The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions

by David Robson

Clearly, wanting to be fair and objective alone isn’t enough; you also need practical methods to correct your blinkered reasoning. Luckily, Franklin had also developed some of those strategies – methods that psychologists would only come to recognise centuries later. His approach is perhaps best illustrated through a letter to Joseph Priestley in 1772. The British clergyman and scientist had been offered the job of overseeing the education of the aristocrat Lord Shelburne’s children. This lucrative opportunity would offer much-needed financial security, but it would also mean sacrificing his ministry, a position he considered ‘the noblest of all professions’ – and so he wrote to Franklin for advice. ‘In the affair of so much importance to you, where-in you ask my advice, I cannot, for want of sufficient premises, counsel you what to determine, but if you please, I will tell you how,’ Franklin replied. He called his method a kind of ‘moral algebra’, and it involved dividing a piece of paper in two and writing the advantages and disadvantages on either side – much like a modern pros and cons list. He would then think carefully about each one and assign them a number based on importance; if a pro equalled a con, he would cross them both off the list. ‘Thus proceeding I find at length where the balance lies; and if, after a day or two of farther consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly.’22 Franklin conceded t...