Protecting knowledge important to your organisation by not possessing it (cf. espionage, terrorist cells, etc.)
Also a broader category of circumstances where you may be called upon to act in such a way that you don’t know something you do, where your motives and knowledge will be scrutinised. I’ve yet to come across a satisfactory name for this, but I’ve provisionally referred to it as “protogaming” in the past (as opposed to “metagaming”, where you use knowledge from outside of a game, which you shouldn’t possess, to influence your actions to your own benefit).
Protogaming involves publicly giving someone information they shouldn’t have access to, which would influence their decisions if they had it, and then asking them to make the decision as if they didn’t have the information. If they’d been ignorant, their decisions could be made without scrutiny, but being in possession of the information obliges them to make less favourable options in order to appear as though they’re not taking advantage of the non-legitimate information.
If anyone has a better term for that, please, please, please tell me what it is.
Non-contrived instances where ignorance can have utility:
For entrainment: A movie watcher wants to remain ignorant of a movie’s ending until she actually sees it.
To reduce bias: A scientist conducts a double-blind study.
To respect privacy: I delete the private emails that have been accidentally forwarded to me.
To avoid temptation: If I have difficulty keeping secrets, I should avoid learning them.
Ignorant people can avoid scams by being too dumb to fool. In the ants and prisoner’s dilemma tournaments, smart people lost by getting too clever.
Probably not as true as you think it is.
Off the top of my head you’ll also want to add:
Plausible deniability
Games of asymmetric information (Peach or Lemon? [pdf])
Protecting knowledge important to your organisation by not possessing it (cf. espionage, terrorist cells, etc.)
Also a broader category of circumstances where you may be called upon to act in such a way that you don’t know something you do, where your motives and knowledge will be scrutinised. I’ve yet to come across a satisfactory name for this, but I’ve provisionally referred to it as “protogaming” in the past (as opposed to “metagaming”, where you use knowledge from outside of a game, which you shouldn’t possess, to influence your actions to your own benefit).
Protogaming involves publicly giving someone information they shouldn’t have access to, which would influence their decisions if they had it, and then asking them to make the decision as if they didn’t have the information. If they’d been ignorant, their decisions could be made without scrutiny, but being in possession of the information obliges them to make less favourable options in order to appear as though they’re not taking advantage of the non-legitimate information.
If anyone has a better term for that, please, please, please tell me what it is.
All of those things except perhaps the privacy one are human-specific, in that they only exist for humans, and an AI wouldn’t worry about them.
In learning: You likely get more utility by not knowing what the answer to your homework question is, in advance of working it out
Entertainment: Puzzles, crosswords. Delayed telecast of sport events.