11 ms·

The Psychology of not wanting to know (2017) [pdf]

130 points by amitmina 4y ago

amitmina 4y ago
In a paper called “Cassandra;s regret - a paper in the journal of psychology review” written by Gerd Gigerrenzer he mentions the prevalence of People ignoring mostly to maintain a potential upside due to surprise and also the negative emotions associated with knowing something they didn’t want to know. People prefer to be in a state of active ignorance even when information is freely available. 85-95% of people don’t want to know about potential upcoming negative events. Deliberate ignorance to maintain positive emotions is more prevalent than earlier expected.
- ahmadmijot 4y ago
  It's the same paper in the title
slickrick216 4y ago
This can sometimes be intentional and driven by situational circumstance. I’ve seen this in an incident response setting where people at all levels didn’t want to know as they’d be obliged to deal with it then. Peoples ethics extended so far as if they didn’t have actual evidence of a thing then it wasn’t a thing. This was driven by the finder being the one that had to fix it. So especially likely to occur to talented people and those with initiative as they’d be the ones that have to deal with it.
- kromem 4y ago
  You see a lot of the "see no data, hear no data" in the pharma industry. Mandatory reporting and investigation for adverse event reports means all sorts of loopholes are jumped through to avoid finding out about them. It's messed up.
  - tunap 4y ago
    Corporate is rife with pre-meditated liability avoidance loopholes. Plausible deniability reigns supreme.
    - slickrick216 4y ago
      Exactly mix the plausible deniability with discovery processes and you get to the point where people couldn’t do the right thing even if they wanted to as they don’t know about it.
- derbOac 4y ago
  I can see some of it driven by situations where nothing could be done to prevent a negative outcome as well: if a death is unpreventable, what's the point in knowing it's coming? I think that's implicit in many of the events in the paper's studies (or explicit? I didnt read it carefully), this idea that they're unavoidable. Maybe that's consistent with what you're saying, in the sense that something unavoidable has infinitely high amounts of cost associated with it in terms of rectification or prevention.
  - slickrick216 4y ago
    Yeah I can see that in some scenarios there’s a no win for the business or the team. Especially information spillage where the cleanup is usually non effective messy and long. Combine that with them not being interesting to work people actively avoid them. There is an I counter example as well. Where there’s no perceived benefit however there actually is one you just didn’t realise it. Some sort of FOMO with out the fear and you do miss out.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- oblib 4y ago
  That is so spot on. When I was in my early teens I started working for a few small businesses that made mods to vans for people in wheelchairs to drive. I built and installed those as instructed without question. By the time I was in my late teens I realized there were some dangerous flaws in some of the things we were doing and began pointing them out. For the most part when I did that the design was modified to address the flaw, but one time involved more than just a tweak and would've been costly and I was told "You're not qualified to evaluate this", and that was true in as much as I had no degree in engineering. What I did have by then was years of experience with how things break and fail. One example is a company I subcontracted work for had a design for a device that moved the driver's seat in a van backwards about two feet on a set of rails so a paraplegic could slide from the wheelchair to the drivers seat, and then move the seat forward towards the driver's controls. They wanted me to build and install them. They used a rack gear and power window motor for a car to do this. The rack gear was made of steel, but the power window motor gear was made of plastic and cheap cast aluminum, and that plastic gear was all that was holding the driver's seat in place. They had no kind of latch at all to hold the seat in the driver's position so it was obvious that in a rear end collision the window motor gear and housing would break and the driver would be slammed backwards about 2.5 ft and then again forwards again with great force. They really did not want to know that, and refused to make any changes to the design. So I told the State inspector about it a few weeks later when he came to inspect a van that was finished for a client. Even though it was very simple he had no idea of how that device even worked, and told me so. So he went to the CEO of the company and told them about what I'd told him and I was fired. They went broke less than a year later so as far as I know there were never many of those shipped.
cryptica 4y ago
This is a huge problem nowadays. I think pretty much everyone has been in such situation... This makes me cynical about WTF must be going on at the top to require so many people to 'not want to know.' We have a hierarchy made up of layers upon layers of "I don't want to know" and people rise to a level proportional to what they are comfortable knowing (and keeping secret).
- dirtybirdnj 4y ago
  People willfully keeping things secret when it's not even necessary has been a huge problem in my career. I get disrespect when I want to understand why things are happening. It's not reasonable to expect the people who create software to solve problems to just blindly write code and not understand why things are done in a certain way. It's their JOB to figure things out and optimize. Asking them not to look for improvement gains is like asking a fish to stop respirating in water and move just as fast on land in air.
  - SCNP 4y ago
    This is one of my go-to indicators that I'm in an IT shop where I need to leave. I'm really good at sussing out and learning systems that people are guarding for the sole reason that they want to retain the clout of being the only one who understands it. If I run into too many of those or if I need access to one to do MY job, I start tapping into my network to move on.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Fascinating study although not exactly what I expected ( I thought it would be about brain deliberately ignoring information and not allowing it to pass for conscious consideration ). Naturally, this is a little different. What is more interesting is that based on the study only tiny fraction of population wants to know regardless.
