"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." -Bertrand Russell.
"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." -Albert Einstein
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that these quotes are misleading. The way they place the labels and blame are backwards. Here is one of my favorite jokes and it lays it out a bit better.
Speaker- Only a fool is certain!
Random Audience Member- Are you sure?
Speaker- Absolutely!!
The greatest threat facing humanity is not the stupid. I have seen stupid people get smarter over time. Thought itself is like any other intended action, the more you practice it, the better you become at doing it.
Proof that practice makes progress.
The greatest threat facing humanity is its capacity for certainty. The instant a person becomes certain they know the truth of something, they stop learning anything more on the subject. The moment they think they have it all figured out, they stop improving, progressing, advancing, etc. They stop being of any real use and the book that they are, closes.
A good friend begins one of my favorite songs with the words, "Some of my friends are dead and the rest just stopped living." (I believe he wrote that line before we met.)
https://odysee.com/@Blasted:d/rise:e7c
Think about it. How many people do you know that simply stopped growing as individuals. Do you ever call them? Visit? Did you completely lose interest in them?
I consider them NPCs (Non Player Characters.) They are the idiots standing at a crossroads in an RPG that always say the same line no matter how many times you happen past them in the game and regardless of what has happened. For the 10th time, they inform you - "I hear there are bandits in that pass" long after you followed their advice and killed those bandits hours ago. That is certainty.
Certainty itself is nothing more than the sum of a person's laziness and arrogance, with varying degrees of each so a huge swath of humanity is somewhere on the spectrum. Some are incredibly arrogant and a bit lazy, others may be the opposite, but the effect on the world is the same. Harm.
Here are some examples-
The Doctor who refuses to listen to a patient's description of their ailment.
The fanatic who knows the will of their god.
The activist with no doubts about the righteousness of their cause.
The factory worker who wasn't listening to the assembly instructions.
The bricklayer who didn't bother to measure their mortar mix ingredients properly.
The person who follows the decree of authorities/experts and refuses to look into any other possibilities.
The person who judges your opinion solely on the letters following your name on your business card.
The person who judges your opinion solely on the letters following their name on their business card.
They are all somewhere on the spectrum. Some, you would call idiots, some you probably wouldn't. When was the last time you met a Doctor you considered stupid? But it is the same problem, isn't it? The guy who didn't bother learning the instructions is the same as the doctor who doesn't listen to his patients. They were both certain they did not need the info.
So , please. think about your position on any topic. Do you have any doubts? If not, you should.
Are you curious if there is more to topics you consider yourself an expert on? If not, then you have a problem.
Or more to the point, please know that the current sum total of human knowledge is, at best, a collection unmatched naivety* and completely incorrect about everything. As we expand our reach and our gaze, we will constantly be proven wrong again and again and that is the best possible future. Don’t get attached to your conclusions to the point of faith or belief, because you will be wrong eventually.
*Every scientific conclusion is supposed to be based on the best fitting theory given the information on hand. At best, that means that our conclusions utilize the very limited info we have about the universe around us in order to draw conclusions on topics that govern the entire universe. To say that we are naïve is perhaps the greatest understatement of all time.