Ignorance, Knowledge, Wisdom
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    I neither know nor think I know. — Socrates

    No one is wiser than Socrates. — The Delphic Oracle

    Q&As, exams, quizzes, etc., we've been measuring people (sizing them up) on the basis of what they know (knowledge). I'm not in any way opposed to this, but would like to put up for discussion a new measure of a person's worth/value by assessing how much s/he doesn't know (ignorance).

    To illustrate, supposing there are 4 questions in an exam and you don't answer any of them correctly, your knowledge score is 0% but your ignorance score is 100%. Since Socrates knew nothing (knowledge score 0% and ignorance score 100%) and he, as per the Delphic oracle, was the wisest, a person who gets an F-, an euphemism for a 0% knowledge score on one's test, is, hasta be, wise too!

    We've been holding the wrong end of the stick all this while. :chin:

    A penny for your thoughts ...
    Agent Smith Options
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    I gave it a go last year with this proposal ...
    SQ (stupidity quotient) tests taken at the end of primary school, again at the end of secondary school and then lastly at the end of professional school (e.g. law, medicine, finance, a research science) would be, IMO, far more useful to society as a criterion for disqualifying idiots from being allowed to squat in high places since, apparently, it is the well above average level of stupidity endemic in the intellectual (bureaucratic) & decision-making classes that is chiefly responsible for the persistently deplorable state of many developed societies (re: climate change, WMD proliferation, human trafficking, neoliberalization, etc). :mask: — 180 Proof
    AFAIK no takers yet here or abroad.
    180 Proof Options
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    ↪180 Proof




    This isn't an anomaly then - the less one knows the wiser one is! Squares with ignorance is bliss, hedonically that is.

    Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. — Mahatma Gandhi

    Gandhi was loco!
    Agent Smith Options
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