Any sufficiently deep ignorance is indistinguishable from stupidity. You’d recognize that to be a riff on Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law (1968) which states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
While Clark’s 3rd law is about perception (how we perceive technology that we don’t understand), my variation is about outcomes: how severe ignorance results in outcomes that could have been motivated by malice or just plain stupidity. The intent may be to improve things but the impact is to make matters worse.
We all are abysmally ignorant about nearly everything. The saving grace is that our ignorance does not result in widespread socially destructive outcomes. But public policy is sadly replete with examples of gross stupidity arising out of ignorance. That’s so because bureaucrats and politicians are generally ignorant and therefore cannot formulate reasonable solutions to actual or perceived problems. Continue reading “Hydrogen is Not Green”
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 