[lisarea]

AW DANG, I just thought of the best example to illustrate the issue, and I love this one especially hard because it's not me being the dumbass in this one.

I knew a lady who thought that the word animal meant mammal. She wasn't stupid or unobservant. In fact, she had some very complicated understanding of the taxonomy of living things that had, at its foundation, the mistaken belief that the word animal meant mammal. She had no doubt seen things that contradicted that understanding, but she must have somehow glossed over or discounted them or something. Because I don't remember how it came up in conversation, but I do remember that it was a pretty grown up and relevant discussion and we weren't just standing around trying to remember the taxonomy we learned in grade school or something.

She was obviously kind of embarrassed (as was I, because I thought she was telling a joke or something at first), but moreso, she was sort of knocked over by just how much shit she thought she understood but didn't. Like you could tell she was facing the prospect of having to confront the fact that a HUGE part of her understanding of the world and things she'd read and observed was based on a faulty fundamental premise that somehow took foothold at a very early age.

That's a really clear and glaring example, but that's exactly what it's like and that's the sort of thing that's at stake when you don't get the basics down right before you move on.