Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/10/40-of-people-choose-ignorance-to-avoid-guilt-about-being-selfish.html
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In Scientific American:
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“but some people seem to be actively choosing to be a dumbass.…”
I always read this kind of study as a warning to all of us and not just an effort to divide.
Of course I feel like I’m in the empathetic 40%, but is that my ignorance?
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The thing that gets me is that the 40% usually think they are being cleaver by being selfish but know they need the others to make up for it and look down on those that help.
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I can’t read the study, but it seems like an odd way to frame it…there are plenty of people who purposely ignore facts and reality not because acknowledging those things would make them have to account for other people’s experiences, they don’t give a shit either way about those people. But they choose the path of willful ignorance so they don’t have to face the cognitive dissonance of acting against their own best interests.
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“Odd way to frame it” is right! It is also relatively normal to feel or act selfishly from time to time in some way even if it displeases others. Once the decision is made it actually makes sense not to dwell. I think honestly when people extrapolate larger political patterns from things like this it tends to fall apart. People make excuses for themselves of course though!
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Similarly, citizens are often reluctant to engage with information about climate change’s impact, so they will not feel obligated to change their lifestyle
… there may be some unexamined “blame the consumer” sentiment in this article and its sources
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The one aspect of ‘willful ignorance’ that doesn’t seem well captured by the sterile laboratory decision games, where the rules can be anything that the experiment requires and knowledge can have any implications(from revealing an initially hidden even-better outcome or an extra-selfish option; or patting me on the back for my benevolent concern for the consequences; or just revealing that it’s a straightforward tradeoff between taking more of the money for myself or leaving more for the other party) is all those cases where we have strong suspicions rather than pure ignorance.
When you are in the store looking at two bags of coffee at different prices you know that those prices aren’t just experimental stimuli; and that there’s a certain amount of inherent competition over margins between you, the farmer, and any middlemen. Your knowledge is limited and mostly theoretical; but you already know the outlines of what you aren’t going to delve further into.
Perhaps people are so unused to the contrived scenarios that they don’t actually respond differently to them; but it seems like the psychology of choosing ignorance in a situation where basically any permutation is possible because they are all constructed and that of choosing ignorance when you have a distinct but weakly supported suspicion that the truth is ugly might well work slightly differently.
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Something like an ethical Dunning Kruger effect?
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The link to the article does not work.
Try this:
Why some people choose not to know
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I’m sorry… are we not (us, here at BB) all this? I am definitely all this.
I am SO lucky to be me…
But also, literally, what is “ignorance” of the world? 50 years ago we in the West would have had a curated hour of nightly news. Most of humans would have had delayed access to a curated version of monthly news.
Two centuries ago, the elite would have had access to some news, carried slowly by traders.
Two millenia ago, when the"West" was beginning to codify the Judeo/Christian/Islamacist" mythologies, they could speak / codify / proclaim stuff that wasn’t remotely true (or was remotely sourced from mythologies they wanted to overwhelm)… and now too many people believe all that manipulation was “divine”.
“Well… if it gives you power…
Then why the hell’re you so sad…?”
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From that article:
Acting selfishly is a freedom? So altruism is a burden?
I found the article to be an interesting read. I’m not sure if the authors explained “why” but they speculated about some reasons, and suggested re-framing choices to be less confronting.
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So, our goal in this life should be to wield power over others? If that’s your argument, I seriously disagree.
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Ignorance is when you stop trying to understand the world.
It’s not about power, though. It’s about self delusion. People interpret the world in a way that is convenient for them. I do it. I know that I’m doing it. I try to see where I’m doing it, but I know that I fall short. But I will never throw away my curiosity. That is the road to ignorance.
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I wonder how things change if the dollar amounts are changed to life changing amounts.
And instead of their partner not receiving money their partner loses money they already have.
In the scenario for this test I would always ask how it affects my partner.
There are a couple sub reditts that ask hypothetical questions. A popular one is you get some reward that causes a random person you don’t know to die, do you take the reward?
Speaking of ignorance…
Judge: Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Me: I did know that.
And, it’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
But I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do that, sorry.
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I feel like willful ignorance exists because personal accountability is just to damn hard. I wouldn’t even say it’s against their own interests (all the times at least), it is just another level of work that doesn’t yield as much return.
Can totally relate. The Vulcan part of my brain just wishes more of us humans could mature to a point where we can take in the facts and make our choices knowing that in the modern world, everything has unintended consequences.
As a silly example, I did an energy audit on a family member’s old farmhouse, at their request. When I mentioned that they had no insulation in the attic or upper walls, their response was, “oh, I don’t want to know!”
I tried to tell them how much energy they could save on heating if they got it addressed, still didn’t want to know. This was over a decade ago. They’ve done a fair number of other large-ish scale projects around the house since then, but the attic/walls are still empty. In Maine.
That’s their choice. I just thought it was funny that instead of framing it as an informed decision: “we know the facts, we are purposely choosing to do these other thing,” they frame it as, “we don’t want to know the options.”
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Honestly I am inherently suspicious now of any sentiment that is bolstered by the poetic interpretation of human social interaction whose underlying logic is derived from the jargon-riddled language of science and the fraught liminality of political natures/identities. People can have a lot of feelings about a word like “selfish” after all and it can mean many different things actually in different contexts, so it’s very easy to use a word like that to mean confusing or conflicting things without even realizing it.
On one hand, I reacted to it enough to click on it. Mainly because I actually really do find it interesting. I think it is interesting. When I think about what selfishness can mean compared to the lab conditions then think about it in different contexts I can kind of see how that makes sense and it’s fun to reflect on that.
But people are more interested in who they are mad at I guess and honestly I respect it, but I’m also drained by it personally in a way that would make me less dependable to others if I let it get to me too much and doubt I’m alone in that. Of course, in that way, I am very selfish. But I ease my mind by thinking about other things than how the aspects of my day to day life might be harming others. Ultimately whether one behaves altruistically or selfishly, life always comes down to how much harm, how much good, what others to prioritize, and how to course-correct upon failure… 
I decline to draw political conclusions though because the water is muddy enough. But if I think about how people behaved around an issue like public masking, or the frustrating grift of recycling… I see how human nature isn’t going to make anything easier on some fronts.
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