Ignorance is great

​

Ignorance is essential. It is a crucial component of learning, growth, discovery, and joy, and it is indispensable for our everyday lives. However, a particular type of ignorance, especially when it remains unrecognized and not vigilantly guarded against, can become a blight on our existence...more on this shortly.

​

First, let's do a quick preview of the types of beneficial and necessary ignorance.

​

• To the extent that we are all learning new things that we didn't know before, from the child who doesn't know how to talk to the adult who is learning how to operate a new computer, each of us is moving from being ignorant about something to knowing about it. This is a beneficial and necessary ignorance.

• To the extent that we are all forgetting things we used to know, from not remembering what you had for lunch on this day 839 days ago to the address of your best friend in high school, this is a beneficial and necessary ignorance.

• To the extent that we either consciously, unconsciously, or by default don't focus on learning things or being aware of things that most probably are not helpful to or needed for fulfilling our current desires and needs, this is a beneficial and necessary ignorance. 

​

​

Misverity: the blight of humanity

​

Don't check for the meaning of that word in your dictionary just yet. Coining a new word to indicate this distinction, however, is important since this special type of ignorance goes largely unrecognized and unacknowledged as the unnecessary source of our large part of our suffering and our bumbling through life.

​

Will Rogers was talking about this type of ignorance when he said,

​

"The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so."

​

I doubt that he knew the half of it. Misverity plagues our life daily, creating unnecessary upsets and avoidable mistakes, affecting everyone almost equally from the homeless to the heads of corporations and countries.

​

Before I make my case, let me give you a more formal definition of misverity (with a bow to Aiko).

​​

Misverity: (n.)  A belief or assertion held with excessive certainty despite lacking adequate supporting evidence. It often arises from unnoticed assumptions or circular reasoning that lend an illusion of self-evident truth.

​

A misverity can also appear in the form of an assertion that cannot, in principle, be true or false — not because it is vague or poetic, but because one or more of its key terms are used in ways that prevent clear reference or falsification.

For example, when a claim uses undefined or vague abstractions like, “should,” “patriotism,” “decent” "not good enough," "behind on things," it gives the impression of making a factual claim while actually saying something that cannot necessarily be tested or verified.

​

In essence, a misverity is any statement that feels certain but stands on unclear ground — whether the uncertainty lies in missing evidence, hidden assumptions, or in the very language that makes the statement seem meaningful.

​

Key Elements of Misverity

​

Belief: A misverity begins as a proposition or assertion that someone accepts as true or accurate. It need not be formally articulated; it may be implicit in language, attitude, or behavior. What defines it as a misverity is not the topic, but the manner of holding the belief.

​

Excessive certainty: The belief is held with greater confidence than the evidence available to the person justifies. The degree of conviction surpasses the degree of evidential support. This excessive certainty creates a psychological illusion of knowledge — the sense of knowing even when one does not actually know.

​

Lack of evidence: The person lacks adequate, accessible, or reliable data to substantiate the belief’s truth. This doesn’t mean the belief must be false — only that the believer does not possess, or has not examined, the kind of justification required to warrant their level of confidence.

​

Unidentified assumptions: Many misverities rest on unexamined presuppositions, linguistic habits, or inherited cultural frames that are mistaken for established facts. These assumptions silently shape how the belief is interpreted and defended, often preventing awareness that they exist at all.

​

Masking as truth: A misverity presents itself as an undeniable truth. Its form, tone, or social reinforcement discourages scrutiny. Because it “feels” self-evident, it resists re-evaluation — not by strength of evidence, but by the inertia of conviction.

​

Semantic opacity (assertive form without truth-apt content): Some misverities arise not merely from poor evidence but from the way their language blocks truth or falsity altogether. Here, one or more key terms in the assertion fail to refer clearly enough to be tested or verified.

Statements such as “Real love conquers all,” “The universe rewards good energy,” or “True patriots never question authority” sound factual but employ undefined or shifting concepts (“real,” “energy,” “true”) that render the entire claim incapable of being true or false in any consistent sense. Such sentences mimic the structure of factual statements while actually expressing attitudes, identifications, or social signals.

This form of misverity is particularly insidious because it feels like knowledge while eluding any possible test of its truth.

​

Partial untruth: A misverity is not necessarily a total falsehood. It can be “true” in content but “false” in the confidence with which it is held. For instance, believing with certainty that the next coin flip will be heads is a misverity, because the certainty — not the prediction — exceeds what is knowable. Recognizing the proper limits of knowledge (“there’s a 50% chance”) dissolves the misverity without necessarily changing the belief itself.