- worker_person 4y ago
  For deeper learning, get a delusional spouse that ignores any reality other than the one they like. You'll wish you ignored this line of reasoning.
gcau 4y ago
I've pondered: if you were given an envelope, written inside it is the deepest and darkest secret of the universe/humanity, would you want to read it? It could say that we're just in a simulation, it could say all politicians are aliens, it could say we're totally alone in the universe because any sufficiently advanced planet destroys itself from the inside, it could say all your family and friends are just Synths and You're in a Truman show scenario. Or something worse we can't imagine. If you read it and found out something like this you'd go crazy.
- laszlokorte 4y ago
  How would you know that what it says is actually true?
  - b3morales 4y ago
    That seems to be stipulated as part of the thought experiment. Otherwise, it's a different thought experiment. ;)
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  Nah. Even assuming it's true, I'd still be motivated by the mystery of who wrote it and why he gave it to me.
- pawelmurias 4y ago
  All the situations you mentioned I would want to know about.
  - deebosong 4y ago
    Same. Those scenarios point to more of a "meaning of life" and "reason behind it all" types of scenarios, assuming that the message-deliverer is trustworthy/ accurate. Knowing such weighty matters might heavily shift the way you live, the choices you make, and the things you invest your energy and time into.
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    The universe's deepest darkest secret just sounds interesting and I must already be living with the consequences of it in some way. I think a more localized version (your spouse or family's darkest secret) might be a more difficult decision.
yotamoron 4y ago
Am I the only one who can't understand how Cassandra could foresee the future - but somehow failed to see that Apollo is about to curse her?! I mean - WTF?! The damn god is about to turn her life into living hell, she's more then capable of actually knowing it in advance and do something about it, and she's like "Nah, I'll just go shoppin' for a new tunic"?! I'm telling you - those subtle inconsistencies make me doubt this whole greek mythology thing...
- adrianN 4y ago
  Maybe her actions prevented even greater catastrophe.
  - yotamoron 4y ago
    I disagree. She failed - miserably - as mount Olympus' VP of future foreseeing, and that's totally unacceptable. Where's HR in all this? the recruiting manager!? Anyone?? Are those the kind of unrealistically supernatural powers baring individuals we want to have in our company? I don't think so...
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    She must have read The Aeneid
- NetBeck 4y ago
  Apollo was rejected by a mortal after giving her powers. As a god of prophecy, he should have seen that coming.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    I've seen that point expressed cutely in an old goth metal lyric: If he did grant Wherefore then did He not foresee? Be like egal As if to him Might be? I guess he preferred not to know.
bertil 4y ago
I’m really confused why the authors barely mention *agency*: knowing is fine and useful if you _can do_ something about it. Cassandra’s curse was not to know but that she wouldn’t be believed. Every circumstances that I can think of regretting knowing something (friends who were going to separate, systemic racism in algorithm that my team implemented, global warming), how certain I am is far less important than whether I can do something about it.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  Good point. But there are Knowledge Hazards that stand alone. Such as traumatic images you cannot unsee. A lot of people who work in digital forensics would love a zero knowledge proof that a folder is full of CP without having to look at it. That's pretty much the idea of the CSAM algorithm Apple wanted to push, which makes it a pretty great idea minus the digitally rapey forcing it on people without their consent bit. > "Only 1% of participants consistently wanted to know" Wow! I sometimes feel "better not to know" but for the most-part I am scientific/rationalist and will take all the intel I can get even if it may be challenging. There's one exception: I often deliberately don't google people I am going to meet. I want the relationship to evolve organically. If it's an interview I might check a bit on their professional background, and the orgs they've worked with, but even given the opportunity to see a much deeper dox I'll pass on it. I feel it's degrading. Also that it may give me a false impression that excludes opportunities. I would only break that "polite ignorance" if I needed to assess the risk of someone or suspected a problem.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    That last part is quite important; we've lost the ability to lose things to time, and it can be brought back up quite easily. Part of it has been loss in trust of the people in society setup as gatekeepers, but the "cure" of everyone doing it themselves may be worse than the disease.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      That theme, of whether the age of 'benevolent elites' has given way to a hyper-liberal vigilantism (and whether that's worse) is explored quite nicely by Adam Curtis in some of his more recent films.
narag 4y ago
One more motive, archivable under "plot twist" meme: what seems like relevant information is actually a lie, amplified by the echo chamber. Maybe you can spot some buzzword that has been discussed in HN for years and later diluted into irrelevance. Sometimes the next big thing, sometimes the moral panic, sometimes the impending doom. The bigger the sense of urgency, the more suspect.
gw67 4y ago
This is very relevant during this large crypto correction. Nobody wants to know that BTC will reach $3,000 within 1-2 years.
tpoacher 4y ago
