Epistemic Responsibility

Unbeknownst, there is a pattern which emerges when I look at the people I admire most. David Brooks, Andrew, Mark Rowlands et al (sans the famous and historical figures) have a common belief - Epistemological Modesty, the awareness of what we don't know and the limitations of one's knowledge. Here's an interview with Mark Rowlands, author of my favorite book Philosopher and the Wolf:

"One of the most interesting themes in Sci-Phi and The Philosopher and the Wolf is that of epistemic responsibility (2003: 280-284; 2009: 98). Is it feasible to demand such a responsibility in a world like ours, where knowledge is often technical, specialized, and fragmentary? Or could we just interpret this kind of responsibility as a form of enlightened autonomy, in which the moral agent is asked to permanently re- vise and criticize his or her own beliefs?

Sometimes being epistemically responsible amounts to nothing more than ad- mitting you don’t have the expertise to answer a question. For the reasons you point out, we might expect this to be an increasingly common feature of human life. I suspect that to think or act as if you do have answers when you actually don’t is the most common form of epistemic irresponsibility of the present age. So, for example, this is something you almost never hear anyone say: I don’t have the right to an opinion on that question because I haven’t thought it through. Everyone has opinions, and everyone thinks they are more than opin- ions. Perhaps the most important epistemic virtue required by the present time is a certain kind of humility."

I think, this is nothing new. World was always filled with epistemically irresponsible people. Socrates saw this was omnipresent when he said "Only thing I know is I know nothing". So what should one do? Give up and join the majority? No.
A quote by Victor Fankinl - from the last book I read:

"Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find reads the last sentence od the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to saints. Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best."