The Principle of Ignorance

The Principle of Ignorance is a ‘corollary’ of the Principle of Fragility, which states:

Complexity X Uncertainty = Fragility

This principle states that highly complex actions (business models, or lifestyles) lead to situations of fragility in uncertain environments (e.g. markets). For example, a highly articulated portfolio may result to be fragile in a turbulent market. In effect, the more an environment gets uncertain and volatile, the wiser it is to be simple and pragmatic. This is intuitive. The incessant increase in uncertainty of our global society is an obvious manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the amount of ‘chaos’ is either constant or it increases. The ancient Greeks would say that each generation leaves behind more chaos than it inherits. Things will not get simpler. Nothing new under the Sun.

The Principle of Ignorance states that:

Complexity X Ignorance = Fragility

To put it simply, a highly complex product, or tool, in the hands of a fool leads to fragility (vulnerability, unpredictability, danger). Place a child at the wheel of a sports car, an incompetent CEO at the helm of a multi-national firm, a sophisticated derivative in the hands of an inexperienced investor, or a deranged politician in charge and the results are easy to imagine.

Observing our society one comes to the inescapable conclusion that on average the level of ignorance increases, much like the volatility of the global economy. True, we do have more technology, but people have traded books for tablets and, thanks to the advent of AI, many people are blissfully hallucinatng themselves into ignorance, or even intellectual coma. This is not good.

One trend that we witness is that in many countries the middle class is shrinking as the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. When it comes to education and intellectual endowment a similar pattern may be observed: the scientific elite on the one hand, a generation which ‘lives’ in the inappropriately called ‘social networks’, which are instruments of propagation of decadence, emptiness and mediocrity, on the other. Where will this take us? As the complexity of our lives increases–think of the volatile economy, wars, genocide, migrations, lockdowns, climate change, pollution, epidemics, cyber attacks, oil crisis, corruption, hype, etc.–so does the overall level of ignorance of the society. Both terms on the left hand side of the equation are increasing: a spiral of complexity and ignorance can only lead to an increasingly fragile and vulnerable world. And every fragile system eventually meets its shock.