The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes

by David Robson

With this knowledge in mind, we are now ready to start Part 2. Through the stories of the Termites, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the FBI’s forensic examiners, we have seen four potential forms of the intelligence trap: • We may lack the necessary tacit knowledge and counterfactual thinking that are essential for executing a plan and preempting the consequences of your actions. • We may suffer from dysrationalia, motivated reasoning, and the bias blind spot, which allow us to rationalize and perpetuate our mistakes, without recognizing the flaws in our own thinking. This results in our building “logic-tight compartments” around our beliefs without considering all the available evidence. • We may place too much confidence in our own judgment, thanks to earned dogmatism, so that we no longer perceive our limitations and overreach our abilities. • Finally, thanks to our expertise, we may employ entrenched, automatic behaviors that render us oblivious to the obvious warning signs that disaster is looming, and more susceptible to bias.