What is the difference between being stupid and being ignorant?

[joon]

I have a personal theory on this and wonder if anyone would like to contribute.
You may answer in religious, political or philosophical points of view or if so inclined all three.
I encourage creativity. I have thought a lot about it but wonder if anyone else sees the difference.

[ms.peachy]

I don't know and I don't care.


Duh. Easy.

[Bob]

that's ignorance and apathy

i just took a dump on your joke, didn't i? sorry

[ms.peachy]

:rolleyes: think harder, Bob...

[Lyman Zerga]

im not naive enough to be open minded for everything in this world and i think thats impossible anyway


well being ignorant is too much fun, cant give it up

[QueenAdrock]

Being ignorant is not knowing something that's pretty common-knowledge...like something pretty much everyone knows but you don't for some reason. Like my one friend who didn't know that hairless cats were that way naturally, he thought they were shaved. I thought "Wow, that's pretty stupid," but then I thought, if he had never been taught it, how would he know? I mean, it may be "obvious" to me, but to him he thought "Why the hell would any cat be that way naturally if every other one has fur?"

Being stupid is when you explain this unknown fact to the person and they still don't get it. I told my friend "No, they're hairless naturally, they're bred that way for people with allergies," and he immediately replied "You know, that makes so much more sense." If he had replied "No fucking way! That's impossible," I'd think he's stupid.

So stupidity = inability to reason and come to logical conclusions about things, ignorance = being misinformed or just uninformed about something that's mostly common knowledge.

[befsquire]

stupid: what you don't know isn't your fault, because you don't have the mental capacity to learn.

ignorant: you could learn, but choose not to.

[joon]

stupid: what you don't know isn't your fault, because you don't have the mental capacity to learn.

ignorant: you could learn, but choose not to.

between you and queen adrock these are the closest to my definitions
I really like this one but like the queens as well.
i looked them up in the dictionary.com but here is my personal philosophy

being stupid more often comes from capacity (like you said)
but in my life i have found that ingnorance, more and more comes from a choice
as in the active participation of [I]ignoring[I].
the choice to ignore is far more treacherous to me and much more difficult to forgive than stupidity (not impossible and certainly it is more spiritually rewarding to forgive) but more dangerous no less.



you can be stupid and nice but ignorance is knowing but refusing to accept or denying the truth for personal gain which i consider selfish and imbecilic (i.e. CHOOSING to be STUPID). stupid people sometimes don't have a choice, but I think ignorant people often do.

For sure, life is about the choices we make. Choices.

i really appreciate those of you who took this seriously. i long to have more adult conversations here. so thanks.