Imagine you believe something to be true and make a decision based on that belief, a decision that has an enormous negative impact on someone else.
Now imagine you later discover the truth is something quite different from what you believed. How would you correct your mistake?
Sometimes we can feel certain of our decisions because we feel certain of the “facts” we used to make them. That certainty can come from trusting the person who is the source of the “facts” or because the “facts” align with our existing beliefs and biases. In neither case have we actually verified the “facts.”
This flawed reasoning is an example of what I call a calculus of ignorance.
A calculus of ignorance is a method of reasoning or decision-making that operates on false, incomplete, or unverified information. Even if the logical steps are internally consistent, the conclusions can be deeply flawed because the framework relies on premises shaped by misinformation, bias, or misplaced trust. The danger lies in the certainty such a system can inspire, masking the fragility of its foundations and amplifying the harm of the decisions it produces.
As a mathematician, I am a creature of logic, and as such, I am acutely aware of the importance of verifying the truth of anything I use as a basis for my decisions.
In the real world, the desire to verify truth underpins the legal and ethical principle of natural justice, which requires decisions affecting someone’s rights or legitimate interests to be made fairly.
Natural justice is framed around two important rules:
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The right to be heard: Before a decision is made that could negatively affect you, you must be told the case against you and be given a fair opportunity to respond, to address the evidence, make arguments, and bring forward your own information.
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The right to an unbiased decision-maker: No one should decide a matter if they have a personal interest in the outcome, have prejudged the issue, or could reasonably be perceived as lacking impartiality. This standard includes not only actual bias but also the reasonable apprehension of bias.
A calculus of ignorance is antithetical to natural justice. Natural justice requires open, impartial processes in which allegations are disclosed, evidence is tested, and those affected are given a meaningful opportunity to respond.
In the case I described in my previous post, an autistic drag artist I called Zuri was excluded by one of Vancouver’s oldest charitable societies (‘the Society’) through a closed and opaque process. The Society refused to disclose the alleged concerns, withheld the identities of many of the individuals the decision-makers claimed to have “consulted,” and declined to engage with Zuri in any way. The result was a decision untethered from tested fact and based in a calculus of ignorance built entirely on unverified and undisclosed premises, yet carried out with complete certainty and producing a profound, damaging outcome.
For autistic people, the dangers of such an unfair process are amplified. Autistic individuals are often judged not on the substance of their concerns, but on their affect, which is the visible ways they express emotion, on their autistic perceptions and ways of understanding the world, and on their autonomic storms (commonly called “meltdowns”), which are involuntary responses to intense stress. These responses, rooted in neurology rather than intent, are frequently misinterpreted as evidence of unreliability, unreasonableness, or bad character. This is particularly true for autistic people who are high-masking, so exhausting themselves by trying to hide the true nature of their autism. When such misinterpretations form the unexamined “facts” in a calculus of ignorance, they serve to dismiss the autistic person’s truth and to undermine their credibility without ever addressing the real issues at hand.
Layered into this is a persistent form of ableism: the accusation that autistic people are “using their autism as an excuse.” Such claims distort reality. When autistic people speak about their autism in these contexts, they are not evading responsibility. They are attempting to foster understanding by explaining how they perceive, process, and respond to the world, and how these differences can affect interactions. Framing these efforts as “excuses” dismisses the legitimacy of their experiences, erases the impact of disability, and shuts down the very dialogue needed to build mutual respect and equitable participation.
Beyond the Society’s formal decision, there has been a sustained whisper campaign, including the spreading of so-called “facts” that are untrue, believed to be carried out by individuals closely associated with the Society, some of whom operate their own drag-related businesses. This conduct amplifies the harm far beyond the initial exclusion. It undermines Zuri’s professional reputation, creates a chilling effect on future performance opportunities, and entrenches false and prejudicial narratives within the broader drag community, including in venues that regularly host drag shows in Vancouver. Those engaging in this behaviour may feel justified, but that justification rests on a calculus of ignorance and therefore lacks any sound foundation.
The BC Human Rights Code is directly engaged. Unfounded and ableist narratives have taken root, entrenching discriminatory stereotypes, undermining the credibility of autistic self-advocacy, and causing tangible harm to dignity, self-respect, and professional opportunity.
At its core, this is not only about one exclusion or one individual from Vancouver’s drag community. It is about the dangers of allowing decisions to be made using a calculus of ignorance, where secrecy replaces transparency, assumption replaces fact, and bias replaces fairness. Natural justice exists to prevent precisely these kinds of harms, and the BC Human Rights Code reinforces that protection when discrimination is at play. When we fail to confront unfounded narratives and ableist stereotypes, we do more than harm one person: we damage the integrity of our communities. The work of building fair, inclusive spaces requires that we replace ignorance with truth, suspicion with dialogue, and prejudice with respect.