We Need to Save Ignorance From AI - Issue 61: Coordinates

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German citizens were offered the chance to read the files kept on them by the Stasi, the much-feared Communist-era secret police service. To date, it is estimated that only 10 percent have taken the opportunity. In 2007, James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, asked that he not be given any information about his APOE gene, one allele of which is a known risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. Most people tell pollsters that, given the choice, they would prefer not to know the date of their own death--or even the future dates of happy events. Each of these is an example of willful ignorance.