Especially here on the internet. Ken sees a potentially sobering mirror:
I’ve been feeling very self-conscious. That’s because lots of people are talking about … subjects with which I am somewhat familiar. When they do, I ask myself: when I very frequently talk about things I haven’t bothered to learn about, do I sound like that? God help me.
I urge you to ponder this koan, which could lead you to satori.
: Zubon
I know enough about a few things to have an informed opinion, just enough about a bunch of other things to know that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and on a wide variety of subjects I am profoundly ignorant. Occasionally, I mistake the third state for the first and make a complete fool of myself.
It puzzles me that this doesn’t seem to bother most people on the internet.
That was a fascinating piece you linked to, especially the comment thread, which featured plenty of examples of people sounding off about things they were later informed they knew considerably less about than they’d imagined.
Wouldn’t it be an incredibly dull, plodding, tedious life, though, if we only opened our mouths to speak when we really did know what we were talking about? I frequently only know what I’m going to say after I hear myself say it and sometimes I learn that way that I know things things I didn’t know I knew.