I used to interpret this phrase in the image of a young student, saying, “You should have asked your teacher what you didn’t understand, but you didn’t and made appropriate assumptions, and now you are embarrassed as an adult because you didn’t ask.

I just realized a different interpretation. Imagine a middle-aged person: “He should ask the younger people about new things he doesn’t know, but by not asking and pretending to know them or assuming they are trivial, the people around him think, ‘Oh, he has already lost the ability to learn new things. This is very embarrassing, but the person is unaware of it and spends the rest of his/her life adding to the shame by being overbearing and so on” interpretation.

Putting the two interpretations side by side, the latter fits me better now.

  • Young people may act according to false assumptions, fail, and realize the existence of their assumptions
  • Middle-aged people who disregard new knowledge don’t act on it because they disregard it and don’t realize how much they disregard it.
  • Same principle as Pessimistic Misconceptions. The latter are more likely to be stuck in more serious situations.

relevance


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