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>knowing that y'' = y is a positive feedback loop (exponential growth) but y'' = -y is a negative feedback loop (oscillating) is really useful in all sorts of common sense scenarios.

I'm not sure what sorts of situations you keep finding yourself in, but I think they're pretty atypical.

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positive and negative feedbacks happen in climate systems and economic systems.

if you want to have a chance of understand the economic news it is a good idea to have familiarity with them.

Oversimplifying leads to confidently wrong predictions based on superficial understanding. Basic intuition about differential equations doesn't meaningfully help you with the math of economic models, nor is math alone enough to understand what happens in a complex system made of people.

You may be better off not knowing anything and knowing that you don't.

Edit: Not to say it's good not to know things in general. Just that there's some minimum you need to know for it to practically help you, and sometimes it's a lot.

Zero knowledge doesn't prevent anyone from being confidently incorrect (in fact it seems to encourage it).

That's true. But if zero knowledge doesn't help, and a little more won't either, then why make people suffer to acquire that little bit more?

Which I guess just brings us back to the top of the question. My bad.

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