Willful ignorance is achieved by avoiding actions that would reveal unwanted knowledge
Evidence
One remains uninformed about what one does not want to know by not doing what would reveal it. It took hundreds of molested children before the cardinal decided to find out whether being sexually abused by a priest is enduringly harmful to young children (Lovett, 2013). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 522
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- DEFINE: A crisp articulation of the self-deception mechanism: ignorance as an active refusal of the means of knowing.
- DEEPTHINKING: One-sentence distillation of how self-deception works as an active omission rather than passive lack of information — paradigm-shifting in its precision.
Related
- Ignorance is maintained by refusing actions that would reveal unwanted knowledge. (similarity 0.93)
- Willful ignorance is the deliberate avoidance of relevant information because the truth would be uncomfortable or would create pressure to act. (similarity 0.83)
- Genuine self-deception works by staying willfully uninformed, not by believing falsehoods (similarity 0.82)
- Ignorance as want of knowledge derives from active ignoring as refusal to take notice. (similarity 0.79)