Willfully Ignorant

There are two signs posted to two trees in my neighborhood separated by a block or two. Each sign has a picture of a cat. One claims to have found a cat. The other claims to have lost a cat. By my eye, the cats pictures are the same. I thought about calling, but the short distance between the two signs lead me to believe this was a ruse. But then again, I know people who are so willfully ignorant of the most straightforward connections (myself not excluded) that it wouldn’t surprise me that the two sign posters would not have ventured the block required to see the other sign.

By not acting on the knowledge of these two signs, I am also subjectively ignoring the information, or being ignorant, am I not? I could raise the issue that by calling myself out, I am somehow absolved. But if I apply this principle elsewhere, lets say, for instance, that I choose to believe that infringing the rights of a citizen of my country is okay in the name of the security of the country, I am approving the fact that I am subjectively ignoring the rights granted by the constitution of said country. If I further this stance, by expanding my adoption of ignorance by stating that because I am not a threat to my country, I will not be infringed upon, do I not enter into a moral hazard? Which, if it hasn’t yet escaped from the vapid collective memory, is precisely the culprit that brought the world economic system to its knees?

So I must ask myself, if it was my lost cat, wouldn’t I want the person in my position to make the call?

Aside: two roads, traveling in the same direction, but on opposite sides of a river, are stopped by a passing train. In the span of a minute, I observe the lining up of cars at the track-road intersection. From this observation, I determine the number of cars per minute that travel down these streets. Is this not a stochastic Poisson process? And when the train barrier rises and I realize that my side is less trafficked, am I not performing a K-S test?

And they say you can’t use this stuff in real life.

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