This pdf is a masterpiece in the art of kerning. I had a lot of fun poking my eyes out trying to decipher the characters.
zerop 4y ago
Sometime it's good to if you don't know the details, it helps to analyze the problem at high level and might result in creative solutions because you don't get caught into details since you don't know it. But it's not good always.
dmfdmf 4y ago
Ayn Rand called not wanting to know the "blank-out" and identified evasion as the root of all evil. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/evasion.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/evasion.html
- amitmina 4y ago
  powerful words! this encapsulates it even better
photochemsyn 4y ago
Interesting discussion here: https://www.mpg.de/16834860/interview-deliberate-ignorance https://www.mpg.de/16834860/interview-deliberate-ignorance For example: > "We distinguish between at least six functions of deliberate ignorance. One important function is regulating emotions. Not knowing certain facts can help us avoid negative emotions. For example, some people consciously make the decision not to view their "Stasi" (State Security Service of the GDR) files because they fear they might contain information that would make them extremely upset or sad. Such as a friend or a relative may have collaborated with the Stasi. Another function is to preserve suspense and surprise: When we read a detective story, we typically do not want to know in advance how the story ends." They also discuss how blind auditions for orchestras result in a much broader group of people being hired as musicians (basically it's anti-discriminatory wrt non-relevant factors), and also, the Twitter effect: > "In 2018, an investigation found that false information spreads more quickly and more widely on Twitter than genuine facts. Scientists suspect that the reason for this is that false information appeals to our emotions and often surprises us and defies our expectations. And initially, everything that's contrary to our expectations is interesting to us. We need to know this! That's where deliberate ignorance can help us to build up a cognitive defence to protect us against being inundated with false information."
- amitmina 4y ago
  Deliberate ignorance is a way to optimize for out emotions. Most of us are still rooted in our limbic brain no matter how rational we think we are.
- endominus 4y ago
  The blind auditions may be a bad example - or at least, may not have helped get more women hired into orchestras. The original study that posited that blind auditions greatly help women does not show strong data to support its claims and what data it does show either contradicts the claim (when confounded) or has no significant result and large error values (when unconfounded). See https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/ https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/ for more details. There are also a lot of... let's call them self-styled anti-racists who want to end blind auditions because they don't result in enough minority hires (see [0], [1], [2]) which is an interesting way to define discrimination, I suppose. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition... [1]: https://www.amren.com/news/2020/07/to-make-orchestras-more-diverse-end-blind-auditions/ https://www.amren.com/news/2020/07/to-make-orchestras-more-d... [2]: https://www.quora.com/Considering-that-blind-auditions-increased-the-number-of-women-in-orchestras-from-6-to-33-but-did-little-to-increase-racial-diversity-should-we-end-blind-auditions https://www.quora.com/Considering-that-blind-auditions-incre...
UIUC_06 4y ago
There's a very, very good reason for not wanting to know, and undercover organizations (legal or otherwise) have always exploited it: You can't spill what you don't know. If you're an illegal or espionage group, your members can't be threatened or tortured into giving up information they don't have. Similarly, they can't give it to WikiLeaks.
neosystem 4y ago
Timely article — I can’t help but to relate it to my investing/stock account lol. I’m mostly invested in big tech and not so much growth — so things probably aren’t so bad — still, I haven’t checked that account in a couple months. I have it set up to make recurring purchases in things like Apple, so I’m just waiting it out and hoping that the old adage “time in the market beats timing the market” holds true.
amitmina 4y ago
“Technological progress steadily shifts the line between the knowable and the unknowable in the direction of Cassandra’s powers. Advances in genomic analyses and biomarker research will put more and more people into situations where they have to decide whether they want to know future health issues.” Gerd Gigerrenzer
nobody0 4y ago
ignorance is a bliss
kelseyfrog 4y ago
The paper mentions Kruglanski & Webster[1] which is good, but somehow misses their 1994 paper "Individual differences in need for cognitive closure."[2] The latter develops the Need For Closure Scale(NFCS) which is available online[3]. The NFCS exemplifies some of the aspects of the needs for cognitive closure. > 21(d) In most social conflicts, I can easily see which side is right and which is wrong. > 30(d) I dislike it when a person's statement could mean many different things. > 32(a) I find that establishing a consistent routine enables me to enjoy life more. I'd even go so far to say that by not assessing the paper's subjects using NFCS the authors made a massive oversight. If the subject interests you, I recommend reading the sources. They aren't too hard to follow, but if you're someone who is unfamiliar with the limitations of developing a psychological assessment instrument, you might have to put aside your need for cognitive closure for a bit while reading them. 1. Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103, 263–283. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263 2. Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(6), 1049–1062. 3. https://www.kruglanskiarie.com/_files/ugd/1b977d_8ef6f17f4f814d9683acd822ecc9062e.pdf https://www.kruglanskiarie.com/_files/ugd/1b977d_8ef6f17f4f8...
- jimsmart 4y ago
  > but somehow misses their 1994 paper Link to PDF of article for [2] — Rather ironically, you seem to have missed it, and I needed the closure! http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/individual_differences_in_need_for_cognitive_closure.pdf http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/i...
