OPINION: It’s OK to not know

I think people have lost the ability to say, “I don’t know.” Despite having the ability to find almost anything out by tapping their phone a couple times, many people would seemingly rather look knowledgable while spreading misinformation rather than admit they don’t know and quickly find the answer.

I work in one of the few fields where we are expected to be experts on basically everything. As someone who writes about local, state and national politics, education, local festivals, projects, people and basically anything else that comes my way, I have to break something to you. While writing and researching the story, I’d be happy to say I’m somewhat of an expert on the topic.

However, seeing as I usually have to write a story on a completely different topic the next day, almost none of my expertise stays in my brain. People will ask me information about a story I wrote, and unless I wrote the story in the last few days, I have to tell them I honestly don’t know. Did I put the exact answer to their question in the story? Probably, but that information is no longer in my brain.

Because of this, I have become pretty good at saying, “I don’t know, but I can find out!” I’m certainly not perfect at it, but I don’t have an issue not knowing something.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are not like that. I’ve had the opportunity to interview a few state and national politicians and I’ve seen the lack of “I don’t knows” a lot. This isn’t a right- or left-leaning “knowledge” type of situation.

Before interviewing these leaders, I will do a bunch of research on them and the topics they seem to care about. I’ll ask questions already knowing some of the information because I’d prefer to have it as a quote. However, when I ask the question, something completely different comes out of their mouth.

I get it, they cover a wide range of issues and policies every day; they can’t be expected to remember everything. However, rather than giving out misinformation, just say, “I don’t know, I’ll get back to you on that.” Like journalists, politicians are expected to be experts on everything. In both our cases, I think it’s better to profess your lack of knowledge than to say something incorrect.

In a similar vein, but more relevant to the wider population, is realizing something you said was incorrect and admitting your mistake. In my mind, this is a bit harder than saying you don’t know something. I can think of countless times I’ve been confidently wrong about something in a conversation, and upon learning I was wrong, I’ve had to go back to share that information. Even worse for our human pride, that usually means the other person was right.

In journalism, correcting a mistake can mean a variety of things, depending on the severity of the mistake. Often times, a misspelling of the name or an incorrect title will just mean the online version is updated. If something written is found to be inherently false, we will issue a correction on page three. Every once in a while, a major misunderstanding will occur and we have to republish the rewritten story. I can only remember that happening once in the three years I’ve been here.

These corrections are very public, and sometimes embarrassing, but important nonetheless. While everyone makes mistakes in their job, we want to make sure the correct information is getting out to people. No matter how we might feel, we acknowledge and fix our mistakes. This is most certainly not true for many people.

Whether what someone thought was a fact has been proven false, or someone has majorly changed their opinion on something, no one likes to say they were wrong. With opinions, I think a lot of people get too deep into the idea of a sunk-cost fallacy.

Let’s say you get super passionate about a person or idea and become very invested in it. You go to rallies in support, make friends with the same viewpoint, buy merch to show your love. Suddenly, something comes out about that person or idea that you vehemently disagree with. You’ve realized your positive opinions are negated by the negative information.

This happened to me with Harry Potter. I’ve been to the Universal parks; I’ve seen the filming studio; I made friends with other Potterheads. And then JK Rowling did her thing and everything came shattering down. While I’ll always appreciate the positives that were brought to my life because of her writing, I no longer support her. I will read the books and watch the movies, which I already owned when everything came out, but I try to do nothing that will bring her revenue.

When negative information came out about her, I changed my opinion. That is something everyone is able to do. I don’t care how deep you feel you are into something, change is always allowed.