For years now, I have been trying to tell people that the world would be a better place if we all took a step back and approached the world with a little less confidence. I believe this with the very fiber of my being, with only my anecdotal evidence to support it.
But let’s leave irony out of this.
I think I speak for us all when I say that all of us know more than a few people that seem to want to have their say even when they have absolutely no bloody idea what they are talking about. I suppose the other end of this is radical skepticism, and that isn’t healthy either. But I have at this point heard what feels like every facet of stupid opinion stated with the utmost confidence, whether it is something about 5G cell towers, the moon landing, the war in Ukraine, the origin of the Covid virus, vaccines, autism, the construction of the pyramids…
I could go on, but you get the point. And before anyone jumps down my throat, be advised that often conflicting opinions on any of the above topics come with the same amount of confidence. Clearly, someone must be wrong, right?
The title of this book translates to Eulogy of Ignorance and Error, and it advocates strongly for people to embrace both of these things. It makes a pretty strong argument for both of those, helping us to understand that ignorance is our default state, and when we understand that we live in a state of ignorance, then we can do something to correctly resolve it. But it also helps understand what it truly means to be an expert, and to navigate the virtues of things like improvisation and martial arts, and how we can apply lessons from those to our mentality.
It’s obvious that this book spoke to some things that I strongly believe, but Carofiglio does it particularly well. I like how he writes, and I like what he has to say. I am also just not reading as much as I should in Italian.
Failures in Polymathy 