Stephen Hawking: "illusion of knowledge"

[inavalan]

Stephen Hawking:

• "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

He has a good point, but your own "illusion of knowledge" is almost impossible to realize; your beliefs prevent you.

Maybe easier to spot and work on, are your own arrogance and stubbornness.

[LarryH]

inavalan, did you get that quote from an email today from Upworthy.com? If not, that's quite a coincidence.

[inavalan]

No, I got it from jumping from one link to another. It is from, the "The Lancet":

• https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736(22)02413-8

As many of us, the author applies that quote / opinion to somebody who has different views than his.

It is interesting how we all are exposed to the same information, but understand it differently. Sometimes people say "you don't want to see", or such, which implies some willful misinterpretation. "Illusion", outside the entertainment field, has a pejorative connotation. I often read it used by nondualist posters.

It may have always been such an adversarial atmosphere, and I just didn't notice it ... but I've kind of had enough. I try to be careful not to do it too.

[LarryH]

Immediately after reading your Hawking quote, I saw that I had an email from Upworthy listing 10 Hawking quotes, including that one.

[inavalan]

Immediately after reading your Hawking quote, I saw that I had an email from Upworthy listing 10 Hawking quotes, including that one.

I didn't do it! Honest!

It might be worth trying to interpret the symbolism of that synchronicity. It is likely to have somewhat different (intuitive) interpretations and guidance for each of us.

Interesting.