The art of ignoring - 26 May 2021

Everyone agrees on the significance of information and knowledge. But it is also a curious fact that human beings often use strategies to bypass or entirely avoid relevant information and knowledge. This is referred to as ‘strategic ignorance.’

Notably, strategic ignorance is not just a complete lack of knowledge or understanding. It is an interesting process of ‘choosing’ to ignore something that you ‘know’ that you are ignoring – so in a way, it presupposes knowledge of some kind. This begs an exploration of the question as to how we, as individuals and organizations, choose to keep ourselves and others ignorant. How can we understand the space between knowing and not-knowing? Why is it often so easy to keep ourselves from knowing more about things that we could, or should know more about?

Speakers:
Anna Essén - House of Innovation, SSE.

Jens David Ohlin - Professor of Law and Interim Dean of Cornell Law School.

Pallabi Chakravorty - Professor of Performing Arts at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.

Ramón López de Mántaras - Research Professor of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and founder and former Director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the CSIC.

Sabina Čehajić-Clancy - Associate Professor of Social Psychology at Stockholm University.

This session was part of the Stockholm Explorative Talks - Webinar Series.

More information on this LINK.