Beyond Willful Ignorance

Willful Ignorance in a World of Biased Misinformation

Suppose individuals face a claim of uncertain validity and can only obtain more information from sources known to sometimes report biased misinformation for or against the claim. In such an environment, it is optimal for Bayesian expected utility maximizers to select the source biased toward their current behavior even if they know that source more frequently reports misinformation than an oppo...

Does Willful Ignorance Deflect Punishment? – An Experimental Study

This paper studies whether people can avoid punishment by remaining willfully ignorant about possible negative consequences of their actions for others. We employ a laboratory experiment, using modified dictator games in which a dictator can remain willfully ignorant about the payoff consequences of his decision for a receiver. A third party can punish the dictator after observing the dictator’...

1 Equal Culpability and the Scope of the Willful Ignorance Doctrine

Ignorance-Based Chance Discovery. Beyond Dark Events

The human part of chance-discovery is usually analyzed as an effect of the agent’s knowledge of herself and of her environment. In this paper, setting off from the importance of “understanding the meaning of an impending phenomenon as a chance,” we will analyze how chance-discovery activities are affected and driven by the agent’s ignorance, and the relationship she entertains with the latter. ...

Beyond duplicity and ignorance in global fisheries*

The three decades following World War ii were a period of rapidly increasing fishing effort and landings, but also of spectacular collapses, particularly in small pelagic fish stocks. This is also the period in which a toxic triad of catch underreporting, ignoring scientific advice and blaming the environment emerged as standard response to ongoing fisheries collapses, which became increasingly...