The two things that I can't tolerate most are stupidity and ignorance. In this time and age, with internet, mobile phones, ipod and so forth, how can we not learn anything.

We keep telling ourselves that we are in the age of information, but the fact is that we are poorly informed. Because most of the information is deliberately manipulated. Because information management is often careless, repetitive and shallow - handled by people who are ignorant on the subject and don't bother to check their sources as thoroughly as they should. Or because our "mental filter", or instinctive laziness, makes us perceive and understand only what fits our usual beliefs and biases.

There is a mischievous reciprocity of ignorance. When people mutually adjust to other people's (real or assumed) ignorance, the level of dialogue spirals downwards. The amount and the quality of information exchanged tend to zero - or become negative, reinforcing false or distorted notions, increasing prejudice, commonplace and errors of perspective.

Ignorance and stupidity are two completely different things. And so are intelligence and knowledge. There can be very stupid people with lots of "notions" as there can be poorly informed, or scarcely educated, people with a high level of intelligence.

Hence, it reminds me of someone who vouch the intelligence of another. Not that I am arguing about the opinion, but subjecting another person intelligence based on his/her habits to engage in so called an intellectual challenging debate with someone who has the ability to entertain him/her, is somewhat lame.

There is also a relevant difference between formal education level and actual "knowledge". A person can have spent several years at school without learning much, or anything at all, other than repetitive and conventional "notions". While there are self-educated people with considerable depth of knowledge and understanding.

Therefore I don't mean to say that there is any direct and linear connection between ignorance and stupidity. But when they combine and interact the result can be awful. One of the worst forms of ignorance is the assumption of knowledge. Just as people who never notice their own stupidity are very stupid, people who never understand that they don't know are desperately ignorant.