The Bliss of Ignorance — Dr Ahmed Khaled Tawfik

The celebrated Egyptian poet Abdel Rahman El-Abnudi has a famous poem titled Ordinary Sorrows. The passage I have in mind comes at approximately 7:20 and contains the brilliant line:

“God has given him an ignorance that makes him independent of all knowledge.”

Abdel Rahman El-Abnudi, Ordinary Sorrows

That, in the briefest possible form, is the Dunning–Kruger effect.

This explanation was described in 1999 in a study conducted by two psychologists at Cornell University in New York. Despite the study’s brevity, the two later received a Nobel Prize. They were David Dunning and Justin Kruger. Their interest arose after a bank robber named Wheeler was arrested. The thief had reached an extraordinary degree of foolishness: he robbed a bank after covering his face with lemon juice. His idea was that lemon juice is used as invisible ink, and therefore applying it to his face would make him invisible.

The two researchers studied human incompetence and found that people who lack a particular skill may not recognise the extent of their deficiency or ignorance, may fail to recognise the skill in others, and may only understand their own lack of ability after receiving proper training.

I remember my son at the age of five confidently declaring that he could pilot a submarine. When I asked how he would do it, he jumped into the air and said, “Tss!” Such confidence is acceptable—even delightful—in a five-year-old. The important thing is that it should not grow with us until we meet a forty-year-old man who still believes he could pilot a submarine simply by saying, “Tss!”

Dunning and Kruger said that the condition resembles a person suffering from an impairment in the brain when that very impairment prevents the person from recognising that an impairment exists. Your inability deprives you of the ability to recognise your inability.

The example that comes to mind is a third-degree burn. The skin and its nerves are charred, and the result is that the injured person feels no pain. The burning of the skin has made the skin unable to feel that the skin has been burned.

“Your tragedy is that you recognise your tragedy.”

Dr Raouf Roshdy

That is precisely the opposite of what we are discussing here. Your tragedy is that you do not recognise your tragedy.

Confidence, Intelligence, and Humility

People of limited ability, or those who lack skill, may feel intensely superior and look down on others. Intelligent people, by contrast, often remain dissatisfied with themselves and doubt that they are especially talented. They may assume that whatever they can do easily must be equally easy for everyone else.

“I know that I know nothing.”

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

“The trouble with our age is that those who do not understand feel superior, while the truly intelligent are full of doubts.”

Attributed respectively to Socrates, Confucius, and Bertrand Russell

This is the nature of the true scholar: the more knowledge and intelligence increase, the more humility and doubt regarding one’s own knowledge also increase.

There is a famous story about the brilliant Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi. An insolent student confronted him with a question that appeared simple to the other students. Al-Khalil remained silent, then said, “I do not know how to answer this question.”

After the rude student left, Al-Khalil’s students cried out angrily, “If you had allowed us to answer him, we would have silenced him completely.” Al-Khalil replied, “If he had then said this, how would you have answered?” They offered a response. He continued, “And if he had then said that, how would you have answered?” The students fell silent, realising that they had reached a genuine dead end. The true scholar had been less arrogant than they were.

The accompanying image summarises Kruger’s theory: incompetence may reach such a level that the incompetent do not recognise their own incompetence.

Why Are the Ignorant So Confident?

The problem is that those who are ignorant do not miss intelligent people and do not care when they are absent. That is why the guillotine took Lavoisier’s head and Tycho Brahe was burned, while no one saw a problem. If you have never heard of the pineapple, how would its disappearance from the world trouble you?

When the public stormed the headquarters of the scholars of the French campaign, they destroyed everything and burned the maps. They even burned exceedingly precious manuscripts of the Qur’an. Who witnessed all this with a heart torn apart by grief? Al-Jabarti, of course.

You can see examples of this confidence everywhere. Most people are genuinely satisfied with themselves. Watch one of those street-interview clips—while remembering, of course, that being suddenly questioned in the street can be confusing and may momentarily interrupt anyone’s thinking.

Most people believe that they appreciate visual art. They buy paintings of a duck swimming in a canal, a crying child, or a woman kissing a snake. When choosing furniture, they select pieces carved with Romeo and Juliet or a nursemaid. This is art to them, and they are thoroughly satisfied with it; they may even mock you if you say it is poor art.

I used to take my cassette player to a shop specialising in cassette-player repairs. After two weeks of suffering, I discovered that the shop owner knew a great deal about everything except repairing cassette players. Why, then, did you choose this particular human activity, my brother? Because he did not know the truth about his own abilities.

A respected governor recently said that if Israel attacked us with missiles, the wind would carry the missiles back to their own land.

There are certainly exceptional cases: people who believe themselves intelligent and who genuinely are intelligent.

I watched a clip of Tawfik Okasha explaining that God had given him a very high degree of intelligence. He expressed this intelligence through the remarkable statement, “God granted me an intelligence that He could not grant to any other human being.” Apart from my reservations about the strange phrase “God could not,” which slipped from him, Tawfik Okasha is genuinely very intelligent. He shaped the thinking of the Egyptian people for twenty years, achieved exactly what he wanted, and reached Parliament. The Dunning–Kruger effect does not apply to this case.

El-Abnudi had never heard of Dunning and Kruger, yet he summarised the entire principle in his brilliant description of the officer’s arrogance, ignorance, and brutality:

“God has given him an ignorance that makes him independent of all knowledge.”

An article by the late Dr Ahmed Khaled Tawfik.