A frustration of mine is the characteristic of many people to be willfully ignorant. To be willfully ignorant you must actively choose not to learn something. For example, while talking on a religion forum information was gathered that repeated published scientific studies show that on average atheists have a higher IQ than dogmatic believers. The amount is 6 points, so probably less than the difference between being a bit tired and being well rested. However, a poster on the forum said that there was nothing but opinion supporting the position that atheists were smarter than believers. When showed the evidence beyond opinion this was rejected as "Lies, damn lies and statistics." In other words the individual had decided not to take on information about the world, they had decided to be willfully ignorant.
I have seen this repeatedly in politics where people will simply decide not to take on information (such as the actual words in a law) and rather choose to listen to the talking point rantings from either side. I have repeatedly shown someone accounts of observed speciation (actual evolution happening), and that person repeatedly states that there are no such things. There are people who think that Barack Obama is a Muslim despite them knowing that he does not worship in a mosque and regularly attended a Christian church. They have chosen to be ignorant.
Wilfull ignorance is everywhere. Despite there being more evidence for the fact of evolution than for any other scientific theory the majority of Americans think evolution is false. The availability of information showing that this position is ignorant is astounding. Most Americans think they know more about biology than biologists, but how many think they know more about plumbing than plumbers? How stupid is that?
Now, it would seem that choosing to be ignorant of the state of the world around you would be a big negative. Thinking that all Muslims have been instructed in their religion to conquer the world and force you to convert cannot be useful when dealing with Muslims who have not been so instructed. But the numbers of people being willfully ignorant is such a vast number that there must be some reason for it. There must be some utility in this choice.
When are people willfully ignorant? They are willfully ignorant when some belief of there's is challenged by information. The people who choose not to know that France has a better health care system at half the price of the US system make that choice because they have a belief that governments are bad at everything. If they took on the new information they would have to change a belief. Now, changing the belief would seem to be sensible, but the key is that this belief is a shared belief. It isn't just one person having that belief it is a group. That group probably has a name, an identity, and differentiates itself from competing groups. If you refuse to learn about the French health care system you are probably a right-wing, republican, free-market capitalist, if someone asked you about yourself you would label yourself within that group, and you probably compete against left-wing, democrat, socialists.
So, if you change your mind about a position based on evidence, and you identify with groups based on your beliefs, then that change of position removes you from a group with which you identify. If you are a fundamentalist Christian and you change your mind so that you believe evolution to be a fact, then you can no longer identify as a fundamentalist Christian. People are willfully ignorant to sustain their position within a group.
Through the history of humans (and many animals too) it is much more useful to remain within a strong, united group then to differ on some points and be out of a group. The bigger the group, the stronger the group the more power and rewards the individual can get from that group, and therefore the stronger the motivation to remain ignorant about facts that are contrary to the position of that group. If you were Galileo there was more utility in deciding to not believe that the planets revolved around the sun than believing that they do, regardless of what the actual facts were.
Willfull ignorance occurs because the human animal knows that without the group it dies and it is therefore better to be part of a group that is wrong about many things, than to be right about everything and all alone.
Addendum: I do find it interesting, and even a little annoying, that the spell checker on this program objects to the non-capitalization of american, or muslim, but not to the non-capitalization of atheist.
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