{
  "id": "head-in-the-sand.unselective",
  "term": "head in the sand",
  "sense": "unselective",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 21,
  "domain": "model and reality",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "keeping one reading out at the price of all readings, an exclusion that cannot be selective because what is blocked is the whole channel and not the threat.",
  "folk_gloss": "refusing to look at a problem in the hope it goes away",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "read.information",
      "stop.action",
      "whole.complete",
      "single.quantity",
      "protection.security",
      "model.representation",
      "cost.economic"
    ],
    "interaction": "The feared reading and every other reading share one channel; blocking the channel is the only exclusion available, so the model buys blindness to the one threat with blindness to everything else that is approaching.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "unselective exclusion",
      "whole-channel blackout",
      "collateral blindness"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "A company that stops reading vulnerability reports also stops reading the one about the flaw it feared.",
      "domain": "security"
    },
    {
      "text": "Skipping the scan avoids one diagnosis and all of them.",
      "domain": "medicine"
    },
    {
      "text": "Not opening the brokerage statements hides the loss and also the margin call.",
      "domain": "finance"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "out-of-touch.stale",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "head in the sand pays to keep readings out; out of touch pays nothing - the readings simply lapsed while the range moved"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "bury your head in the sand",
    "head in the sand"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-08-22",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — keeping reality out"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-head-in-the-sand.unselective"
}