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“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.”
This wisdom, often attributed to American historian Daniel Boorstin, suggests a sister aphorism: The great enemy of democracy is not ill will, but the illusion of understanding. It is social and political opinion that, even if well-intentioned and sincerely believed, sprouts from self-confident misinformation.
Such is not the province of any one political perspective. Consider:
Such ill-informed opinions—illusions of understanding—are powered by what social psychologists know as the overconfidence phenomenon (a tendency to be more confident than correct) and the Dunning-Krueger effect (incompetence not recognizing itself). And, as I have previously noted, illusory understanding—and what it portends for our civic life--matters because our collective future matters. Consider further:
Red or blue, we agree that our children’s and grandchildren’s future matters. The problem is that democracy requires an informed and thoughtful populace. Democracy’s skeptics argue that most people lack the motivation and ability to do the needed work—to absorb large amounts of information and then, with appropriate humility and openness, to sift the true from the false. Consider our collective ignorance on such diverse topics as the U.S. federal budget percentage going to foreign aid (1 percent, not Americans’ average guess of 31 percent) to the mere 38 percent knowing which party currently controls the U.S. House of Representatives.
Such ignorance needn’t reflect stupidity. Perhaps you, too, have rationalized: If the odds of my vote affecting an election or referendum outcome are infinitesimal, then why invest time in becoming informed? Why not, instead, care for my family, pay the bills, manage my health, pursue relationships, and have fun? Or why not trust the simple answers offered by authoritarian leaders?
Ergo, the great enemy of an informed and prudent populace, and of a flourishing democracy, is misinformation that is sustained by an illusion of understanding. But there is good news: Education matters. Education helps us recognize how errors infuse our thinking. Education makes us less gullible to conspiracy theories. Education, rightly done, draws us out of our tribal social media bubbles. And education teaches us to think critically—to ask questions with curiosity, to assess claims with evidence, and to be humble about our own understanding. Said differently, education increases our willingness to ask the two big critical thinking questions: What do you mean? and How do you know?
So three cheers for education. Education informs us. It teaches us how to think smarter. And as Aristotle long ago taught us, it supports civic virtues and human flourishing.
(For David Myers’ other essays on psychological science and everyday life, visit TalkPsych.com.)
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