Discussion»Questions»Life and Society» Can you ever know too much about a subject? You think you have all the answers/know everything there is to know? Is a little ignorance good?
It's tempting to say No! and be happy with that. Surely, the more we know about a subject the better.
Well, yeah. But it depends what the subject is and how you relate to it. A leading Indian chess grandmaster said in an interview earlier this year that he only intended to stay in the game for a few years. Why? Because he thought that the amount of study, the amount of memory work, the amount of time spent study the games of past masters, was such that he expected to reach the point where he would no longer enjoy the game.
Similarly a parent who learns the game (any game, I suppose) to play with his kids but gets hooked and pursues it at a higher level will find that the kids no longer want to play with him. (Nor he with them, since there would be no challenge.) So yeah, sometimes a little ignorance is a pretty good thing.
When he was young my son and I started playing Scrabble. By the time he was 12 he beat me regularly and not by a little..by a whole lot. So I stopped playing with him because I was no challenge for him and I had no chance of ever winning again. Here is where I should tell you that he is a genius and I am not. I don't know if anyone ever beat him after that. I didn't ask. I think to have fun you have a little chance of doing well. No one wants to get regularly creamed. I also think a little bit of ignorance is good. Having no room to grow/do better would be hard to take. What incentive would there be if you always performed exactly the same? Thank you for your thoughtful and informative reply Didge! :)
Benedict Arnold 