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17 Apr 2017

The Intelligence Trap

intelligence and thinking skill are not directly related
Verbal facility: Intelligent people learn that well-articulated is often mistaken by others for well-thought-out. Since verbal skills come easier than thinking skills, the intelligent person is tempted to substitute the former for the latter.
Backdoor commitment: An intelligent person can create a rational and articulate argument to support almost any position, sometimes without even examining it. It is very easy for him to then slip into having an emotional stake in the position, not because he has critically evalutated it, but simply because he has pride of ownership of the argument in its favor.
Bias toward criticism: If you advocate an idea, you make yourself vulnerable to the criticism of others. If you shoot down others’ ideas, you get to be the one who showed others they were wrong. This behavior can be very seductive. It is also self-reinforcing: once you have been the critic for a while, you visualize others doing to your ideas what you routinely do to theirs, and are therefore even less inclined to put forward new ideas of your own.
The “Everest effect”: Intelligent people often seem to prefer reactive and analytic thinking over projective and synthetic thinking. In reactive thinking the problem is there before you and you have to respond, usually on the problem’s own terms. In projective thinking, you have to find the problem, the objectives, and the solution space. Reactive and analytic thinking appeals to intelligent people the way a big mountain appeals to skilled mountain climbers: because it’s there. However, most of the important problems in life require projective and synthetic thinking.

Is this what MBTI calls rationality vs intuition? + in indian mythology there was something about the logic that divides to atoms to understand vs logic which understands things by having them whole

Speed: Because an intelligent person can reach a conclusion without walking through all the intermediate steps, he is tempted to do so. But some of the intermediate steps may be important and reveal considerations that make the easy conclusion inappropriate.

See suggestions that cognitive bias is mildly correlated with iq; find better sources than http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-people-are-stupid

Bias toward cleverness: There are greater social rewards for demonstrated cleverness than for demonstrated wisdom. This can lead the intelligent person to habitually retreat into cleverness.

How is this different from “Everest effect” and “Bias towards criticism”?