How to be an Ignoramus

On #SkinInTheGame, Shaky Knowledge and Magic Words

In the original Latin, ignoramus means something like “We do not know”.

This article is about a subset of people who are not Ignoramii. People who say “We do know”, but don’t.

Why do people say “We do know”, when they don’t?

There are at least three reasons. The first two are a paradox.

Reason 1: #SkinInTheGame

Too many people who say “We do know” have an ulterior motive for saying so.

For example, they might have won an award or position for claiming to know X. Even a Nobel prize, or a consulting job in a multinational company. Or a prestigious university. If they back track and say “I don’t know X”, or “I was wrong about X”, they might lose the position or prize money or both.

This type of #SkinInTheGame is not restricted to professors and experts.

For example, if you’re a lowly researcher working for (say) a left-wing think tank, you have to “know” that left-wing is the “right”-wing. If you don’t know that, you’ll get fired. If you’re an organiser for the purple political party, then all their policies must be perfect. If you don’t pontificate that “purple is perfectly perfect”, they’ll ask you to leave.

And not everyone who has #SkinInTheGame gets paid for it. A lot of “skin” is non-monetary. Like ego or loyalty.

Reason 2: No #SkinInTheGame

While many people have some #SkinInTheGame, they don’t have enough #SkinInTheGame.

For example, you might have won a Nobel Prize for your crack-pot economic theory. But you don’t pay for it when corporations and nations implement your ideas and go bust.

Just as Astrologers claim “You must have got the birth-time wrong”, you blame the failure on some external factor. You write another paper on this external factor and get another Nobel prize.

Hence, paradoxically the problem with many “Don’t know, but say we know”-types is that they have enough #SkinInTheGame to make them influential (and dangerous). But not enough #SkinInTheGame to make them self reflect and regulate.

Reason 3: Shaky Ground

There are three ways of “knowing” things.

• Class 1. First Principles. You build up a theory, which is precisely reasoned from foundational theories. Like Mathematics. And some areas of applied mathematics like Physics and Computer science.
• Class 2. Significant Evidence. Your area is too complex to understand from first principles. So you run experiments, collect large amounts of data, and build theories based on the statistically significant outcomes. Much of Chemistry, Biology and Medicine is based on this type of “knowing”.
• Class 3: Insignificant Evidence. Like Class 2, your area is very complicated. However, it is also not possible to collect enough data to form statistically significant theories. The Social Sciences and History broadly fall into this bucket.

The goal of this classification is not to put down some academic fields under others. My goal was to compare people, not areas.

Also, in practice, most fields overlap across multiple classes. While much of Computer Science knowledge is Class 1, it has many examples of Class 3. For example, all but the most trivial computer systems are highly complex. And it is almost impossible to prove for sure if (say) that system is bug-free.

But as I said, the classification was intended to describe people.

When something you know is Class 1, you can be very confident about its correctness. For example, Pythagoras would have been supremely confident about his eponymous theorem.

At the other extreme, if you were Milton Friedman (say), almost everything you’d say would be statistically insignificant garbage. You can’t prove anything rationally. So the only way to promote your ideas would be to force people to believe. By influencing governments and politicians. Or by talking a lot.

Hence, one reason people say “We do know” when they don’t know is because they hope (often correctly) that a lie said many times would turn true.

Again, my goal is not to debunk “areas”. Most “Class 3” areas have led to interesting and useful data. The work is highly valuable. The problem is trying to theorise and generalise based on insufficient data. That’s what leads to naughtiness.

So, what to do?

Hence, as we can see people who say “We do know”, but don’t, are the worst possible way atomic particles can aggregate as matter. They must be abolished or worse.

One way of making sure that their numbers don’t swell even further is by making sure we don’t join them. It’s not very difficult to be an ignoramus.

• Make sure you don’t have #SkinInTheGame. Don’t take on jobs or accept prizes that depend on something you don’t know for sure. If you do, make sure it is Class 1 or Class 2 knowledge.
• If you do take on prizes or jobs, be honourable and also take on some #SkinInTheGame. Offer to return the prize money or salary if you’re proved wrong.
• Don’t claim to know things that are on Shaky Ground. Always qualify what you say with the magic words “But I don’t know…”.

Welcome to the global fellowship of Ignoramii!