​

Relation to other concepts: While the idea of misverity overlaps with terms such as cognitive bias, confirmation bias, and overconfidence, it emphasizes a broader phenomenon: the psychological and linguistic mechanisms by which excessive certainty attaches to inadequately grounded or semantically unstable beliefs. Misverity highlights not just the bias in reasoning, but the illusion of truth that emerges from the interplay of belief, language, and unexamined assumption.

​

Undoing misverities: To undo a misverity is to uncover the boundaries of what can justifiably be known. It involves questioning hidden assumptions, clarifying terms, and proportioning confidence to evidence. The process is less about proving a belief wrong than about restoring humility where certainty has overstepped understanding.

​

​

Beginning to uncover your own misverities

​

We may think we are able to easily identify the misverities of others, while remaining largely unaware of our own and not even questioning that our own misverities may be contributing to our belief in the misverities of others. 

​

This becomes especially true when we have an element of righteousness associated with our beliefs and we have identified ourselves or others who share our possible misverities as the victims and the good guys.

​

​

Righteousness (viewing things from the HOGAB) as a key component contributing to misverities

 

Consider these as misverities in your relationship with others: 

​

• You had an upset with a friend, colleague, lover, wife, husband, parent, or child. How did you view the beliefs you think they had about you (and vice versa for them)?

• You consider yourself to be spiritual or religious. How you view the beliefs of those who don't share your beliefs (and vice versa for them)?

• You are Progressive or Democrat. How do you view the beliefs of the conservatives or Republicans (and vice versa for them)?

• You believe that people should be kind, generous, fair, loyal, or responsible. Any belief that hinges on a "should" or "should not" often indicates one or misverities present.

• Believing that they could have chosen otherwise, when in fact, they could not have.

​

Consider these as misverities regarding your relationship with yourself:

​

• The last time you felt bad about yourself because you knew you should not be lazy or should not procrastinate, or should have tried harder.

• The last time you forced yourself to do something you had to do and you're just waiting to get through it.

• The last time you felt guilty because you acted selfishly or impulsively and hurt someone else.

• The last time you did something for someone else and ended up resenting them for it.

• Believing that you could have chosen otherwise, when in fact, you could not have.

​

​

Daily damages from our hidden misverities

​

Misverities mostly fall into two different types, each a kind of self-induced blindness, a blindness which is often motivated by a different flavor of the same short-term benefit: feeling safer (while incurring the risk of more danger).

​

​

Optimistic misverities (the downsides of optimism)

​

• Over promising to others

  • This has the projected short-term benefit (whether it's true or not) of looking good to another and avoiding the fear of upsetting them, not disappointing them, or looking bad to them.

• Over promising to ourselves

  • This has the short-term benefit of looking good to ourselves and avoiding looking bad to ourselves (because we have the belief that we should be able to do more).

  • It could also have the short-term benefit of avoiding the fear of having to face now the consequences we might or would be incurring if we're not able to get what we promised done by a certain time or date.

  • We also get the short-term benefit of getting to count our chickens before they hatch.

• Over believing that others will keep their promises (or obligations) to you

  • This has the short-term benefit of avoiding the fear or sense of risk we would feel if we accepted and acknowledged the chances that a specific promise or obligation by another may not be kept, especially in light of the track record that person has with keeping similar types of promises to you in the past.

  • This over believing is the source of all experiences of being betrayed or being upset with or disappointed in others.

• Over believing that you will keep your promises to ourself

  • This has the same short-term benefits as over promising to ourselves.

• Indulging in expectations that things will go the way we want them to go.

  • So many short-term benefits and so many long-term costs.​

​

​

Pessimistic misverities (the downsides of pessimism)

​

While the optimist denies or hides from the risks that things won't turn out as desired, planned, or projected, the pessimist denies or hides from the risks that things could turn out as desired, planned, or projected. Both are cashing in on the short-term benefits of avoiding the sense of risk or disappointment. Both at at war with the fundamental fact that risk is a fundamental and necessary part of living. Consequently, they both put at greater risk the chances of living an exciting, fulfilling life, chocked full of play, adventure, connection, and accomplishment.

​

The misverities that the pessimist indulges in are the mirror images of those that the optimist indulges in. 

​

• Under promising to others to avoid the risk of disappointing others or ourselves.

• Under promising to ourselves to avoid the risk of disappointing ourselves.

• Under believing that others could keep their promises or obligations to avoid the risk getting disappointed.

• Under believing that we may keep a promise to ourself to avoid the risk of disappointment.

• Indulging in the expectation that things will not go the way we would like them to in order to avoid possible disappointment.

​

​