Talk:Rational ignorance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is part of WikiProject Game theory, an attempt to improve, grow, and standardize Wikipedia's articles related to Game theory. We need your help! |
|
|
|
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale. [FAQ] |
| ??? | This article has not yet received an importance rating within game theory. |
The word cost can be used in different ways. At first glance here it would seem to mean the effort of learning, and this may be the way it's intended to be used. However it could also refer to some disadvantage which learning might bring. Normally learning is not considered to bring disadvantages, but David Rumelhart has described situations in which knowledge can lead to a disadvantage. Example - suppose my wife has cancer, and you are a debt collector suing me for failing to pay for something. If I let you know that my wife is ill, and the nature of her illness, you may be more willing to let me run the debt for a few more months. However, suppose also the debt collector gets paid a proportion of the debt which is repaid. It is to his/her advantage not to know about any possible rational reason why I should not pay.
Apparently this kind of situation is quite common in bargaining situations - so some parties sometimes deliberately keep themselves ignorant of all the facts. I'm not sure if this is relevant to the current article, but it may be.
David Martland 16:12, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Contents |
[edit] "Categorical Imperative"
Being an educated person, I understand that the person who added the "Categorical Imperative" link is probably suggesting that a Kantian democrat would hold voting to be an absolute duty, and therefore it is irrelevant that one vote is extremely unlikely to influence an election. However, the parenthetical as written does not refer to voting or rational ignorance, nor do the words "vote", "voting", or "ignorance" appear in the "Categorical Imperative" article. Therefore it is very confusing and arguably not the correct approach for enforcing NPOV on this article. user Jjb, 2006/03/14
- Perhaps changing the note to something like: This uses the term "rational" to mean providing a greater benefit than cost purely to oneself and does not show that such ignorance is rational in any other sense. - This provides additional information and neutralizes the POV.
[edit] Links and references
I've come across some noteworthy papers on the subject, if someone would like to read through them and make the article better, it'd be in wikipedia's spirit. Thanks! 128.6.175.10 20:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] quotes
[edit] Sherlock Holmes
[edit] Sherlock Holmes's first words to Watson, in "A Study in Scarlet"
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
[edit] Watson, describing Holmes in "A Study in Scarlet"
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
[edit] Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
[edit] Albert Einstein
Someone once asked him [Albert Einstein] how many feet are there in a mile. "I don't know," he was reported as saying. "Why should I fill my head with things like that when I could look them up in any reference book in two minutes?"
I couldn't find a better source for this quote. Anyone else know of one?
[edit] Henry Ford
"I don't know the answers to these questions, but I could find a man in five minutes who does. I use my brain to think, not to store a lot of useless facts."
71.116.131.100 04:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
