Information avoidance: A critical conceptual review

I had no idea the information avoidance was an area of study!

I'm curious to dig into this paper a bit more, because I've been wondering if the same phenomenon relates to:

1) the generally low quality of public discourse on a wide variety of topics -- many people seem to hate discussion based on evidence and would rather "go with their gut" or appeal to some vague notion of "common sense".

2) the popularity of AI -- there seems to be a common sentiment that AI is capable of taking care of the messy, yet important, details of the world around us so that we don't have to. i.e. AI is a information avoidance black box which gives us the liberty of ignoring what's actually in the box.

It's a prank on the popular saying "ignorance is bliss", right?

An overly convoluted article describing ignorance in reductionist terms, meanwhile massaging it to actually praise ignorance through the very same reductive framework.

It mocks whoever agrees to it, which is kind of amusing, but also cruel and unnecessary.