Allocation concealment and blinding: when ignorance is bliss : [Letter]

Non peer reviewe

Rational ignorance is not bliss: When do lazy voters learn from decentralised policy experiments?

A popular argument about economic policy under uncertainty states that decentralisation offers the possibility to learn from local or regional policy experiments. We argue that such learning processes are not trivial and do not occur frictionlessly: Voters have an inherent tendency to retain a given stock of policy-related knowledge which was costly to accumulate, so that yardstick competition is improbable to function well particularly for complex issues if representatives’ actions are tightly controlled by the electorate. Decentralisation provides improved learning processes compared to unitary systems, but the results we can expect are far from the ideal mechanisms of producing and utilising knowledge often described in the literature.Policy decentralisation; fiscal competition; model uncertainty; collective learning.

When ignorance is bliss : information asymmetries enhance prosocial behavior in dicator games

In most laboratory experiments concerning prosocial behavior subjects are fully informed how their decision influences the payoff of other players. Outside the laboratory, however, individuals typically have to decide without such detailed knowledge. To asses the effect of information asymmetries on prosocial behavior, we conduct a laboratory experiment with a simple non-strategic interaction. A dictator has only limited knowledge about the benefits his prosocial action generates for a recipient. We observe subjects with heterogenous social preferences. While under symmetric information only individuals with the same type of preferences transfer, under asymmetric information different types transfer at the same time. As a consequence and the main finding of our experiment, uninformed dictators behave more prosocially than informed dictators

When collective ignorance is bliss: Theory and experiment on voting for learning

When do groups and societies choose to be uninformed? We study a committee that needs to vote on a reform which will give every member a private state-dependent payoff. The committee can vote to learn the state at no cost. We show that the committee votes not to learn the state whenever independent voters are more divided than partisans. This implies that groups with conflicting preferences tend to seek less information. A laboratory experiment shows that committees are substantially more likely to vote against acquiring information when the theory predicts them to do so. We also observe deviations from theory that are largely explained by cognitive limitations. At the same time, subjects with more experience or with greater strategic competence are more likely to vote in line with the theory, providing evidence for external validity of the model.We thank Universidad del Rosario for hosting the experiment, and the financial support from Central Bank of Colombia grant 3754, Spanish Ministry of the Economy grant MDM 2014-0431, and Comunidad de Madrid grant S2015/HUM-344

When Ignorance Is Not Bliss: In Search of Racial and Gender Equity in Intercollegiate Athletics

While racial and gender-based inequities regularly occur throughout our broader culture, this Article focuses on their presence in the context of athletics. Part II of this Article examines possible racial and gender implications associated with the common unwillingness, in the academic context, to take seriously the academic skills or values that may attend participation in athletics. Effective efforts to deal with racial and gender- based inequity in the operation of intercollegiate athletics will have to account for the presence of this broader academic ambivalence toward participation in athletics. Part III, in turn, deals with the existence of racial and gender inequity in athletics generally, and specifically, in intercollegiate athletics at the Division I level.\u27 Part IV examines a number of reform and related efforts designed to enhance racial and gender equity in intercollegiate athletics

When ignorance is bliss: weight perception, body mass index and quality of life in adolescents

Background/Objectives:Body weight is negatively associated with adolescent Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL). Despite this well-established relationship, some adolescents with obesity do not display the expected HRQoL decreases. This study hypothesised weight perception as a moderator of the association between weight status and adolescent HRQoL.Subjects/Methods:Subjects were secondary school students from an obesity prevention project in the Barwon South-West region of Victoria, Australia, entitled It’s Your Move (N=3040). Measures included standardised body mass index (BMI-z; World Health Organization growth standards), weight perception and HRQoL, measured by the Paediatric Quality of Life Inventory. Linear regression and average marginal effect analyses were conducted on cross-sectional baseline data to determine the significance of any interaction between weight perception and measured weight status in shaping adolescent HRQoL.Results:The BMI-z/perceived weight status interaction was significantly associated with adolescent HRQoL outcomes. Adolescents with BMI z-scores in the overweight/obesity range who perceived themselves as overweight had lower HRQoL than those who perceived themselves as ‘about right.’ Conversely, adolescents with BMI scores in the lower end of the normal range or in the thinness range who perceived themselves as underweight had lower HRQoL than those with ‘about right’ perceptions.Conclusions:This was the first study to report third-variable impacts of a body-perception variable on the relationship between adolescent weight status and HRQoL. Adolescents’ weight perceptions significantly moderated the relationship between overweight/obesity and reduced HRQoL. Adolescents who were outside the normal weight range and misperceived their objectively measured weight status enjoyed a higher HRQoL than adolescents whose weight perception was concordant with their actual weight status. These findings suggest that practitioners may need to exercise caution when educating adolescents about their weight status, as such ‘reality checks’ may negatively impact on adolescent HRQoL. It is suggested that more research be conducted to examine this potential effect

Curiosity and Ignorance

Though ignorance is rarely a bliss, awareness of ignorance almost always is. Had we not been able to develop this powerful skill, there would have been no philosophy or science, nor advanced forms of religion, art, and technology. Awareness of ignorance, however, is not a motivator; but when it arouses curiosity that is strong enough, it causes what may be called an “epistemic” desire; a desire to know, to understand, to learn or to gain new experiences, which is a basic motivator for inquiry. This makes the relationship between curiosity and awareness of ignorance all the more important. One can however find very little on this relationship within the philosophical literature. In this essay this is what I wish to explore. After a brief discussion of the question of whether awareness of ignorance is a precondition for curiosity, based on my earlier work I attempt to show that corresponding to the two forms of curiosity that I call “objectual” and “propositional”, there are also two forms of ignorance. This will refute the prejudice that awareness of ignorance must always have propositional content and therefore must always be about truth. I further argue that awareness of ignorance that does have propositional content can be of two different varieties: truth-ignorance versus fact-ignorance. One may simply be ignorant of whether a proposition is true or false ; one may, on the other hand, know that a proposition is true but still be ignorant of the fact that makes it true. I then show that awareness of ignorance, whether it is objectual or propositional, can always be translated into what I shall call awareness of inostensibility. An important moral to be drawn from this discussion is that reaching truth, even when it is coupled with certainty, does not always eliminate one’s ignorance and therefore cannot be the ultimate goal of inquiry