ifokiedoke 4y ago
An interesting consideration here that I don't see mentioned in the comments is the difference between the destination and the _journey_. The paper asks, "would you want to know during the wedding ceremony whether your marriage is going to end in divorce?" There are 4 reasons offered for not wanting to know ("to avoid the negative emotions, to maintain the positive emotions of surprise, to gain a strategic advantage, to implement fairness") but my reason would be this: there is a difference between knowing the outcome, and knowing _why_. And there is a difference between being able to express _why_, and truly feeling it and accepting it. And I don't think there is any way to get there other than through living it. The human mind and our capacity to learn/grow is incredible, but we only learn and accept things when we are ready to. Sometimes you learn a little too late (e.g. after your divorce) what it means to be a present partner, but that doesn't mean you didn't learn it as _soon as you could_. And no knowing the future can change that. I mean, how many of us have been told over and over that we should be grateful for something (e.g. our parents, our partners, our jobs) but only truly learned the lesson once we lost it? Sometimes I think we have too myopic a view of what "knowing" really means.
oblib 4y ago
I can't say there are many things I do not want to know, but there are things I do not want to see like videos/photos of deadly car crashes, war battles, murders, etc. So I also never watch "slasher" movies/TV, or read books that depict graphic violence/gore. I'm not squeamish, I have raised, slaughtered, and dressed livestock since I was a teen. That's never been a source of "fun" for me though. It has a real life purpose and the end result has always been a much improved source of food for my family and I. I seldom watch anything on TV that has any violence at all and to be honest I'm a bit leery of those who go out of their way, like to a movie theater, to see it. I'm 62 and this something I've done since a was a teen. I just don't want those images in my memory. I've never looked into it but my gut feeling is they desensitize us. Looking at the current state of the obsession with owning arms designed specifically to murder humans compared to when I was growing up, I think there is ample proof of that.
- daenz 4y ago
  A different take: videos of horrible things show rare insights into behaviors that are only visible before the horrible thing. For example, how a robbery goes bad and ends up as a multiple murder. Or how someone will hide and wait to kill someone. Of course I'd rather not see that stuff in general, but more than that, I'd rather have a basic understanding of how those things play out.
- LocalPCGuy 4y ago
  > I've never looked into it but my gut feeling is they desensitize us. Looking at the current state of the obsession with owning arms designed specifically to murder humans There have been studies on this and my recollection is that despite the "gut feelings" people have about this, it doesn't hold up to the level of being able to prove causation. At best, there is a level of correlation (not strong). Most I've read show that people are able to differentiate between reality and "entertainment". I'd recommend looking into the studies that have been done (and be warned, there are also some really bad studies in this area, paid for, low sample size, etc.) Also, I fully recognize that this is an area we need more study because it's been stymied for years by various laws that prevent investment in researching anything that is in this area. Note - I also want to clarify that I am not a gun nut or 2A absolutist or anything of that nature and not trying to dive down that rabbit hole - so not trying to defend their misplaced importance and/or misuse in any way. And I'm also not saying we should wait to try things for studies to be done. But I think it's important to know the real underlying issues so we work toward fixing the problem correctly.
locallost 4y ago
Sorry for not reading past the first page, so maybe their conclusion is the same, but: in the case of the HIV test, it's pretty clear that people avoid it because the mere thought forces you to confront the possibility, and that is tough. At least that was my experience, even though I rationally knew that it was better to know, boy was it tempting to not pick up the result. Another interesting tangent on it is that I got my results the same day, but there are places where they make you wait for a week, just so you think about it.
- CodeBeater 4y ago
  This is so prevalent all around the world, that there's even a saying in my native Brazil: "You're only sick if you get tested"
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    I wonder how well that expression was taken in the context of COVID.
    - CodeBeater 4y ago
      Not very well actually. that idiom is used almost exclusively in a joking manner when referring to HIV testing in specific.
- ksd482 4y ago
  That’s a very good point. I also went through this dilemma a few years ago and it was very difficult for me. Given my personality, I always strive to do what’s right regardless of how difficult or uncomfortable it is. I can say I have ALWAYS succeeded in doing that. But a few years ago when I was in a situation where I needed to get an HIV test, I was very scared and nervous. I was sweating every now and then thinking about it. I couldn’t focus on work and I couldn’t have any fun. The only thing that helped me a little bit was to rationally predict my outcome based on statistics and past behavior. But all in all, I trusted in the process and got myself to go through with it step by step.
agnos 4y ago
Is knowing the same thing as believing? Maybe I'm missing something, but a lot of this seems to hinge on an assumption that knowing something with absolute certainty is possible, and a meaningful hypothetical scenario in our human cognition. Predictions (knowing) and their ensuing actions in a non-deterministic world are not necessarily isolated from the eventual outcome. I'm curious how much of the "willful ignorance" is actually avoidance of some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

