One of the better decisions I’ve made over the past decade or so is allowing myself to say “I don’t know” and “I don’t have an informed opinion about that” more often.

Giving oneself permission to admit ignorance isn’t easy for many of us, as society primes (some of) us to conceal our understanding-gaps with all the bluster we can muster.

Divulging our informational lacunae, though, can spark conversational chains that lead to greater understanding, while also demonstrating humility—which tends to add credibility to our other (more info-backed) claims.

There’s a space between “things we know about” and “things we’re ignorant of,” though, that I tend to think of as the land of “relatively ignorant opinions.”

Understanding the distinction between these and more- or less-informed opinions is important in part because the dividing lines can be blurry, but also because the level of confidence we should have in each opinion-type should differ greatly.

If I’ve read a quick summary of something happening in the news today—maybe a bit of political maneuvering, maybe something that happened in a military conflict overseas—I likely know more about that current event than someone who hasn’t read a similar summary, but I probably don’t know anything more than that.

I likely lack informational depth about the history of those maneuverings or that conflict, might not understand the implications of what’s happening, today, and how those happenings will influence future happenings, and may not even fully grok why what’s happening matters to anyone beyond the halls of government or traversing those foreign battlefields.

My opinion on this specific matter, then, will be better informed than it was before I ingested that quick summary—I have a sense of the numbers, the main players, and a superficial overview of what it all means—but I’m not an expert, even though I may know 100% more about the topic than I did before downing that shot glass of data.

The difference between absolute knowledge and relative knowledge is important here, because while yes, that 100% leap in my understanding is not nothing, and it will probably be enough for me to form a rough outline of what’s going on (which in turn expands and enriches my mental model of the world, how it works, and what’s happening in it right now), it’s still not anywhere near the comprehension I could acquire by majoring in the subject at school, reading scholarly tomes on the matter, engaging with hundreds of focused works compiled by experts, or participating in the events firsthand as a professional politician or proficient partisan (which in turn would almost certainly require a fair bit of theoretical and practical knowledge, just to be welcomed into the operational fold).

Most of the resources to which we have casual access provide us with superficial understandings that are meant to improve our broad-scope, situational awareness, but no more than that.

Watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, or reading online summaries of events can increase our understanding of something by 100%, but that’s a relative increase in our personal knowledge, not an objective assessment of how knowledgeable we are compared to how knowledgeable we could be.

These types of resources are valuable because increasing the quality of our heuristics for how the world works provides us with jumping-off points for greater, deeper, richer understanding.

I’m unlikely to seek out more information on a foreign conflict or political happening unless I know such things are going on in the first place, and unless I possess a bare-bones comprehension that nudges me to commit more of my time, energy, and resources to learning more about it.

Recognizing this thin-coat of knowledge for what it is, relative to a more complete expertise, helps us maintain a proper and productive sense of humility while also allowing us to expand our understanding over time.

It also helps us form our opinions appropriately: maintaining enthusiastically malleable beliefs and judgements early on in our knowledge journey because we understand that what we’ve yet to learn enormously outweighs what we currently know.

If you found value in this essay, consider buying me a coffee :)