The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes

by David Robson

A Taxonomy of Stupidity Bias blind spot: Our tendency to see others’ flaws, while being oblivious to the prejudices and errors in our own reasoning. Cognitive miserliness: A tendency to base our decision making on intuition rather than analysis. Contaminated mindware: An erroneous baseline knowledge that may then lead to further irrational behavior. Someone who has been brought up to distrust scientific evidence may then be more susceptible to quack medicines and beliefs in the paranormal, for instance. Dysrationalia: The mismatch between intelligence and rationality, as seen in the life story of Arthur Conan Doyle. This may be caused by cognitive miserliness or contaminated mindware. Earned dogmatism: Our self-perceptions of expertise mean we have gained the right to be closed-minded and to ignore other points of view. Entrenchment: The process by which an expert’s ideas become rigid and fixed. Fachidiot: Professional idiot. A German term to describe a one-track specialist who is an expert in their field but takes a blinkered approach to a multifaceted problem. Fixed mind-set: The belief that intelligence and talent are innate, and exerting effort is a sign of weakness. Besides limiting our ability to learn, this attitude also seems to make us generally more closed-minded and intellectually arrogant. Functional stupidity: A general reluctance to self-reflect, question our assumptions, and reason about the consequences of our actions. Although this may increase productivit...