130 points by amitmina 4y ago

In a paper called “Cassandra;s regret - a paper in the journal of psychology review” written by Gerd Gigerrenzer he mentions the prevalence of People ignoring mostly to maintain a potential upside due to surprise and also the negative emotions associated with knowing something they didn’t want to know. People prefer to be in a state of active ignorance even when information is freely available. 85-95% of people don’t want to know about potential upcoming negative events. Deliberate ignorance to maintain positive emotions is more prevalent than earlier expected.

ahmadmijot 4y ago
It's the same paper in the title

slickrick216 4y ago

This can sometimes be intentional and driven by situational circumstance. I’ve seen this in an incident response setting where people at all levels didn’t want to know as they’d be obliged to deal with it then. Peoples ethics extended so far as if they didn’t have actual evidence of a thing then it wasn’t a thing. This was driven by the finder being the one that had to fix it. So especially likely to occur to talented people and those with initiative as they’d be the ones that have to deal with it.

kromem 4y ago
You see a lot of the "see no data, hear no data" in the pharma industry. Mandatory reporting and investigation for adverse event reports means all sorts of loopholes are jumped through to avoid finding out about them. It's messed up.
- tunap 4y ago
  Corporate is rife with pre-meditated liability avoidance loopholes. Plausible deniability reigns supreme.
  - slickrick216 4y ago
    Exactly mix the plausible deniability with discovery processes and you get to the point where people couldn’t do the right thing even if they wanted to as they don’t know about it.
derbOac 4y ago
I can see some of it driven by situations where nothing could be done to prevent a negative outcome as well: if a death is unpreventable, what's the point in knowing it's coming? I think that's implicit in many of the events in the paper's studies (or explicit? I didnt read it carefully), this idea that they're unavoidable. Maybe that's consistent with what you're saying, in the sense that something unavoidable has infinitely high amounts of cost associated with it in terms of rectification or prevention.
- slickrick216 4y ago
  Yeah I can see that in some scenarios there’s a no win for the business or the team. Especially information spillage where the cleanup is usually non effective messy and long. Combine that with them not being interesting to work people actively avoid them. There is an I counter example as well. Where there’s no perceived benefit however there actually is one you just didn’t realise it. Some sort of FOMO with out the fear and you do miss out.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
oblib 4y ago
That is so spot on. When I was in my early teens I started working for a few small businesses that made mods to vans for people in wheelchairs to drive. I built and installed those as instructed without question. By the time I was in my late teens I realized there were some dangerous flaws in some of the things we were doing and began pointing them out. For the most part when I did that the design was modified to address the flaw, but one time involved more than just a tweak and would've been costly and I was told "You're not qualified to evaluate this", and that was true in as much as I had no degree in engineering. What I did have by then was years of experience with how things break and fail. One example is a company I subcontracted work for had a design for a device that moved the driver's seat in a van backwards about two feet on a set of rails so a paraplegic could slide from the wheelchair to the drivers seat, and then move the seat forward towards the driver's controls. They wanted me to build and install them. They used a rack gear and power window motor for a car to do this. The rack gear was made of steel, but the power window motor gear was made of plastic and cheap cast aluminum, and that plastic gear was all that was holding the driver's seat in place. They had no kind of latch at all to hold the seat in the driver's position so it was obvious that in a rear end collision the window motor gear and housing would break and the driver would be slammed backwards about 2.5 ft and then again forwards again with great force. They really did not want to know that, and refused to make any changes to the design. So I told the State inspector about it a few weeks later when he came to inspect a van that was finished for a client. Even though it was very simple he had no idea of how that device even worked, and told me so. So he went to the CEO of the company and told them about what I'd told him and I was fired. They went broke less than a year later so as far as I know there were never many of those shipped.

cryptica 4y ago

This is a huge problem nowadays. I think pretty much everyone has been in such situation... This makes me cynical about WTF must be going on at the top to require so many people to 'not want to know.' We have a hierarchy made up of layers upon layers of "I don't want to know" and people rise to a level proportional to what they are comfortable knowing (and keeping secret).

dirtybirdnj 4y ago
People willfully keeping things secret when it's not even necessary has been a huge problem in my career. I get disrespect when I want to understand why things are happening. It's not reasonable to expect the people who create software to solve problems to just blindly write code and not understand why things are done in a certain way. It's their JOB to figure things out and optimize. Asking them not to look for improvement gains is like asking a fish to stop respirating in water and move just as fast on land in air.
- SCNP 4y ago
  This is one of my go-to indicators that I'm in an IT shop where I need to leave. I'm really good at sussing out and learning systems that people are guarding for the sole reason that they want to retain the clout of being the only one who understands it. If I run into too many of those or if I need access to one to do MY job, I start tapping into my network to move on.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

Fascinating study although not exactly what I expected ( I thought it would be about brain deliberately ignoring information and not allowing it to pass for conscious consideration ). Naturally, this is a little different. What is more interesting is that based on the study only tiny fraction of population wants to know regardless.

