If you can notice when you’re confused, how do you notice when you’re ignorant?
I think one tricky thing about this question is there are cases where I am ALWAYS ignorant, and the question to ask instead is, is my ignorance relevant? I mean, I tried to give a short example of this with a simple question, below, but ironically, I was ignorant about how many different ways you could be ignorant about something until I started trying to count them, and I’m likely still ignorant about it now.
For instance, take the question: What is my spouse’s hair color?
Presumably, a good deal of people reading this are somewhat ignorant about that.
On the other hand, they probably aren’t as ignorant as a blind visiting interstellar Alien, Samplix, who understands English but nothing about color, although Samplix has also been given a explanation of hexadecimal color chart and has decided to guess the RGB values of my spouse’s hair is #66FF00.
But you could also have another blind alien, Sampliy, who wasn’t given even given a color chart, doesn’t understand what words are colors and what words aren’t, and so goes to roughly the middle of a computer English/Interstellar dictionary and guesses “Mouse?”
Or another visiting Alien, Sampliz, who doesn’t understand English and so responds with ‘%@%$^!’
And even if you know my spouse has black hair, you could get more specific than that:
For instance, a Hair analyzing computer might be able to determine that my spouse has approximately 300,000 hairs, and 99% of them happen to be the Hexadecimal shade #001010, but another, more specific Hair Analyzing computer, might say that my spouse has 314,453 hairs, and 296,415 of them are Hexadecimal shade #001010. and 10,844 of them are Hexadecimal shade #001011, and...
And even if you were standing with that report from the second computer saying “Okay, it finished it’s report, and I have this printout from an hour ago, so I am DEFINITELY not ignorant about your spouse’s hair color.”
Well, what if I told you my spouse just came back from a Hair salon?
The above list isn’t exhaustive, but I think it establishes the general point. My spouse’s hair color seems like the kind of question which someone could be ignorant about in less ways than something as confusing as consciousness, and yet… even spousal hair color is complicated.
I think there’s a relevant difference here between being ignorant of actual data that you are aware exists (e.g. the color of hair), and being ignorant of the existence of alternative theories or models (e.g. possible alternative meanings of the word “color”).
That seemed to make sense to me at first, but I’m having a hard time actually finding a good dividing line to show the relevant difference, particularly since what seems like it can be model ignorance for one question can be data ignorance for another question.
For instance, here are possible statements about being ignorant about the question. “What is my spouse’s hair color?”
1: “I don’t know your spouse’s hair color.”
2: “I don’t know if your spouse has hair.”
In this context, 1 seems like data ignorance, and 2 would seem like model ignorance.
But given a different question “Does my spouse have hair?”
2 is data ignorance, and 1 doesn’t seem to be a well phrased response.
And there appear to be multiple levels of this as well: For instance, someone might not know whether or not I have a spouse.
What is the best way to handle this? Is it to simply try to keep track of the number of assumptions you are making at any given time? That seems like it might help, since in general, models are defined by certain assumptions.
I think one tricky thing about this question is there are cases where I am ALWAYS ignorant, and the question to ask instead is, is my ignorance relevant? I mean, I tried to give a short example of this with a simple question, below, but ironically, I was ignorant about how many different ways you could be ignorant about something until I started trying to count them, and I’m likely still ignorant about it now.
For instance, take the question: What is my spouse’s hair color?
Presumably, a good deal of people reading this are somewhat ignorant about that.
On the other hand, they probably aren’t as ignorant as a blind visiting interstellar Alien, Samplix, who understands English but nothing about color, although Samplix has also been given a explanation of hexadecimal color chart and has decided to guess the RGB values of my spouse’s hair is #66FF00.
But you could also have another blind alien, Sampliy, who wasn’t given even given a color chart, doesn’t understand what words are colors and what words aren’t, and so goes to roughly the middle of a computer English/Interstellar dictionary and guesses “Mouse?”
Or another visiting Alien, Sampliz, who doesn’t understand English and so responds with ‘%@%$^!’
And even if you know my spouse has black hair, you could get more specific than that:
For instance, a Hair analyzing computer might be able to determine that my spouse has approximately 300,000 hairs, and 99% of them happen to be the Hexadecimal shade #001010, but another, more specific Hair Analyzing computer, might say that my spouse has 314,453 hairs, and 296,415 of them are Hexadecimal shade #001010. and 10,844 of them are Hexadecimal shade #001011, and...
And even if you were standing with that report from the second computer saying “Okay, it finished it’s report, and I have this printout from an hour ago, so I am DEFINITELY not ignorant about your spouse’s hair color.”
Well, what if I told you my spouse just came back from a Hair salon?
The above list isn’t exhaustive, but I think it establishes the general point. My spouse’s hair color seems like the kind of question which someone could be ignorant about in less ways than something as confusing as consciousness, and yet… even spousal hair color is complicated.
I think there’s a relevant difference here between being ignorant of actual data that you are aware exists (e.g. the color of hair), and being ignorant of the existence of alternative theories or models (e.g. possible alternative meanings of the word “color”).
That seemed to make sense to me at first, but I’m having a hard time actually finding a good dividing line to show the relevant difference, particularly since what seems like it can be model ignorance for one question can be data ignorance for another question.
For instance, here are possible statements about being ignorant about the question. “What is my spouse’s hair color?”
1: “I don’t know your spouse’s hair color.”
2: “I don’t know if your spouse has hair.”
In this context, 1 seems like data ignorance, and 2 would seem like model ignorance.
But given a different question “Does my spouse have hair?”
2 is data ignorance, and 1 doesn’t seem to be a well phrased response.
And there appear to be multiple levels of this as well: For instance, someone might not know whether or not I have a spouse.
What is the best way to handle this? Is it to simply try to keep track of the number of assumptions you are making at any given time? That seems like it might help, since in general, models are defined by certain assumptions.