It’s good to be smart. After all, intelligent people earn more money, accumulate more wealth, and even live longer. But intelligent people have a reputation for making dumb mistakes, especially in situations that require common sense. Smart people are more prone to silly mistakes because of blind spots in how they use logic. These blind spots exist because smart people tend to be overconfident in their reasoning abilities. That is, they’re so used to being right and having quick answers that they don’t even realize when they’re blowing it by answering without thinking things through.
- We’re not nearly as rational as we like to believe.
- When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics.
- We forget our arithmetic lessons and instead default to the answer that requires the least mental effort.
- Their decisions depend on a long list of mental shortcuts, which often lead them to make foolish decisions. These shortcuts aren’t a faster way of doing the math; they’re a way of skipping the math altogether.
- In many instances, smarter people are more vulnerable to thinking errors.
- We assume that intelligence is a buffer against bias. That’s why those with higher SAT scores think they are less prone to these universal thinking mistakes and it can actually be a subtle curse.
- People who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.
- Intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy.
- Our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.”
- We excel at noticing the flaws of others and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves.
- We readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.
- Intelligence seems to make things worse.
- Smarter people (at least as measured by SAT scores) are more likely to engage in deliberation were slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes.
- The bias blind spot arises because of a mismatch between how we evaluate others and how we evaluate ourselves.
- When considering the irrational choices of a stranger, for instance, we are forced to rely on behavioral information. We see their biases from the outside, which allows us to glimpse their systematic thinking errors.
- When assessing our own bad choices, we tend to engage in elaborate introspection. We scrutinize our motivations and search for relevant reasons. We lament our mistakes to therapists and ruminate on the beliefs that led us astray.
- The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence.
- Introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings. We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point. The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.
Being smart can come at a cost. Asking tricky questions, doing the research and carefully thinking things through takes time. It’s also unpleasant. Most of us would rather do anything than think. Being smart can also upset people. Asking tough questions can quickly make you unpopular. Some of life’s greatest gifts, including high intelligence, can also come with challenges. If you aren’t willing to take an honest look at the whole picture, you’re selling yourself short. And that isn’t smart.
Common sense is not so common ... Voltaire
