The fool wants nothing
Another completely unexpected gem from the Viaje de Turquia (see the previous article on this blog): a 16-th century statement of the Dunning-Kruger effect!
An effect, of course, which has never been more visible than today (just watch the news).
Against Pedro, who narrates his travels and travails, the dialog sets two other characters, friends from his youth. They serve both as foils for Pedro, enabling his cleverness to shine — they are themselves not the brightest candles on the cake —, and as the embodiment of conventional wisdom. He occasionally gets really impatient with them, although always friendly, and at some point cites this ditty that he remembers from his youth in Spain:
Blind people want to see,
The deaf man wants to hear,
The fat man wants to slim,
The lame man wants to run.
For the fool there is no remedy:
Since he fancies that he knows,
He does not care to learn more.
Wow!
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Similar to this:
“It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So”
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/