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Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

> But ignorance is a choice.

Is that true for this case?

Understanding the actual on-the-ground situation for all types of people and situations in the 10 largest countries will probably take up most of a normal human lifespan. And that's assuming they spend several hours a week, 50 weeks a year, learning.

Understanding India and China alone to that level would probably take up 30-40 years.

It seems literally impossible for the vast vast majority of people to have enough time for that ignorance to have been a meaningful choice.

i.e. This is likely the baseline default for nearly everyone, who are not especially interested in the UK or who are not super-geniuses.

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When you consider the actual context of the essay and that the person to whom the author is speaking directly is the sister of an MP and herself a MEP, this kind of well-actually does ring hollow.

The sister of a generationally-wealthy MP, both the products of extremely wealthy families who did not have to work for their money (which is why they are both in politics - because they're pretty useless everywhere else).

Sister

When you make an argument in general terms, you can't call no-fair when someone takes it at face value and counter-argues in equally general terms. That's not cheating, it's just assuming good faith.

When people point out that one's counter-argument, by virtue of ignoring the context the original argument is steeped in, is not actually countering any argument, they aren't saying that the counter-argument is "cheating" - they are adding context.

You can call it "adding context" if you concede that said context implies the original argument was badly phrased, in that the most direct reading is not what the writer really meant.

Or I could just call it "adding context". I could also expect readers to not have to be spoon-fed, and to avoid launching themselves into "counter-arguments" before they have understood what they are arguing against.

An argument that doesn't contain adequate context to be understood is a bad argument. You can't expect people outside your exact bubble to have enough context to figure out things you're literally not saying.

I'd say "ignorance is a choice" misrepresents this as a problem of individuals rather than structures. Miss Mogg isn't the problem. The world would not be much better if she took the time and energy to try to learn about the author's life experience and attempt to empathize with it - which is no easy feat given they are worlds apart and each other's life experiences are likely mutually incomprehensible because they lack any frame of reference.

The ignorance is inevitable. The system that produces and enables this ignorance and that allows this ignorance to result in harm (by creating ignorant laws that create ignorant legal structures that ignorantly harm people the people who created the laws didn't understand) is the problem. You can guillotine the entire House of Lords but that wouldn't change anything other than the names and the number of dead aristocrats.

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