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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
David Robson
Read between
March 1 - March 7, 2023
In exactly the same way, intelligence can help you to learn and recall facts, and process complex information quickly, but you also need the necessary checks and balances to apply that brainpower correctly. Without them, greater intelligence can actually make you more biased in your thinking.
It started, he said, when the Oracle of Delphi declared that there was no one in Athens who was wiser than Socrates. “What can the god be saying? It’s a riddle: what can it mean?” Socrates asked himself. “I’ve no knowledge of my being wise in any respect, great or small.” Socrates’s solution was to wander the city, seeking out the most respected politicians, poets, and artisans to prove the oracle wrong—but each time, he was disappointed. “Because they were accomplished in practising their skill, each one of them claimed to be wisest about other things too: the most important ones at that—and
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His conclusion is something of a paradox: he is wise precisely because he recognized the limits of his own knowledge.
“system 1,” intuitive, automatic, “fast thinking” that may be prey to unconscious biases; and “system 2,” “slow,” more analytical, deliberative thinking. According to this view—called dual-process theory—many of our irrational decisions come when we rely too heavily on system 1, allowing those biases to muddy our judgment.
One study from the London School of Economics, published in 2010, found that people with higher IQs tend to consume more alcohol and may be more likely to smoke or take illegal drugs, for instance—supporting the idea that intelligence does not necessarily help us to weigh up short-term benefits against the long-term consequences.21
People who believe in the paranormal rely on their gut feelings and intuitions to think about the sources of their beliefs, rather than reasoning in an analytical, critical way.25
“Conan Doyle used his intelligence and cleverness to dismiss all counter-arguments . . . [He] was able to use his smartness to outsmart himself.”30
The upshot, according to Kahan and other scientists studying motivated reasoning, is that smart people do not apply their superior intelligence fairly, but instead use it “opportunistically” to promote their own interests and protect the beliefs that are most important to their identities. Intelligence can be a tool for propaganda rather than truth-seeking.34
In other words, an intelligent person with an inaccurate belief system may become more ignorant after having heard the actual facts.
All of this would seem to chime with research showing that beliefs may first arise from emotional needs—and it is only afterward that the intellect kicks in to rationalize the feelings, however bizarre they may be.
We have now seen three broad reasons why an intelligent person may act stupidly. They may lack elements of creative or practical intelligence that are essential for dealing with life’s challenges; they may suffer from “dysrationalia,” using biased intuitive judgments to make decisions; and they may use their intelligence to dismiss any evidence that contradicts their views thanks to motivated reasoning.
“People confuse their current level of understanding with their peak level of knowledge,”
The intelligence trap shows us that it’s not good enough to be fool proof; procedures need to be expert proof too.
When the going gets tough, the less experienced members of your team may well be the best equipped to guide you out of the mess.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s, there are few.”
hinges on their success. “If it does not do good it will do harm, as it will show that we have not the wisdom enough among us to govern ourselves,”
“For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.”
I hope you are now convinced that engaging with your feelings is not a distraction from good reasoning, but an essential part of it. By bringing our emotions to the mind’s surface, and dissecting their origins and influence, we can treat them as an additional and potentially vital source of information. They are only dangerous when they go unchallenged.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
we simply can’t assume that smart, educated people will absorb the facts we are giving them.
“If you aren’t willing to think, you aren’t, practically speaking, intelligent.”
The lesson, then, is to beware of the use of anomalies to cast doubt on vast sets of data, and to consider the alternative explanations before you allow one puzzling detail to rewrite history.
These are the same principles we are hearing again and again: to explore, listen, and learn, to look for alternative explanations and viewpoints rather than the one that comes most easily to mind, and to accept you do not have all the answers.
“He was never content with what he knew, or what other people knew. . . . He pursued knowledge without prejudice.”
people with greater curiosity still appear to be able to remember facts more easily.
The neurotransmitter dopamine is usually implicated in desire for food, drugs, or sex—suggesting that, at a neural level, curiosity really is a form of hunger or lust. But the neurotransmitter also appears to strengthen the long-term storage of memories in the hippocampus, neatly explaining why curious people are not only more motivated to learn, but will also remember more, even when you account for the amount of work they have devoted to a subject.
Those with the growth mind-set had faith that their performance would improve with practice, while those with the fixed mind-set believed that their talent was innate and could not be changed.
The result was that they often fell apart with the more challenging problems, believing that if they failed now, they would fail for ever. “
In each case, the researchers advise that parents and teachers emphasise the journey that led to their goal, rather than the result itself.
The wonderful thing about this research is that learning seems to beget learning: the more you learn, the more curious you become, and the easier it becomes to learn, creating a virtuous cycle.
That process—of forgetting, and then forcing ourselves to relearn the material—strengthens the memory trace, leading us to remember more in the long term.
“His errors were not a matter of great concern; what would be worrisome would be the child’s failure to expend the effort necessary to correct them.”
“Reasonably often at least one student in the group withdrew, because the dynamics were so uncomfortable—or they just didn’t want to engage in the conversation because their ideas weren’t being heard. They thought, ‘I’m the one who makes the decisions, and my decisions are the best ones.’ ”
With every employee able to contribute to the bank’s strategy, its entire service was transformed—and customer satisfaction rose by more than 50 percent within two years.28
“[Leadership is] less about trying to be successful (yourself), and more about making sure you have good people, and your work is to remove that barrier, remove roadblocks for them so that they can be successful in what they do.”
These are exactly the high-pressure conditions that are now known to reduce reflection and analytical thinking.
The aim is to do whatever you can to embrace that “chronic uneasiness”—the sense that there might always be a better way of doing things.
Whether you are a forensic scientist, doctor, student, teacher, financier, or aeronautical engineer, it pays to humbly recognize your limits and the possibility of failure, take account of ambiguity and uncertainty, remain curious and open to new information, recognize the potential to grow from errors, and actively question everything.
The twenty-first century presents complex problems that require a wiser way of reasoning, one that recognizes our current limitations, tolerates ambiguity and uncertainty, balances multiple perspectives, and bridges diverse areas of expertise.