Couple of weeks back, few of us were walking out for lunch. One person was talking about a detailed assessment done for a product and asking someone if she was confident to present it to a customer. It seems she showed absolute confidence, but when she started speaking, those were incorrect or meaningless statements which the speaker doesn’t seem to have any awareness about. I said something like “The wise are full of doubts, but fools are full of confidence” - I had been seeing more of these happening of late. I didn’t remember where I had heard this phrase before and exactly what it was. Someone remarked that as we learn more, we also come to know the gaps in our knowledge, hence when we speak we are cautious. But if someone doesn’t know at all, they can be confident.
Last week, I saw this quote in a tweet.
"The folks who know the truth aren't talking...The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!" - Tom Waits
Then this poem (The Second Coming, W B Yeats) came up in the Poem A Day feed last week, which carries the original quote. I read up on the analysis of the poem, context in which Yeats wrote it (First World War, Irish War) and how the phrases were adopted in culture (Things Fall Apart, Centre Cannot Hold and such). It is relevant right now when the world seems to be at the edge of some chaos.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
In the past week, I was in an intense discussion about Generative AI. I felt there was a lot of noise, but no substantive arguments. I was looking at one person in the room who has spent a lot of time learning Generative AI in the past year and she appeared disinterested. Afterwards I asked her why she didn’t speak up, she said she did in the past, there was no change and hence she is saving her energy.
If in major debates that affect us, when people who know shuts up or are silenced or their voices drowned out, what would happen?
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