"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."
The book Walden, written in the mid-1800s by the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau (1), is a masterpiece. Beneath its elementary recollections this book proffers many thought-provoking intonations about how to live.
The dictionary defines ignorance as a lack of knowledge, understanding, or education (2). Generally, ignorance is seen as a bad thing. However, in the relatively recent information era healthy doses of ignorance can be a good thing - indeed, a very good thing. Let me explain.
In The 4-Hour Work Week, author Timothy Ferriss discusses how to use selective ignorance to remove the information clutter from a person's life so that it is not "frittered away by detail" (3). His method involves utilizing the Pareto Principle, named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, which states that in any system or event 20% of the inputs produce 80% of the outputs (4). Pareto showed this principle to be true for many things - that approximately 20% of a country's population produces 80% of the wealth, that about 20% of a country's population owns 80% of the land, and even that 20% of the peapods in his garden produced about 80% of the peas.
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