Where being wrong carries no personal cost, holding comfortable false beliefs is individually rational and collectively harmful.
Caplan's 2001 extension. Rational ignorance is not knowing; rational irrationality is preferring not to know, because the belief is pleasant and being wrong costs the holder nothing personally.
In practice
- A commentator whose forecasts are never checked holds the position that plays best with his audience, and would drop it tomorrow with his own money on it.
- A voter whose preferred policy would cost them nothing personally if wrong can hold it comfortably, which is why bad economic beliefs are stable.
- Standing
- Extends rational ignorance from not knowing to preferring not to know.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works