidity?

From our UK edition

Best remembered now in the English-speaking world as a lyricist, Friedrich Schiller is often quoted for his line: ‘Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.’ I was waiting for that observation in A Short History of Stupidity. It didn’t appear, but Stuart Jeffries assembles an impressive team of thinkers who have come to the same conclusion. You can’t win: imbecility will always ace you. The great crime for Socrates was ignorance – something often mistaken for stupidity There is of course the question of what exactly constitutes stupidity. It’s a hard thing to pin down and the definition strays into many areas. Jeffries offers a learned, picturesque ramble through world civilisation in an attempt to come up with some answers.

Thursday

Jonathan Meades

A familiar OE-led balls-up: Rory Stewart’s The Long History of Ignorance reviewed

From our UK edition

In my next life I intend to have my brain removed in order to become a telly executive. You know: ‘where ignorance is bliss/ ’Tis folly to be wise’ (Thomas Gray, OE). Such ignorance is a state which, happily enough, Rory Stewart, OE and a fully tooled-up Mob from rent-a-thinker (what one of those executives, without a hint of irony or faint praise, once called ‘television intellectuals’) are just now kicking around in the hope that they may rehabilitate it and release it from its sty of obloquy. Rory is a very keen type – what used to be called an all-rounder – and, despite his protestations otherwise, he is untouched by the piggiest ignorance, and addresses his audience and contributors with the zeal of a scoutmaster.

Friday

John McAfee

A thought experiment with John McAfee

Knowledge, which is known information, has become the number one commodity in the world. It doesn’t matter how large and important or how small and insignificant a piece of information may be: there is still value in it. Knowledge of a person’s shoe style preference, for example, is valuable to shoe manufacturers or sales organizations which may place targeted ads on social media. Knowledge is king. Given the massive effort placed in collecting, analyzing, cross referencing and disseminating this near infinite body of valuable knowledge, it is odd that no one has yet attempted to exploit the far larger collection of knowledge’s mirror image – the world of ignorance.

john mcafee