Is ignorance a bliss? This is the second time this question is posed on this blog... The answer is not straightforward, and involves deep philosophical investigation! This entry features the same question, but from a totally different perspective...
Some people say: "What you dont know cannot harm you!"; I think this statement is false and misleading... Most of the time, what you dont know WILL hurt you, because it will lead you to uninformed decisions... But what this entry is about to address is when what you dont know ACTUALLY cannot harm you. For that condition to be satisfied, what you dont know must be completely irrelevant to your current decisions, that is to say that the difference it makes is not detectable!
Lets consider a cheating partner example: One person cheats on his partner, this partner is ignorant of that, could this ignorance hurt him? To answer such question we must consider the consequences: Roughly speaking this ignorance can hurt this partner in quite a few ways: If the partner discovers the incidence later on he might be emotionally hurt; It might lead him to optimistic decisions about the relationship, while he should have put expectations to minimum; In short the difference between reality and percieved knowledge can cause confusion!
But what if that cheating partner was so professional in his work that no emotional disconnection or contradiction of evidence entailed to such act, does this scenario seem equally unfavorable? The question is: What makes you afraid of being cheated? Is it the simple fact of being cheated? Or the knowledge of being cheated? Or the unfavorable consequences? Rationally, its the latter! Whats so bad about knowing that you were cheated if no negative experiences followed? And more importantly, what so bad about being cheated if you never knew on the condition that such lack of knowledge didnt harm you?
To elaborate more on the matter consider this case-study scenario: PersonX pays for PersonY to be their partner (assuming PersonY is a perfect pretender) and then has memory modifying operation to forget that such deal took place (ie. become ignorant of the deal)... Is PersonX a reasonable person?
The more important and fundamental question is: Is this scenario intrinsically better than the cheating partner scenario? Does it matter who made the decision to create an enjoyable fantasy? These are few radical and interesting questions to ponder!
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2 comments:
Very interesting questions. I've been thinking about this for a while.
What's so bad about being cheated if you never knew on the condition that such lack of knowledge didnt harm you?
Hmm... can that lack of knowledge really be harmless? I think it can't... because, like you said, it's not only about you but about your partner living with the knowledge of what he/she has done, and that consciousness will inevitably affect the relationship in one way or another.
But *If they, too, can forget it*...
Can you really suggest that? You can't picture eliminating the consequences, because it's all about them. They make things favorable or not. Without consequences, nothing would be the way it is. What is an experience without the changes it carries along? Are things only about the moment? Can the moment ever be enough? A great part of an enjoyable experience is its memory... isn't it? Don't we live on those memories for a long time to come?
Regret is so painful... but don't we always say "I will regret this" and nevertheless do it anyway, From eating that cookie to cheating on someone? I think avoidance is more about the consequences that follow. And the only reason you can overlook those, too, is by never thinking about them in the first place. "I just wasn't thinking" is the best "reasonable" justification for anything!
It's getting a little confusing in my head now, so I'll stop here :s
A great part of an enjoyable experience is its memory... isn't it? Don't we live on those memories for a long time to come?
So can we say that if a person gets a memory modifying operation and installs in his brain enjoyable memories, then at the *current* time what he has actually done doesnt matter, rather only the memory of having done enjoyable stuff?
[note that I emphasize the word "current"]
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