worker_person 4y ago
For deeper learning, get a delusional spouse that ignores any reality other than the one they like. You'll wish you ignored this line of reasoning.

gcau 4y ago

I've pondered: if you were given an envelope, written inside it is the deepest and darkest secret of the universe/humanity, would you want to read it? It could say that we're just in a simulation, it could say all politicians are aliens, it could say we're totally alone in the universe because any sufficiently advanced planet destroys itself from the inside, it could say all your family and friends are just Synths and You're in a Truman show scenario. Or something worse we can't imagine. If you read it and found out something like this you'd go crazy.

laszlokorte 4y ago
How would you know that what it says is actually true?
- b3morales 4y ago
  That seems to be stipulated as part of the thought experiment. Otherwise, it's a different thought experiment. ;)
lr4444lr 4y ago
Nah. Even assuming it's true, I'd still be motivated by the mystery of who wrote it and why he gave it to me.
pawelmurias 4y ago
All the situations you mentioned I would want to know about.
- deebosong 4y ago
  Same. Those scenarios point to more of a "meaning of life" and "reason behind it all" types of scenarios, assuming that the message-deliverer is trustworthy/ accurate. Knowing such weighty matters might heavily shift the way you live, the choices you make, and the things you invest your energy and time into.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  The universe's deepest darkest secret just sounds interesting and I must already be living with the consequences of it in some way. I think a more localized version (your spouse or family's darkest secret) might be a more difficult decision.

yotamoron 4y ago

Am I the only one who can't understand how Cassandra could foresee the future - but somehow failed to see that Apollo is about to curse her?! I mean - WTF?! The damn god is about to turn her life into living hell, she's more then capable of actually knowing it in advance and do something about it, and she's like "Nah, I'll just go shoppin' for a new tunic"?! I'm telling you - those subtle inconsistencies make me doubt this whole greek mythology thing...

adrianN 4y ago
Maybe her actions prevented even greater catastrophe.
- yotamoron 4y ago
  I disagree. She failed - miserably - as mount Olympus' VP of future foreseeing, and that's totally unacceptable. Where's HR in all this? the recruiting manager!? Anyone?? Are those the kind of unrealistically supernatural powers baring individuals we want to have in our company? I don't think so...
- jrumbut 4y ago
  She must have read The Aeneid
NetBeck 4y ago
Apollo was rejected by a mortal after giving her powers. As a god of prophecy, he should have seen that coming.
- vintermann 4y ago
  I've seen that point expressed cutely in an old goth metal lyric: If he did grant Wherefore then did He not foresee? Be like egal As if to him Might be? I guess he preferred not to know.

bertil 4y ago

I’m really confused why the authors barely mention *agency*: knowing is fine and useful if you _can do_ something about it. Cassandra’s curse was not to know but that she wouldn’t be believed. Every circumstances that I can think of regretting knowing something (friends who were going to separate, systemic racism in algorithm that my team implemented, global warming), how certain I am is far less important than whether I can do something about it.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
Good point. But there are Knowledge Hazards that stand alone. Such as traumatic images you cannot unsee. A lot of people who work in digital forensics would love a zero knowledge proof that a folder is full of CP without having to look at it. That's pretty much the idea of the CSAM algorithm Apple wanted to push, which makes it a pretty great idea minus the digitally rapey forcing it on people without their consent bit. > "Only 1% of participants consistently wanted to know" Wow! I sometimes feel "better not to know" but for the most-part I am scientific/rationalist and will take all the intel I can get even if it may be challenging. There's one exception: I often deliberately don't google people I am going to meet. I want the relationship to evolve organically. If it's an interview I might check a bit on their professional background, and the orgs they've worked with, but even given the opportunity to see a much deeper dox I'll pass on it. I feel it's degrading. Also that it may give me a false impression that excludes opportunities. I would only break that "polite ignorance" if I needed to assess the risk of someone or suspected a problem.
- bombcar 4y ago
  That last part is quite important; we've lost the ability to lose things to time, and it can be brought back up quite easily. Part of it has been loss in trust of the people in society setup as gatekeepers, but the "cure" of everyone doing it themselves may be worse than the disease.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    That theme, of whether the age of 'benevolent elites' has given way to a hyper-liberal vigilantism (and whether that's worse) is explored quite nicely by Adam Curtis in some of his more recent films.

narag 4y ago

One more motive, archivable under "plot twist" meme: what seems like relevant information is actually a lie, amplified by the echo chamber. Maybe you can spot some buzzword that has been discussed in HN for years and later diluted into irrelevance. Sometimes the next big thing, sometimes the moral panic, sometimes the impending doom. The bigger the sense of urgency, the more suspect.

gw67 4y ago

This is very relevant during this large crypto correction. Nobody wants to know that BTC will reach $3,000 within 1-2 years.

tpoacher 4y ago

This pdf is a masterpiece in the art of kerning. I had a lot of fun poking my eyes out trying to decipher the characters.

