The Dangers of Being Smart

[KilljoyKlown]

This is a great article, now I don't have to wonder why I might be smarter than I think <Just kidding> So I have a few problems. They aren't because I'm IQ challenged. Then again who knows. Maybe you all should give the article a read and think about how it might apply to yourself.

Tauriq Moosa on June 13, 2012, 7:21 AM

Jonah Lehrer’s new post at The New Yorker details some worrying research on cognition and thinking through biases, indicating that “intelligence seems to make [such] things worse.” This is because, as Richard West and colleagues concluded in their study, “people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.” Being smarter does not make you better at transcending unjustified views and bad beliefs, all of which naturally then play into your life. Smarter people are better able to narrate themselves, internally, out of inconsistencies, blunders and obvious failures at rationality, whereas they would probably be highly critical of others who demonstrated similar blunders.

I am reminded of Michael Shermer’s view, when he’s asked why smart people believe weird things, like creationism, ghosts and (as with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) fairies: “Smart people are very good at rationalizing things they came to believe for non-smart reasons.” If you’ve ever argued with a smart person about an obviously flawed belief, like ghosts or astrology, you’ll recognise this: their justifications often involve obfuscation, deep conjecture into areas you probably haven’t considered (and that probably aren’t) relevant, and are all tied together neatly and eloquently because she’s a smart person.

It is troubling that smarter people are often worse off, because they cannot recognise the biases and blunders, due to a deep, complex layer of justification they’ve narrated to themselves. It’s troubling because we expect smart people to be the ones devoid of biases more than others. However, expectation as usual takes a backseat to evidence. Perhaps all we should expect of intelligence, however you conceive it, is a way of thinking, not the content of thought. This means, even if the belief is quite absurd, the methods to get to it can be smart (sophisticated theology is like this to me). But that’s just one way and assuming one kind of definition of intelligence, which is notoriously difficult to study, let alone quantify.

However, this confirms something more practical to me. As Lehrer says, we’re good at picking out the flaws in others. If this is true, this confirms my earlier view that we shouldn’t want a world in which agreement is everywhere. We must welcome criticism and argument, since, no matter how smart we are (indeed, as this indicates, especially considering how smart we might be), we could be wrong. We are, fundamentally, flawed and fallible.

Smart people will usually be able to brush off criticism since they are convinced they are right and, due to their thinking abilities, can probably out-argue most criticism even if the criticism is right. Smart people will especially be difficult to counter if the criticism is made with capital letters, bad spelling, worse grammar and comparisons to Hitler, psychopaths and terrorists. This is a further reason why online trolling doesn’t help and can make things worse: it’s already difficult trying to convince a smart person that he’s wrong, reasonably and with evidence, but it only makes him more convinced of his views if he sees opposition as mostly wrathful Neanderthals banging their knuckles on a keyboard.

The irony of course is that if smart people are good at picking out flaws in others, but terrible at recognising their own even when it’s pointed out to them, the entire project seems pointless! I’m not sure that it is (I wouldn’t be writing if I didn't have good reason to think otherwise). Smart people at some point will be stumped, since, if you have the advantage of being smart and right, with irrefutable evidence, you can do a lot of damage to their layer of internal confirmation stories (which tells of how an individual is right despite inconsistencies).

We forget that learning something new usually means unlearning biases we are probably all born with: thus, (1) if we are smart and (2) haven’t been challenged at vulnerable times, say when we’re younger, on certain entrenched views that many have, then when counter-arguments are presented, the bad beliefs are so tightly knitted due to our being smart that we can’t simply weave a new thread. The previous one, with all its knots and bows, must itself be carefully undone.

This is, as Lehrer pointed out in a previous post, why many people don’t believe in science, especially as per the Gallup polls findings on creationism and evolution: 46% believed in creationism in 1982 and 44% think the same in Gallup's latest poll. Science is, to use Lewis Wolpert’s phrase, “unnatural”: common sense “will never give an understanding about the nature of science. Scientific ideas are, with rare exceptions, counter-intuitive… secondly, doing science requires a conscious awareness of the pitfalls of natural thinking… lay theories are highly unreliable.” Not only is a scientific view on subjects, like "Where did we come from?", counter-intuitive, even when presented with evidence to support it, people must overcome their previous, deeply entrenched views. If these views are entrenched furthermore with the abilities of a smart person, no wonder then that it makes the job even more, rather than less, difficult.

This, again, though, should not make us apathetic in trying to still convince people, even smart ones. Smart doesn’t make you right: it just makes you, in many instances, better at thinking that you are.

http://bigthink.com/against-the-new-...m_medium=email

[R1D2]

“intelligence seems to make [such] things worse.”

I think that's true some of the time.

[Hipparchia]

I have found that if I imagine a viewpoint I hold is actually held by someone I hate and wish to prove wrong it enables one to be highly critical of that position and thus achieve a more balanced view.

[Buddha12]

"The Emperor's New Clothes" (Danish: Kejserens nye Klæder) is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!" The tale has been translated into over a hundred languages.

