Ignorance is the “lack of knowledge or information” (Cambridge Languages). The word has negative connotations, but we are all ignorant in many regards and to varying degrees.

We routinely depend on others whose education and experience exceeds our own in critical areas: physicians, engineers, architects, mechanics, skilled craftspersons and educators, among many others. Acknowledging the limits of our own knowledge base requires both common sense and a certain humility. It is important to distinguish the ignorance that is part of being human in a complex world from a variant that is both less common and far more pernicious.

Willful ignorance is the profound mistake of thinking we know more than we do and denying evidence to the contrary solely because it is contrary to what we want to be true. I am not a climate scientist and it would be the height of hubris for me to pretend to weigh the massive evidence on which those experts base their conclusions about the human contribution to global climate change.

What I can do is to credit the wide consensus of experts and dismiss the opinions of outliers whose interpretations are more politically than scientifically founded. Apologists for the fossil fuel industry, like those who denied the link between cigarettes and lung cancer to protect that industry’s profits, claim that the scientific evidence of carbon’s impact on the global climate is a hoax. Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, oil-industry CEO Chris Wright, is a case in point. This is willful ignorance motivated by economic interests.

Take another example: the impact of tariffs on the American economy. I can embrace a “stick it to them” emotional reaction and support Trump’s plan to put tariffs on a wide range of imports. Or I can listen to the judgment of the vast majority of professional economists — who rarely agree with one another — that tariffs actually are a tax on Americans and will crater our economy.

Only willful ignorance and a heavy dose of arrogance can lead one to ignore the informed judgment of trained economists, including Nobel Prize laureates, in favor of a politician who promotes a failed policy from the past. Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Treasury Department, a billionaire Wall Street financier, Scott Bessent, has defended tariffs as a “useful negotiating tool.” Few in his profession would agree.

Border politics is a particularly fraught issue, in part because there are many factors that lead migrants to risk the journey over the southern border. Not surprisingly, experts weigh those factors differently, but most see little benefit to building walls. There is strong support for the view that better staffing of immigration courts to facilitate hearing asylum petitions would reduce the number of migrants released into the U.S. pending review of their claims. There is virtually no support among those who study the problem for Trump’s cruel and unconstitutional idea of mass deportation and more wall construction.

Again, willful ignorance driven by arrogance and anger is the only way one could embrace these absurdly simplistic “solutions.” And yet that is precisely what Trump’s “border czar,” former ICE head Tom Homan, promises.

With few exceptions, Trump’s nominations favor loyalty over qualifications, producing a list of candidates with little to no background in the areas they would be charged to oversee. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for example, has no medical training beyond what he reads on conspiracy websites, and yet he has been called to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services. He is willfully ignorant on many health matters, but most significantly on the benefits of routine vaccines.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to lead the largest government agency, the Defense Department, has only his own lower-level military service and hosting on Fox News to bring to the table. He would be responsible for an $800 billion budget, 1.3 million active-duty troops and 1.4 million in the National Guard. His ungrounded claims about women serving in combat are a good illustration of his willful ignorance; there is simply no evidence that women diminish the military’s readiness.

And then there is Tulsi Gabbard, who Trump believes can serve as director of national intelligence, a position with responsibility for 18 spy agencies and for providing guidance to the president on national security matters. Not only does she lack relevant experience, notwithstanding her service in the Hawaii National Guard and in the U.S. House of Representatives, but her only relevant background is a questionable visit to Syria’s now deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and advocacy for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She is singularly unqualified to hold the nation’s top secrets.

How many of these willfully ignorant nominees will pass confirmation by a Republican majority in the Senate is anyone’s guess, but early signs are that most in Trump’s party will roll over and pretend qualification for high office doesn’t matter. That will be the ultimate demonstration of willful ignorance, and all of us will suffer the consequences.

Donald Joralemon, emeritus professor at Smith College, lives in Conway.