Ignorance is not knowing something.
Stupidity is not having the ability to know something.
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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You can be ignorant on a specific subject, but stupidity is universal.
By that logic, everyone is extremely stupid, since it's impossible to know everything. It's actually impossible to be intelligent.
By feeling, stupid feels like lack of ability to learn and ignorant feels like lazy/avoidant of something you could learn (though you could also be kept in ignorance by another person/a system)
Ignorance is not knowing things (e.g. facts).
Stupidity is not being about to think about things (e.g. lacking reason, being unable to make a good decision even when given all the useful information).
Making a bad decision out of ignorance isn't necessarily stupid. Making a bad decision despite knowing the consequences is.
Ignorance: Lack of information. Stupidity: Inadequate usage of logical reasoning to seek and process information.
That's how I understand it
Ignorance is simply the absense of knowledge. A newborn baby, for example, is ignorant of pretty much everything in the world.
Stupidity is knowing something is wrong and doing it/saying it anyway.
Ignorance can be remedied through education. Stupidity, not so much...
That said, most people could be smarter if they were taught to think, but thinking ability is not the same as knowing facts.
Ignorance is not knowing things.
Stupidity is refusing to learn things.
Stupidity is also inability to learn
inability to learn is a choice.
they do not want to make the effort.
whether or not that effort is worthwhile, however, is the question.
I am learning Russian. lots of people I met recently, love to tell me how stupid it is because it's not a 'useful' thing to learn.
inability to learn is a choice.
Not always. Someone close to me has issues with executive dysfunction and short term memory as a result of brain trauma. She really struggles with algebra and she'll almost certainly never learn calculus even if she wanted to.
lots of people I met recently, love to tell me how stupid it is because it's not a 'useful' thing to learn.
That's a different issue entirely. If they think they're experts at judging what's useful, that may be the Dunning-Kruger effect.
I think we overuse dunning kruger. "useful" is very contextual. I would agree that for many people it would take some specific and dare I say unusual circumstances where learning another language is particularly useful to them. There's some use in that you get a bit of a puzzle to overcome, you can potentially eventually get good enough to consume content in this other language (though one thing LLMs are pretty good at is translation), maybe you get a more direct exposure to Dovstoyestky (sp?). Cool and all, but probably not going to get them a better job or help them with most life tasks.
Cognitive impairments and differing cognitive ability are very much real things 😅 people can have an inability to learn, and/or an unwillingness to learn, but there very much are people who have the former and not the latter
Struggling to learn things is very much not always a choice
those people can learn plenty well.
it just takes more time and effort.
You're dismissing entire categories of cognitive impairment. Not just the varieties of dementia, but also learning disabilities like dyslexia (reading), dysgraphia (writing), and dyscalculia (math) that can affect otherwise smart and capable people. These are measurable impairments, not just a difficulty that can be overcome with time and effort.
https://neurolaunch.com/cognitive-disorders-list/
It would be wise to be more careful with your sweeping statements.
i know people who have all this problems in my family.
you know how they over come them?
by making an effort.
weird how that works!!
Ignorance can be used to refer to both cases.
yeah but that's a phrase not a word: "willful ignorance."
It's used interchangeably. Willful is added when people want to be clearer and more specific.
I don't know and I don't care
In my opinion, and the fact that it's just an opinion is part of the answer itself, the term stupidity or stupid doesn't really mean much of anything. As you say it has a lot of overlap with the concept of ignorance, the main reason someone might choose to use one term over the other is to make it derogatory, or to express displeasure with a person or action. If you're neutral about someone lacking knowledge of something, you think they're "ignorant" if you are annoyed by this or don't like that person, you think they're "stupid".
However if you look up "stupid" in the dictionary there is a bit of a difference. It focusses more on cognitive capacity than knowledge. So if you don't know things because you're inherently lacking in the ability to learn them effectively, people might say you're stupid, whereas if you don't know things because there was simply no opportunity for you ever to have learned them, then you're ignorant.
Ignorance characterizes knowledge; stupidity characterizes behavior.
You can be ignorant without being stupid and stupid without being ignorant, but they tend to be correlated because neglecting knowledge is stupid behavior.
There are different kinds of stupidity and ignorance.
And yes, there are lots of differences. Often the stupid person is the person who expects other people to not be ignorant of what they know, and makes other people feel stupid, and thus destroys any chance anyone has of learning from each other.
Lots of stupid people, can't admit their ignorance. And lots of people can't admit they made a mistake, and thus remain ignorant.
Ignorance is an overlapping circle with stupidity. If you are ignorant about something, you do not possess knowledge of it. Perhaps you've not been exposed to the information yet, or aren't old enough to comprehend it. In such cases, you may be ignorant but not stupid.
If you are stupid, you have failed to acquire knowledge that you should have, given your circumstances, or you come to incorrect conclusions based on the correct knowledge you have acquired. In the former case, you are both stupid and ignorant; in the latter, only stupid.
I feel most of the comments try to separate these two too much too. I mean yes, in the most basic form ignoro means to not know. Which seems innocuous enough in its elf, but a lot of ignorant people will often not admit (be it to themselves or others) that they’re ignorant. And I don’t know whether that’s stubbornness, stupidity, pride or whatever.
Now we’re seeing more and more people who feel cool and tough about themselves because of their ignorance.
People, like AI , can state bullshit with such conviction it may even fool other ignorant and stupid people. Meanwhile people actually might have a good idea or something to say get laughed at. Providing back up for your statements with evidence Is useless in this post-truth
Those people are also stupid.
i think ignorance is reject learn things that you dont knew stupidity is do things thinking that you knew it, but not. (sorry my bad english)
Ignorant = doesn't know yet.
Stupid = knows better but does it anyway.
I'm sorry that this doesn't at all answer the question...But I just had to link this incredibly iconic moment from King of the Hill.
The ignorant usually improve. The stupid usually don't.
Stupidity isn't just lack of knowledge, it's lack of wisdom. Lack of ability to think about your knowledge and apply it
Ignorance is being uninformed.
Stupidity is to either ignore or not understand or to intentionally (willfully) stay uninformed.
Ignorance is not knowing the words have different definitions. Stupidity is refusing to look up either, and instead crowdsourcing the answer.
Ignorance is not knowing something. Stupidity is knowing something and acting like you don't.
We are all ignorant, stupid.
Ignorance is a clack of knowledge.
Stupidity is a choice to not learn.
Some one who is ignorant, can cure that by learning. Some one who is stupid never will.
Ignorance is not knowing what Lemmy is.
Stupidity is to sign up and continuing to use Lemmy anyways.
;p
huh?
This guy gets it.
Ignorance is not knowing. Stupidity is not applying what you know. Think of the friends meme...
Ignorant is more specific, only applies when someone doesn't know or doesn't want to know something. That can be referred to as stupid, but stupid can also refer to any other kind of stupidity, such as struggling to work out a basic math or logic puzzle, or failing to follow basic instructions.