Is there really a difference? I feel like if you don’t know something, that kind of makes you stupid, right? If you don’t know historical facts or mathematics—at least the harder stuff, like algebra or calculus—or if you don’t know about advanced political topics, then you’re kind of a stupid person, not just ‘ignorant.’
Ignorance is not knowing things.
Stupidity is refusing to learn things.
Stupidity is also inability to learn
inability to learn is a choice.
they do not want to make the effort.
whether or not that effort is worthwhile, however, is the question.
I am learning Russian. lots of people I met recently, love to tell me how stupid it is because it’s not a ‘useful’ thing to learn.
Not always. Someone close to me has issues with executive dysfunction and short term memory as a result of brain trauma. She really struggles with algebra and she’ll almost certainly never learn calculus even if she wanted to.
That’s a different issue entirely. If they think they’re experts at judging what’s useful, that may be the Dunning-Kruger effect.
I think we overuse dunning kruger. “useful” is very contextual. I would agree that for many people it would take some specific and dare I say unusual circumstances where learning another language is particularly useful to them. There’s some use in that you get a bit of a puzzle to overcome, you can potentially eventually get good enough to consume content in this other language (though one thing LLMs are pretty good at is translation), maybe you get a more direct exposure to Dovstoyestky (sp?). Cool and all, but probably not going to get them a better job or help them with most life tasks.
Cognitive impairments and differing cognitive ability are very much real things 😅 people can have an inability to learn, and/or an unwillingness to learn, but there very much are people who have the former and not the latter
Struggling to learn things is very much not always a choice
those people can learn plenty well.
it just takes more time and effort.
You’re dismissing entire categories of cognitive impairment. Not just the varieties of dementia, but also learning disabilities like dyslexia (reading), dysgraphia (writing), and dyscalculia (math) that can affect otherwise smart and capable people. These are measurable impairments, not just a difficulty that can be overcome with time and effort.
https://neurolaunch.com/cognitive-disorders-list/
It would be wise to be more careful with your sweeping statements.
i know people who have all this problems in my family.
you know how they over come them?
by making an effort and achieving their goals.
i’ve also known plenty of people who sit around and whine about their disability and refuse to make any effort to improve their life, and blame everyone else for being ‘privileged’ than them, including myself.
weird how that works. almost like not everyone defines themselves as a hapless victim.
I’m trying to steer this away from subjective topics like motivation and effort here. I’m talking about neural hardware with concrete, quantifiable impediments that lead to poor functionality compared to the general populace. Things like physical brain damage or incomplete cortical development.
This genuinely affects quality of life for real people regardless of their mood or whether they consider themselves a victim or any other non-scientific generalizations.
I don’t know whether your family members were actually tested by a credentialed psychologist or psychiatrist, or if they were merely self-diagnosed. I won’t make any assumptions there but please know there is an huge difference in terms of accuracy.
life is subjective. you can steer it away from that all you want, but personal accountability is the name of the game for everyone, disabled or not.
no, they are officially diagnosed and had lots of professional support. you know what the differences between their failures and successes were? putting in the effort. when they studied and practiced, they got good grades and succeed. when they didn’t, they failed.
it’s almost like learning things is about making the effort to learn them.
according to your philosophy here, nobody can ever run a marathon if they aren’t already athletic. that isn’t true. almost anyone can do it, they simple have to train their body to do it. and if they are disabled, they use a wheelchair or other accessibility device. they still need to train.
Ignorance can be used to refer to both cases.
yeah but that’s a phrase not a word: “willful ignorance.”
It’s used interchangeably. Willful is added when people want to be clearer and more specific.