Why are these smart people making all of these mistakes?
I wonder if it is because the mistakes are so extreme that the original failures that lead to them can’t just be ones of poor problem-solving. If an IQ test asks what can be logically inferred from some evidence, I’d expect smarter people to do better. If an IQ test asks whether astrology can be logically inferred from no evidence, I expect very low levels of intelligence to be required to figure this one out. So to the extent that people answer ‘yes’, it is for some non-intellectual reason which are more or less uncorrelated with intelligence.
Do you have evidence that intelligence isn’t correlated with all those three? IIRC Kahneman’s research has pointed out that intelligence seems to protect against certain types of cognitive biases.
Very smart people, like everyone else, have emotional responses to situations, then fit a set of rationalizations to what their emotions tell them in the first place.
I would like to give better answers in the aggregate-maybe we can gather some more evidence, but I’ll just give a few well-known examples of people who would’ve done very well on IQ tests:
Ayatollah Khomeini
Hermann Goering
Alan Turing and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom sadly ended their own lives. Unfortunately, that is fairly common among the highest IQ scorers.
Intelligence is not the only personality trait to consider.
Why are these smart people making all of these mistakes?
-Intelligence testing fails to incorporate your chance of falling prey to cognitive bias.
-Intelligence testing does not test the quality of your information sources
-Intelligence testing does not test how well you control your response to negative stimulus.
It sounds like we’re having to add in a series of other improvements to get an acceptable ubermenchen, not just more speed or higher IQ.
I wonder if it is because the mistakes are so extreme that the original failures that lead to them can’t just be ones of poor problem-solving. If an IQ test asks what can be logically inferred from some evidence, I’d expect smarter people to do better. If an IQ test asks whether astrology can be logically inferred from no evidence, I expect very low levels of intelligence to be required to figure this one out. So to the extent that people answer ‘yes’, it is for some non-intellectual reason which are more or less uncorrelated with intelligence.
Do you have evidence that intelligence isn’t correlated with all those three? IIRC Kahneman’s research has pointed out that intelligence seems to protect against certain types of cognitive biases.
Very smart people, like everyone else, have emotional responses to situations, then fit a set of rationalizations to what their emotions tell them in the first place.
I would like to give better answers in the aggregate-maybe we can gather some more evidence, but I’ll just give a few well-known examples of people who would’ve done very well on IQ tests:
Ayatollah Khomeini Hermann Goering Alan Turing and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom sadly ended their own lives. Unfortunately, that is fairly common among the highest IQ scorers.
Intelligence is not the only personality trait to consider.