Ignorance as a luxury

Going into obscure movies blind is one of my guilty pleasures.

I’ll scour the web for niche recommendations, find a few with a modicum of upvotes, then head to a nearby streaming platform to take a (half-informed) gamble. No trailer. No reviews. I don’t even know the genre of these movies most of the time.

While most of them end up being mediocre, I do occasionally stumble upon a Brazil or Parasite which does nothing more than encourage me to keep up this strange addiction I have with wasting time watching bad films, hoping I’ll land another jaw dropper.

It’s easy to hear something is “good” or “bad” and make an early judgment call from the outside without ever getting your hands dirty and experiencing it for yourself. Which leads to a natural lesson.

Being totally stupid about how the real world works is a luxury.

I bootstrapped my first startup for three years, an effort which ultimately resulted in failure, but one which transformed me into a more effective leader, technologist, and professional. To survive as long as I did, the endeavor forced me to learn sales and marketing, and sharpen my engineering skills at a pace I would never experience in a traditional job.

And if I knew in advance how difficult the entire adventure would be, I might not have bought a ticket in the first place despite the positive, priceless outcomes.

I benefited from the ignorance of difficulty.

This type of ignorance is incredibly useful to anyone trying to accomplish something important. It’s when the excitement about the outcome outweighs the apparent hardship of the trial. Enthusiasm at its best.

One of the most human variations is marriage.

At the altar, people normally believe they’re going the distance. They don’t consider the inevitability of arguments, parenting, declining health, or any of the other stresses the years will require of them for success. It’s arguably irrational in some ways to link your life so closely to another, but we do it anyway because a healthy marriage is full of joy, love, and memories that would be impossible to experience any other way.

Marriage shows us where the fruits of an experience are usually worth the personal cost. Where the ignorance of difficulty helps couples pursue it despite the odds.

But not all ignorance is nearly as useful.

In the United States, almost 39% of people between the ages of 18 and 24 are enrolled in college. Despite some messaging from companies that degrees are going out of style, the university continues attracting large cohorts of people who typically take on debt in the process.

A lot of debt.

There is over $1.86 trillion in student loan debt in the United States, behind only mortgages and auto loans for the highest household debt. It’s estimated that borrowers make payments of about $390 on average per month.

Debt is painful, and in return students aren’t guaranteed an economically viable job or even a degree unless they finish and choose a career with good prospects (and even then, hope they get a little lucky with the state of the economy when they enter the workforce). The debt they carry with them is painful and most don’t realize the full weight of that choice until they start paying it back afterwards.

Many enroll in college with ignorance of the consequences - the pain their choice carries if it goes poorly. By contrast, difficulty is a measure of how much work the degree will demand. The consequences are what happens if the result of that work doesn’t provide a return.

There is a ton of wisdom in listening to those who have gone before us. There’s a reason we ought to stand on the shoulders of giants and learn from their experience.

But there are some things you can only learn by experiencing them yourself. The shoulders of giants philosophy is helpful but shouldn’t be an excuse not to attempt anything on your own. Veterans of a craft understand victory, but they also have scars and excuses. They project their point of view and say certain outcomes are inevitable, even if they aren’t. They’re more likely to miss things because they don’t remember what it was like to have a beginner’s mind.

Experience brings better judgment but it also locks us into a particular frame of reference with hard-coded assumptions, habits and beliefs. The rules feel more permanent. It’s harder to dream.

Therefore, the goal isn’t to purposefully be less informed. Ignorance for its own sake is stupidity. Rather, be comfortable not knowing how hard something will be and take extra care to count the cost if it goes wrong. 

If you worry too much about the difficulties before you start, you’ll miss an opportunity to let them shape you along the way.