Occasionally, though thankfully not often, I catch myself metaphorically patting myself on the back and wallowing in my own perceived brilliance. This unattractive bout of self-admiration tends to strike at random moments, usually while I’m watching a TV quiz show and my long-serving, supportive — otherwise known as tolerant — wife is there to witness it.

The quizmaster — or mistress — poses a question, the more random the better, and for some strange reason my often-spongy, increasingly underused grey matter suddenly turns the cognitive wheel. Hey presto, out pops the answer. I pause for confirmation and then comes the verdict from the voice inside the TV: “That’s correct.” The host then informs the contestants, and the supposedly astonished audience, that only 5% of a random sample knew the answer.

Cue my best Michael Caine impression — “Not a lot of people know that!” — as my wife, from the other side of the living room, acknowledges my “excellence” with a wry smile, already aware of what may follow. Her verbal post-mortem begins: “How the hell did you know that? Where do you get all this shit from?” Then, often adopting her best sad face to reflect the tragic consequences of academic rejection, she shrieks, “Why the hell didn’t I know that?” She ends the routine by reminding me there is no need to run around the living room shouting, “whoop, whoop!” before restoring a little calm with her slyly delivered verdict: “It’s only a bloody TV show. Sit down, idiot. You’re an adult, not a child.”

Once my long-suffering partner has brought me back down to earth from my brief spell of self-adulation, the grey matter slips into reflection mode: “How did I actually know that?” This is swiftly followed by the honest answer: “Fucked if I know… I haven’t a bloody clue!” I then reach the familiar conclusion, while recognising similar traits in my late father — God bless him — that I know all sorts of things about a wide range of random subjects. What I often lack, however, is enough depth in any one area to claim anything like expert status.

I was never much of a scholar and mostly endured formal education rather than enjoyed it, but that does not mean I dislike learning new things — even if I have no practical use for that knowledge beyond occasionally, and playfully, winding up my wife. Despite having a mostly enquiring mind that often lies dormant, I can still be nudged back into thought by the so-called Socratic paradox: “I know that I know nothing.” A phrase that originates in Plato’s account of Socrates’ Apology: “For I was conscious that I knew practically nothing…”

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us. (Socrates)

When it comes to understanding the limits of my own knowledge, I am generally comfortable admitting, “I don’t know.” But that should never be mistaken for “I don’t want to know.” The latter is where ignorance becomes stupidity. Wilful ignorance is an increasingly common trait, and one that our society seems to display more often than it should. (See Jonny Thomson, Author and columnist at The Big Think, explain how The 3 ways stupidity spreads throughout a society)

For various reasons — some valid, others less so, and not least my own academic laziness — I arrived rather late at the philosophical playing field when it came to telling my Ethos from my Pathos, and my Logos from my Kairos. Retirement, however, has unexpectedly given me the time and space to reawaken a curiosity that had too often lain dormant. As the saying goes, “use it or lose it.” To stop thinking, questioning, and learning simply because we no longer work for a living would be like a sportsperson giving up after a single defeat. That familiar “I’m not giving up; I’m not dead yet” attitude still matters to those of us continuing to play the game of life as it unfolds.

As I have often mentioned elsewhere in my digital ramblings, I like to understand why people do what they do, and what thought processes lead them to particular choices or beliefs. That habit — or perhaps ethos — has mostly served me well throughout my working life. With that in mind, a fair question is: why would I not apply the same curiosity to myself? Why would I not want to understand why I think as I do, or why I am inclined to behave in certain ways? That seems perfectly logical to me, though apparently not to many others, who often lack either the ability or the desire to practise even a modest degree of self-reflection.

Regardless, the Socratic paradox remains, for me and many others, an important idea within epistemology: the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. From Socrates’ discussions more than two thousand years ago, human thinking developed a deeper habit of doubt — the critical uncertainty about what we know, why we believe it, and how we come to know it. That uncertainty became central to our modern understanding of knowledge and later influenced the thinking of René Descartes, the renowned 17th-century philosopher who coined the famous phrase cogito ergo sum: “I think, therefore I am.”

These familiar philosophical words can be hard to grasp at first. The Latin cogito ergo sum is often clearer when rendered as “I am thinking, therefore I exist.” It certainly was for me. Even so, new students of philosophy may wonder why so obvious a statement became so famous. Descartes, however, was not offering a simple platitude. He argued that “I am thinking, therefore I exist” cannot be false while it is being thought. This became a crucial step in his search for certainty: knowledge that could not be doubted. Can I ever be sure that what I know is factual, correct, and beyond challenge? For me, the answer to that final point is an emphatic no. All expressed thoughts can, and should, be open to scrutiny. Sadly, the wilfully ignorant often reject such scrutiny outright, and a brief scroll through social media provides ample evidence. Many people now live in algorithm-driven echo chambers where their views, whether right or wrong, are rarely tested and are instead reinforced as truth. The current occupant of the American White House and his administration offer a timely and relevant case study.

For most of my working life, particularly in later years, I was interested in — and often had to apply — what I only later began to understand as the “modes of persuasion,” or the “rhetorical appeals” (Greek: pisteis). These are the broad categories of “rhetorical devices” a speaker (or writer) should use when trying to persuade an audience. As it turned out, they have proved to be very useful personal skills for me, both a police officer and, more recently, as an addictions counsellor. The three traditional appeals are ethos, pathos, and logos — appeals to credibility, emotion, and reason, respectively — all of which appear in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. A less familiar fourth term is Kairos, which concerns the timeliness or significance of the moment in which a message is delivered. Aristotle additionally argued that ‘effective’ persuasion will also require wisdom, virtue, and goodwill: personal qualities I have always tried to nurture, even if I have not always been quite as wise as I imagined. That brings me back to the “I don’t know” space — a place that cannot usually be filled with bullshit, because sooner or later, you will be found out.

Once again, social media is full of strong opinions supported by little evidence. I am often left asking: is the claim credible, what purpose does it serve, who benefits, and which audience is the speaker or writer trying to persuade — and why? That is usually the moment when I reach for my well-stocked and well-maintained toolbox of critical thinking skills.

However, along with others, I often worry that our digital world is destroying ‘our’ critical thinking skills.  Big Think produced a useful explainer that can offer some improved understanding about “how power, conformity, and social media erode critical thinking” (HERE).

Ageing will not necessarily turn you into the satirical Victor Meldrew stereotype, but lived experience can leave you with a robust, tried-and-tested set of bullshit filters — all regularly useful as you navigate today’s digital noise. Now I must get back to discovering something that I don’t know anything about today. It might just be useful in a quiz or, at the very least, put a smile on my wife’s face and brighten her day.

Addendum: As a long-term admirer of Stoicism — a mindset that has given me some useful foundations for life — I now seem set to spend the rest of today exploring the work of Massimo Pigliucci. He is a respected academic who examines specific aspects of Stoic philosophy and often highlights the distinction between authentic Stoicism and what he calls “bad Stoicism.” I think I’ll start with his 5 Stoic lessons to become your best self in 2026 video on YouTube, finish my coffee, and then see where the digital rabbit hole takes me until dinner.

Every day is a school day, enjoy yours whilst you still have them!

Note: all the content above has been written and edited by the author. However, some AI assistance was used with the sole aim of “polishing the turd” in which those words and thoughts exist.