There were generally two explanations why the players preferred ignorance.
As he sees it, "Knowledge, even that which may unsettle us, is surely to be preferred to ignorance, however blissful in the short term the latter may be".
Tom McGowan plays Bessie, a full-figured, wise-cracking gal, whose family is dimly aware of something about his hobby but prefers blissful ignorance.
Most prefer to claim selective ignorance, which explains, for example, Martha Stewart's defense of her suspicious trading of ImClone stock.
Plato often observes that the ignorant prefer to remain as they are (Symposium 204a), but this perverse turn toward ignorance is different.
To say of one of Joel Salatin's caged chickens that "the life of freedom is to be preferred" betrays an ignorance about chicken preferences -- which on this farm are heavily focused on not getting their heads bitten off by weasels.
When it comes to knowing their own genetic risks, most people seem to prefer imperfect knowledge to perfect ignorance.
Looking back on such ignorance (though I prefer to think of it as innocence), I wouldn't change it for the world.
But, in principle, when imagining how to react to the distributional effects of automatisation, Susskind and Susskind [41] argue for Rawlsian egalitarianism: if a person has to choose behind 'a veil of ignorance', most people prefer a society where most medical help, legal advice, news, business assistance, and so forth are broadly available, to one where property is only owned by the few.
The white pool-tiles have slightly browned, so – ignorance being bliss – I prefer to swim without contact lenses.
