Já ouviram falar de agnotologia?

Eu não tinha até ter-me deparado com a referência ao artigo da Wired referenciado abaixo.

Agnotologia é o estudo da construção (cultural) da ignorância: "the study of culturally constructed ignorance". A construção cultural da ignorância deverá ter sido um processo activo em todas as sociedades, mas tem afloramentos muito relevantes e contemporâneos como os associados ao criacionismo e ao aquecimento global - se não viram o vídeo, de que esta nota fala, sobre o modo como se construiu (culturalmente) uma opinião pública céptica sobre a responsabilidade humana no aquecimento global (ou sobre os efeitos nefastos do tabaco), façam-no agora!

Esta nota Agnotology The Big Picture faz a ponte para este artigo da Wired, How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge. Robert Proctor é o historiador de ciência responsável pela criação do conceito. Um excerto:

“When it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases. [...]. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, [agnotology] it is “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.” As Proctor argues, when society doesn’t know something, it’s often because special interests work hard to create confusion. [...]

“People always assume that if someone doesn’t know something, it’s because they haven’t paid attention or haven’t yet figured it out,” Proctor says. “But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what’s true and what’s not.” [...] an awesome definition: Agnotology: Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth. [...] After years of celebrating the information revolution, we need to focus on the countervailing force: The disinformation revolution. [...] Even the financial meltdown was driven by ignorance. Credit-default swaps were designed not merely to dilute risk but to dilute knowledge; after they'd changed hands and been serially securitized, no one knew what they were worth. [...]

As Farhad Manjoo notes in True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, if we argue about what a fact means, we're having a debate. If we argue about what the facts are, it's agnotological [...] Because the most important thing these days might just be knowing what we know."

Recomenda-se vivamente a leitura. Este é um conceito a utilizar muitas vezes.

Poderá ser aplicado, nomeadamente, à apreciação da prática política? Desconfio que sim!