It is literally impossible for anybody to know everything about everything even if he is a genius. As such, each person must individually decide what he thinks is worth knowing and understanding to help him make the right choices and the best decisions in life. As rational beings, we decide what information will be most beneficial for us and we seek to garner that information. As it is impossible for us to learn everything, we deliberately choose to stay ignorant of the rest while we seek information on what is beneficial for us. Quite often, the time, resources, investment, energy and effort required to learn something does not feel as though it is worth it to the individual and, therefore, he deliberately refrains from learning it – because it is simply not beneficial for him. In this sense, it means intentionally choosing to remain uninformed on a topic because the estimated potential benefits are less than the cost of acquiring the information. This is called rational ignorance – the act of refraining from acquiring knowledge because the supposed cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds the expected potential benefit that the knowledge would provide. It is like not engaging in a business where the investment is high but the profit is low.
It was first proposed by American economist Anthony Downs in his book ‘An Economic Theory of Democracy’ published in 1957. Rational ignorance is often used to explain why, for instance, voters in a democracy often have very little incentive to educate themselves about candidates or parties, since the personal benefit they might derive from the effort is likely to be smaller than the cost of it. Ignorance about an issue is said to be “rational” when the cost of educating oneself about the issue sufficiently to make an informed decision can outweigh any potential benefit one could reasonably expect to gain from that decision, and so it would be irrational to waste time doing so. This has consequences for the quality of decisions made by large numbers of people, such as in general elections, where the probability of any one vote changing the outcome is very small.
Politics and elections especially display the same dynamic. By increasing the number of issues that a person needs to consider to make a rational decision about candidates or policies, politicians encourage single-issue voting, party-line voting, jingoism, or selling votes, all of which may tip the playing field in favor of politicians who do not actually represent the interest of the electorate. Jingoism in the Naga context may be related to tribalism, village-ism or clan-ism.
Voters’ rational ignorance does not mean that voters make poor and biased decisions. Rather, it means that many people do not have the time to devote to researching every aspect of a candidate or his policies as they are more concerned about carrying out their everyday responsibilities.
As such, many people find themselves letting others do the research and then form their opinion based on the evidence provided – which in turn gives room for disinformation and propaganda. They are being rationally ignorant not because they don’t care but because they simply do not have the time or do not see the benefit. This gives rise to voter apathy.