zerop 4y ago

Sometime it's good to if you don't know the details, it helps to analyze the problem at high level and might result in creative solutions because you don't get caught into details since you don't know it. But it's not good always.

dmfdmf 4y ago

Ayn Rand called not wanting to know the "blank-out" and identified evasion as the root of all evil. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/evasion.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/evasion.html

amitmina 4y ago
powerful words! this encapsulates it even better

photochemsyn 4y ago

Interesting discussion here: https://www.mpg.de/16834860/interview-deliberate-ignorance https://www.mpg.de/16834860/interview-deliberate-ignorance For example: > "We distinguish between at least six functions of deliberate ignorance. One important function is regulating emotions. Not knowing certain facts can help us avoid negative emotions. For example, some people consciously make the decision not to view their "Stasi" (State Security Service of the GDR) files because they fear they might contain information that would make them extremely upset or sad. Such as a friend or a relative may have collaborated with the Stasi. Another function is to preserve suspense and surprise: When we read a detective story, we typically do not want to know in advance how the story ends." They also discuss how blind auditions for orchestras result in a much broader group of people being hired as musicians (basically it's anti-discriminatory wrt non-relevant factors), and also, the Twitter effect: > "In 2018, an investigation found that false information spreads more quickly and more widely on Twitter than genuine facts. Scientists suspect that the reason for this is that false information appeals to our emotions and often surprises us and defies our expectations. And initially, everything that's contrary to our expectations is interesting to us. We need to know this! That's where deliberate ignorance can help us to build up a cognitive defence to protect us against being inundated with false information."

amitmina 4y ago
Deliberate ignorance is a way to optimize for out emotions. Most of us are still rooted in our limbic brain no matter how rational we think we are.
endominus 4y ago
The blind auditions may be a bad example - or at least, may not have helped get more women hired into orchestras. The original study that posited that blind auditions greatly help women does not show strong data to support its claims and what data it does show either contradicts the claim (when confounded) or has no significant result and large error values (when unconfounded). See https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/ https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/ for more details. There are also a lot of... let's call them self-styled anti-racists who want to end blind auditions because they don't result in enough minority hires (see [0], [1], [2]) which is an interesting way to define discrimination, I suppose. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition... [1]: https://www.amren.com/news/2020/07/to-make-orchestras-more-diverse-end-blind-auditions/ https://www.amren.com/news/2020/07/to-make-orchestras-more-d... [2]: https://www.quora.com/Considering-that-blind-auditions-increased-the-number-of-women-in-orchestras-from-6-to-33-but-did-little-to-increase-racial-diversity-should-we-end-blind-auditions https://www.quora.com/Considering-that-blind-auditions-incre...

UIUC_06 4y ago

There's a very, very good reason for not wanting to know, and undercover organizations (legal or otherwise) have always exploited it: You can't spill what you don't know. If you're an illegal or espionage group, your members can't be threatened or tortured into giving up information they don't have. Similarly, they can't give it to WikiLeaks.

neosystem 4y ago

Timely article — I can’t help but to relate it to my investing/stock account lol. I’m mostly invested in big tech and not so much growth — so things probably aren’t so bad — still, I haven’t checked that account in a couple months. I have it set up to make recurring purchases in things like Apple, so I’m just waiting it out and hoping that the old adage “time in the market beats timing the market” holds true.

amitmina 4y ago

“Technological progress steadily shifts the line between the knowable and the unknowable in the direction of Cassandra’s powers. Advances in genomic analyses and biomarker research will put more and more people into situations where they have to decide whether they want to know future health issues.” Gerd Gigerrenzer

nobody0 4y ago

ignorance is a bliss

kelseyfrog 4y ago

The paper mentions Kruglanski & Webster[1] which is good, but somehow misses their 1994 paper "Individual differences in need for cognitive closure."[2] The latter develops the Need For Closure Scale(NFCS) which is available online[3]. The NFCS exemplifies some of the aspects of the needs for cognitive closure. > 21(d) In most social conflicts, I can easily see which side is right and which is wrong. > 30(d) I dislike it when a person's statement could mean many different things. > 32(a) I find that establishing a consistent routine enables me to enjoy life more. I'd even go so far to say that by not assessing the paper's subjects using NFCS the authors made a massive oversight. If the subject interests you, I recommend reading the sources. They aren't too hard to follow, but if you're someone who is unfamiliar with the limitations of developing a psychological assessment instrument, you might have to put aside your need for cognitive closure for a bit while reading them. 1. Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103, 263–283. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263 2. Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(6), 1049–1062. 3. https://www.kruglanskiarie.com/_files/ugd/1b977d_8ef6f17f4f814d9683acd822ecc9062e.pdf https://www.kruglanskiarie.com/_files/ugd/1b977d_8ef6f17f4f8...

