BIG THINK: How Too Much Education Can Result in Ignorance [OPINION]

“The trouble with the world,” Bertrand Russell, a scientist quipped, “is that the stupid are very sure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” This statement is not always true though.

In fact, the more education people have, the more ignorant they may be. Ignoring our ignorance and assuming we know much more than we actually do seems to be a universal human tendency.

Quick: Are you at all familiar with ultralipids, cholarine, or plates of parallax? All of them? One of them? None?

Thing is intelligent people think they know too much. They feel they have an idea to everything but in fact they do not know anything, for example translating the above word 'cholarine' as combination of chlorine and urine but the word is entirely made up, DOESN'T EXIST. Their brain ticks them into thinking they know, whereas research has proved that “In many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize — scratch that, cannot recognize — just how incompetent they are.”

We tend to resist recognizing when we have a vacuum of knowledge. We think we know a lot more than we do. And we make stuff up, often without realizing it, just to assure our egos that we are good enough and smart enough. “People who don’t know much about a given set of cognitive, technical, or social skills,” Cornell psychologist Dunning writes, “tend to grossly overestimate their prowess and performance, whether it’s grammar, emotional intelligence, logical reasoning, firearm care and safety, debating, or financial knowledge.”

Dunning’s most intriguing idea is that we don’t even have a grasp on what “ignorance” really is. Most people think of ignorance as a lack of information, gaps in our knowledge that could be filled in with appropriate training or education. That’s too hopeful:

"The way we traditionally conceive of ignorance — as an absence of knowledge — leads us to think of education as its natural antidote. But education, even when done skillfully, can produce illusory confidence."

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