Hayek is noteworthy in that he placed ignorance at the very center of his political theory: "the case for individual freedom rests chiefly on the recognition of the inevitable ignorance of us all." Most commentators tend to interpret this as an appeal to ignorance as some kind of primal state of mankind; but I think they need to expand their horizons. The distinction begins to bite when we take note that Hayek harbored a relatively low opinion of the role of education and discussion in the process of learning, and notoriously, an even lower opinion of the powers of ratiocination of those he disparaged as "the intellectuals." These, of course, were the mirror image of his belief in the market as a superior information processor: Nor is the process of forming majority opinion entirely, or even chiefly, a matter of discussion, as the overintellectualized conception would have it .

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 221