jimsmart 4y ago
> but somehow misses their 1994 paper Link to PDF of article for [2] — Rather ironically, you seem to have missed it, and I needed the closure! http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/individual_differences_in_need_for_cognitive_closure.pdf http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/i...

ifokiedoke 4y ago

An interesting consideration here that I don't see mentioned in the comments is the difference between the destination and the _journey_. The paper asks, "would you want to know during the wedding ceremony whether your marriage is going to end in divorce?" There are 4 reasons offered for not wanting to know ("to avoid the negative emotions, to maintain the positive emotions of surprise, to gain a strategic advantage, to implement fairness") but my reason would be this: there is a difference between knowing the outcome, and knowing _why_. And there is a difference between being able to express _why_, and truly feeling it and accepting it. And I don't think there is any way to get there other than through living it. The human mind and our capacity to learn/grow is incredible, but we only learn and accept things when we are ready to. Sometimes you learn a little too late (e.g. after your divorce) what it means to be a present partner, but that doesn't mean you didn't learn it as _soon as you could_. And no knowing the future can change that. I mean, how many of us have been told over and over that we should be grateful for something (e.g. our parents, our partners, our jobs) but only truly learned the lesson once we lost it? Sometimes I think we have too myopic a view of what "knowing" really means.

oblib 4y ago

I can't say there are many things I do not want to know, but there are things I do not want to see like videos/photos of deadly car crashes, war battles, murders, etc. So I also never watch "slasher" movies/TV, or read books that depict graphic violence/gore. I'm not squeamish, I have raised, slaughtered, and dressed livestock since I was a teen. That's never been a source of "fun" for me though. It has a real life purpose and the end result has always been a much improved source of food for my family and I. I seldom watch anything on TV that has any violence at all and to be honest I'm a bit leery of those who go out of their way, like to a movie theater, to see it. I'm 62 and this something I've done since a was a teen. I just don't want those images in my memory. I've never looked into it but my gut feeling is they desensitize us. Looking at the current state of the obsession with owning arms designed specifically to murder humans compared to when I was growing up, I think there is ample proof of that.

daenz 4y ago
A different take: videos of horrible things show rare insights into behaviors that are only visible before the horrible thing. For example, how a robbery goes bad and ends up as a multiple murder. Or how someone will hide and wait to kill someone. Of course I'd rather not see that stuff in general, but more than that, I'd rather have a basic understanding of how those things play out.
LocalPCGuy 4y ago
> I've never looked into it but my gut feeling is they desensitize us. Looking at the current state of the obsession with owning arms designed specifically to murder humans There have been studies on this and my recollection is that despite the "gut feelings" people have about this, it doesn't hold up to the level of being able to prove causation. At best, there is a level of correlation (not strong). Most I've read show that people are able to differentiate between reality and "entertainment". I'd recommend looking into the studies that have been done (and be warned, there are also some really bad studies in this area, paid for, low sample size, etc.) Also, I fully recognize that this is an area we need more study because it's been stymied for years by various laws that prevent investment in researching anything that is in this area. Note - I also want to clarify that I am not a gun nut or 2A absolutist or anything of that nature and not trying to dive down that rabbit hole - so not trying to defend their misplaced importance and/or misuse in any way. And I'm also not saying we should wait to try things for studies to be done. But I think it's important to know the real underlying issues so we work toward fixing the problem correctly.

locallost 4y ago

Sorry for not reading past the first page, so maybe their conclusion is the same, but: in the case of the HIV test, it's pretty clear that people avoid it because the mere thought forces you to confront the possibility, and that is tough. At least that was my experience, even though I rationally knew that it was better to know, boy was it tempting to not pick up the result. Another interesting tangent on it is that I got my results the same day, but there are places where they make you wait for a week, just so you think about it.

CodeBeater 4y ago
This is so prevalent all around the world, that there's even a saying in my native Brazil: "You're only sick if you get tested"
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  I wonder how well that expression was taken in the context of COVID.
  - CodeBeater 4y ago
    Not very well actually. that idiom is used almost exclusively in a joking manner when referring to HIV testing in specific.
ksd482 4y ago
That’s a very good point. I also went through this dilemma a few years ago and it was very difficult for me. Given my personality, I always strive to do what’s right regardless of how difficult or uncomfortable it is. I can say I have ALWAYS succeeded in doing that. But a few years ago when I was in a situation where I needed to get an HIV test, I was very scared and nervous. I was sweating every now and then thinking about it. I couldn’t focus on work and I couldn’t have any fun. The only thing that helped me a little bit was to rationally predict my outcome based on statistics and past behavior. But all in all, I trusted in the process and got myself to go through with it step by step.

agnos 4y ago

Is knowing the same thing as believing? Maybe I'm missing something, but a lot of this seems to hinge on an assumption that knowing something with absolute certainty is possible, and a meaningful hypothetical scenario in our human cognition. Predictions (knowing) and their ensuing actions in a non-deterministic world are not necessarily isolated from the eventual outcome. I'm curious how much of the "willful ignorance" is actually avoidance of some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.