Ignorance

There are three types of 'ignorance' to be found among human beings:
1) simple ignorance -- which may be corrected; another term for this is 'honest error';
2) incorrigible ignorance -- which cannot be corrected; another, more crass, term for this is 'stupidity';
3) willful ignorance -- which will not be corrected; at its worst, another term for this is 'intellectual dishonesty'.

One may reason with the man who is simply ignorant, who is in honest error; one may be able, in patience, to reason with the man who is stupid (*); one cannot reason with a man who is on the spectrum from disinterested in the matter to actively hostile to understanding it.


(*) For, it is probably the case, not that his ignorance really is incorrigible, but rather that it takes noticeably longer for him to properly understand new concepts than it does the average person. It is my firm belief that stupidity is more a function of the so-called stupid person's frustration at his slowness coupled with the impatience of the less stupid persons in trying to deal with that slowness, than it is of an actual impossibility of that person learning/understanding.