A vain Emperor who cares for nothing but his appearance and attire hires two tailors who are really swindlers that promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "just hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the cloth himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor then marches in procession before his subjects, who play along with the pretense. Suddenly, a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but holds himself up proudly and continues the procession. After this experience, the Emperor vows never to be so vain again and take his position more seriously.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...x3O3arc1a7MqSw

[KilljoyKlown]

I have found that if I imagine a viewpoint I hold is actually held by someone I hate and wish to prove wrong it enables one to be highly critical of that position and thus achieve a more balanced view.

Interesting, but yes one of the signs of inelegance is having the flexibility to win arguing either side of a position. Which also means your ability to justify a belief in say creationism and even build a following would be pretty easy, even though it's a wrong belief.

[KilljoyKlown]

"The Emperor's New Clothes" (Danish: Kejserens nye Klæder) is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!" The tale has been translated into over a hundred languages.

A vain Emperor who cares for nothing but his appearance and attire hires two tailors who are really swindlers that promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "just hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the cloth himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor then marches in procession before his subjects, who play along with the pretense. Suddenly, a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but holds himself up proudly and continues the procession. After this experience, the Emperor vows never to be so vain again and take his position more seriously.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...x3O3arc1a7MqSw

That's an interesting story, I'm just not sure how it applies to this topic. Just saying, the king is not coming off as very smart.

[wynn]

Oh. Another antitheist thread.

[R1D2]

Oh. Another antitheist thread.

Well.. I thought this was about the dangers of being smart!

[KilljoyKlown]

Oh. Another antitheist thread.

Well if the examples fit the topic, should they be avoided? Anyway my purpose for posting this topic had nothing to do with theology. But I will admit there are a lot of very smart theist. So it might be hard for this topic not to find some very good examples there.

[spockster]

could also be that being smarter makes you feel superior to others and thus results in a snob effect

[KilljoyKlown]

could also be that being smarter makes you feel superior to others and thus results in a snob effect

Snob effect, yes that's true, I'm sure we've all run into those types before.

[R1D2]

Being a snob don't necessarily mean that there smart.
Ever seen smarter than a 5th grader.
We are all smart in certain areas. Even then we are not always right,or correct..

[KilljoyKlown]

Being a snob don't necessarily mean that they're smart.
Ever seen smarter than a 5th grader?
We are all smart in certain areas. Even then, we are not always right, or correct..

But we are talking about smart people are we not?

[Hipparchia]

Interesting, but yes one of the signs of inelegance is having the flexibility to win arguing either side of a position. Which also means your ability to justify a belief in say creationism and even build a following would be pretty easy, even though it's a wrong belief.

I am sure you could persuade yourself that that was true.

[KilljoyKlown]

I am sure you could persuade yourself that that was true.

I've seen lots of evidence that backs up my position and zero evidence for creationism. Not much persuasion needed.

[steampunk]

Being smarter does not make you better at transcending unjustified views and bad beliefs, .... Smarter people are better able to narrate themselves, internally, out of inconsistencies, blunders and obvious failures at rationality...

I agree with smarter people being able to navigate out of inconsistencies. This is allowable by recognising a path of principles within that inconsistency that are connected. This path can be used to form a secondary interpretation of the mess. It's not always successful.

I don't agree with smarter people not being able to transcend bad beliefs. Atleast the smartest of smart people. Chumps will believe anything and it is only luck if they have the best thing planted in them. Children are often the victims of bad beliefs in this way. Smart people may tie themselves up in a mess with their own convictions, as the article points out. But, the smartest people know how to be a chump just for the sake of the argument, just enough to build a small model of the belief being considered. If it begins to make sense, it can wind up debunking unjustified views and bad beliefs. The smartest people have to be able to start at ground zero and say, "What if?", and try to grow a new belief and let it compete with an existing contradictory belief. Bigots won't even plant a seed for the hell of it. Some people just can't muti-task mentally to carry on several competing theories at once, so they must submit to default conditioning.

[Buddha12]

That's an interesting story, I'm just not sure how it applies to this topic. Just saying, the king is not coming off as very smart.

I threw this in the mix because it shows that sometimes even the smartest can be decieved and the clever can make them look like fools.

[wynn]

I've seen lots of evidence that backs up my position and zero evidence for creationism. Not much persuasion needed.

Possibly you see much evidence to back up your position
precisely because you already hold that position.

It's not like you started off neutral. Nobody does.

[KilljoyKlown]

Possibly you see much evidence to back up your position
precisely because you already hold that position.

It's not like you started off neutral. Nobody does.

Maybe but for me to accept creationism, I'd have to accept a conservative right wing religious belief. For that to happen I would first have to be convinced that there really is a God and that he really did pull an almost 5 billion year old Earth out of his magical hat 6,000 years ago.

What do you think the chances of that happening are?

[wynn]

Maybe but for me to accept creationism, I'd have to accept a conservative right wing religious belief. For that to happen I would first have to be convinced that there really is a God and that he really did pull an almost 5 billion year old Earth out of his magical hat 6,000 years ago.

What do you think the chances of that happening are?

Creating a caricature of theism so that theism may then seem easy to reject is ... the mark of a person with integrity?