A few years ago with the arrival of the Internet, it was said that we live in the information age. This is undoubted; we have all heard about how in our time every five years or something the total amount of information we generate is doubled. The problem is that more information and more “specialists” do not make us as individuals or as a society wiser. After all, the person who can answer countless questions of trivia is just a curiosity. Now, the genuinely admirable person is the one who can integrate and combine all that information and apply it not only to produce something valuable according to the market – like a new gadget – but apply it in your daily life and live healthily and happily.
There are guilty ignorances that are not usually recognized by their protagonists: the regret for not having studied does not include being aware of one’s ignorance, which makes it more daring. “The first step of ignorance is to presume to know” (Baltasar Gracián). An intelligent ignorant is more recoverable than an intellectually limited ignorant. The second ignores one’s ignorance and even comes to believe that one knows everything, while the first knows that one cannot be an expert in all kinds of subjects, so before talking about what he ignores he studies. “There is nothing more fruitful than a conscious ignorance of oneself” (Ortega y Gasset). In the current era, many dare to express their opinions annoyingly in public on any subject without any fear of making a fool of themselves. However, some people avoid them, because they have proven that, as Kant said “it is impossible to refute the ignorant in an argument”. There was a research done by professors at Cornell University, found that people with little skill and preparation have a feeling of superiority over others who are more intelligent and educated. This is because they suffer from a metacognitive inability to recognize their lack of ability.
The less we know, the more we think we do. This can result in at least two consequences: The first is that overconfident ignorants irritate those who try to have a conversation with them. The second is that they contribute to the fact that the world is worse, as Bertrand Rusell said: “Much of the difficulties the world is going through are because the ignorant are completely safe while the intelligent are full of doubts.”