American politics needs more ignorance.

Not just any kind of ignorance. Certainly not a willful ignorance that purposely and often proudly lacks facts or logic. 

The willfully ignorant, the neuroscientist Stuart Firestein says in his book “Ignorance: How It Drives Science,” are “unaware, uninformed.” And, he adds,  “surprisingly often occupy elected offices.”

What our politics needs is another form of ignorance, what Firestein calls “knowledgeable ignorance.”

To understand what that means, you first need to know something about Firestein. He is an eminent neuroscientist at Columbia University who does all the important things that scientists are supposed to do.  But in addition he does something quite different. He teaches a very popular graduate course on ignorance.

This is definitely not a niche course taught by some whimsical tenured professor with time on his hands. In fact, it is a highly popular course involving many exceptional scientists.

They believe what Firestein believes: that knowledgeable ignorance is the linchpin of science. This kind of productive ignorance has four characteristics, all of which should also apply to politics.

First, good scientists recognize how little they know and how uncertain, unclear and contradictory the facts often are.

Second, good scientists concentrate not on what is known but on what they don’t know.

Third, good scientists are wary about confidence but inspired by ignorance. 

Fourth, a good scientist is confident that she is on right track but willing to be proven wrong. She even encourages it.

Everything that knowledgeable ignorance is, contemporary politics is not.

The ignorance issue is much broader and deeper than Trump or his supporters. As low as the 2016 campaign was, it was really just an exaggerated version of voter and politician behavior that has been around for a long time.

Today skepticism, uncertainty and humility are seen as political weaknesses — signs that you are wishy-washy or have no ideals. Being flexible, having doubts and showing a willingness to change your mind is seen as “flip flopping.”    

How many times have you heard or supported a politician who says something like, “I have the answer,” “it’s really quite simple,” or  “it’s time to quit pussyfooting around?”   

For that matter, how many times have you talked assertively and confidently about some idea that you, well, just sort of know in your heart or gut has to be right?

How many times did that turn out to be wrong?

When proud politicians stick to their guns regardless of the evidence, that’s not manning up. That’s willful stupidity.

Whoever heard of another occupation where it’s bad to change your mind? Doctors? Pilots? The guy who’s building an addition to your house?

It’s like we live on Earth but politics lives on the plant Bizarro. Worse, when it comes to politics, we Earth creatures transport ourselves into Bizarroeans.

People are more cynical about politics than ever. Yet at the same time we are all too willing to believe in some political sweet talker’s facile formulas and bloated certainties as long as they tickle our core and shimmy our emotions.

Willful ignorance as a badge of honor awarded by the voters of America.

There are two powerful reasons why willful ignorance is so much an accepted part of politics. One is psychological. The other is philosophical.

Both reasons are formidable, but not deal breakers.

As psychologists have shown time and again, our core values powerfully drive the way we think and learn about politics. These values are quite stable. We avoid information that challenges or contradicts these values. If we do consider the information, it is usually not to accept it but to argue with it.

These core beliefs are your guides. They are also your blinders. That goes for ordinary folks as well as for politicians, who in fact are more likely to have  well-formed ideologies that are even harder to change.

That may in be our nature, but so are other things like curiosity, self-awareness, and skepticism toward authority. 

As Firestein shows, you can teach a budding scientist to be comfortable with scientific ignorance and to appreciate its worth. We need to explore ways to get citizens to be similarly comfortable with and appreciative of the productive kind of political ignorance.

Media literacy courses and programs are good models. Their goal is to teach people how to how to distinguish real news from fake news, which essentially means moving people from bad ignorance to knowledgeable ignorance.

The second and more philosophical reason is about democracy itself. Democracy makes it not simply possible but defensible for stupid people to elect other stupid people.

“Let the people decide,” is a core principle of democracy.

But saying it’s the people’s right to decide is a pretty lame defense of political stupidity. We need to thwart willful ignorance, not simply defend it as the people’s choice.

Am I talking about Donald Trump here? Sure I am, but also much more. Trump is a walking, talking icon of willful ignorance. It’s a key part of the art of his deal. 

But the ignorance issue is much broader and deeper than Trump or his supporters. As low as the 2016 campaign was, it was really just an exaggerated version of voter and politician behavior that has been around for a long time.

It has become harder and harder to reconcile the basics of democracy with what we now know about the way people make political decisions.

In 1877, soon after Rutherford B. Hayes became president of the United States in the most flawed, controversial presidential election in American history, Amos Bronson Alcott, an educator and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, “To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.”

A good starting point is to make this a maxim of good politics, just as it is a maxim of good science.