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Why Smart People Are Stupid
nicholast writes "There's a good piece by Jonah Lehrer at the New Yorker about why smart people are often more likely to make cognitive errors than stupid people. The article examines research about the shortcuts that our brains take while answering questions, and explains why even the smartest people take these shortcuts too. Quoting: 'One provocative hypothesis is that 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. However, 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. In fact, introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings.'"
The article examines research about the shortcuts that our brains take while answering questions, and explains why even the smartest people take these shortcuts too.
Because without taking shortcuts those very smart people wouldn't be able to achieve their goal of getting first post.
Yes you commit more mistakes when you think more about things. Guess what, you also reach a lot more correct conclusions. The best way to avoid making mistakes is not doing anything at all. Same principle.
yo dawg
i heard you like to overthink shit
so i overthought the shit you're overthinking
so you can overthink shit
while i overthink you overthinking the shit you're overthinking
i must be stupid (as in smart, not smart as in stupid) because i got those little word problems correct. the lily pad example was really easy.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
The premise here is that "introspection" (a vague name for a wide range of practices) cannot reveal unconscious biases, bring them into consciousness, and enable self-analysis and intelligent adjustment of them. We are to accept this premise why? In my experience, it's quite possible to gain a conscious vantage on previously-unconscious biases, and subsequently lessen and/or compensate for them. If Lehrer can't do the same, maybe he isn't very good at introspection. No reason to condemn an activity others do well and productively just because you suck at it, Jonah.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Or perhaps high SAT scores do not correlate well with intelligence, but rather correlate with being able to answer questions quickly through the use of mental shortcuts or the ability to recall what was learned through rote learning?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
My theory is that smart people are mostly stupid, and that stupid people are fully stupid.
Who ordered that?
Scott had trouble with a pager, it wouldn't work and wouldn't work. He took out the battery, put it back in, tried a different one and still no success. Finally took the pager to a service center where the tech looked at it for about 10 seconds, took out the battery, flipped it around and put it back in - so the pager worked.
It's a question of competency at some things does not translate into a competency at all things.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Try reading that article. It's full of smart sounding long-winded sentences, which all basically translate to: "Dude, you're overthinking it".
Then, the article ronically ends with: "We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point. The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand."
Dude...
My wife works at a school and she says many of the teachers have masters degrees and some can not fill out a simple time sheet. Things like travel requests or purchase orders are even more likely to be completely wrong. She calls them the smartest dumb people I know.
Hereâ(TM)s a simple arithmetic question: A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
The vast majority of people respond quickly and confidently, insisting the ball costs ten cents. This answer is both obvious and wrong. (The correct answer is five cents for the ball and a dollar and five cents for the bat.)
Why on earth would you ever think that it was 10 cents for the ball and a dollar for the bat? You'd have to be stupid, or something.
In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?
Your first response is probably to take a shortcut, and to divide the final answer by half. That leads you to twenty-four days. But thatâ(TM)s wrong. The correct solution is forty-seven days.
What the fuck? Do I need to to take a dope test or something? Why the hell would you think I'd "take a shortcut" and divide the answer by two? Fuck's sake, the clue is right there! IT DOUBLES IN SIZE EVERY DAY! So it's twice as big today as it was yesterday, so if it fills the lake in 48 days it half-fills it in 47 days. Jeez, how the hell can you even think people would say 24 days? Is there something wrong with your brain?
Also, what the hell kind of lilies grow in your lake, that they crowd the whole damn thing out in a month and a half? Don't you ever rake them back and dredge it? Your fish are going to suffer from lack of light and oxygen with all that crap in there.
Ghod pop-psychologists make my piss boil.
In my own experience--both by observing smart people and by being one (if I may be so bold), I've noticed that the more "smart" a person is (by several definitions; see below), the more easily he/she can convince him/herself--and others--of incorrect things. Furthermore (as these findings suggest), a person who possesses unusually great capacity for self-analysis often becomes quite accustomed to analyzing things on a much "higher level" than what actually motivates one to (erroneous) thought and action.
For example, a "stupid" person might see another person as a threat to getting into a relationship with someone he/she, him/herself, likes, and will therefore treat that person poorly--while probably having few illusions about why he/she is doing so. A "smart" person, on the other hand, will have that same "root" motivation cause him/her to come up with "rational" reasons (which aren't nearly so rational as assumed, of course) for why that rival is actually bad at his/her job, "annoying," unethical, unreliable, unintelligent, etc., and will then treat that person badly without realizing just how "base" or "primal" the root cause of the behavior is.
Notably, I've seen/experienced this with people who are "smart" by way of IQ, and "smart" by way of education (and, of course by way of the two, combined; though--as we all know here--the two aren't always the same thing). Apparently, simply engaging the analytical portion of one's brain habitually--whether by training or nature--almost invariably creates this effect--and can often lead to some truly irritating "smart" people (myself at the forefront, at times, I'll admit).
I'm glad that someone with "license to wear a lab coat" has also determined as much in a somewhat more scientific/official fashion.
Indeed. One of the things that I find is a problem with really bright people is overconfidence, a belief that because they are brilliant in one area, they therefore are brilliant in all areas. You find this sort of thing with engineers who think they are scientists, doctors who think they are scientists, or scientists who make fools of themselves by making elaborate and tragically awful claims in areas where they have no expertise.
True polymaths are probably so rare that even the most seasoned and well-connected academic won't meet one.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
An interesting extension of this issue of introspection is that: In some cases, AI systems perform much better than humans.
To a machine, there is no such thing as subconscious. Given the limitations of hooks built in to a system, one can always ask a machine to 'explain itself' when it makes a decision. This could take the form of a cor dump, list of fired rules, or scores of each alternative path at every decision node.
In addition, humans can build knowledge bases from various sources. And at the time knowledge is acquired, it can be weighted by the credibility of its origin. But, once committed to memory, the origins of these 'training sets' is often forgotten. And should some reason arise to downgrade the credibility of a knowledge source, machines can much more easily recalculate the rule weights leading from it.
Have gnu, will travel.
engineers who think they are scientists.
Computer engineers who think they're engineers, for that matter...
Really? My observation has been the opposite, that you can't go to university without absorbing some degree of liberal (re. left wing) thought. That said, I think if you scratch below the surface one will find that universities are filled with those who are left supporters and those who are two scared to disagree.
I am not just going to agree with the popular view. In other words I have bad Karma.
Both problems given in the article were word math problems.
and
I got them both right almost immediately, but I think I understand why people would frequently make the errors the article mentioned.
Ultimately, I think that the reason people make those mistakes is not because they are naturally irrational, but because they simply have not had enough practice at those types of math problems.
The former took me back to grade 7 math... where I was always solving for x. How I would have done it on paper is as follows:
I happened to solve this particular one in my head, but the mental steps I took still reflected the above process. And I think it's the sheer amount of practice that I got solving those types of problems in grade 7 and 8 that I didn't get hung up on anything.
The latter problem was so obvious, I didn't even have to arrange a formula to solve it... saying it doubles every day, and filling after 48 days means it *MUST* be half full after 47 days. There's probably a formula for it, but I didn't happen to notice it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
@#$%@#$% *too not two. Brain work well not daytwo
I am not just going to agree with the popular view. In other words I have bad Karma.
So other people, even stupid people, will have a relatively easy time spotting my mistakes? Meaning that all I have to do is listen to them when they try to point them out to me. Problem solved.
Its not that conservatives are generally stupid, it is that the stupid people are generally conservative. It is the base of support they lean upon.
Apologies to JSMill for the poor paraphrase.
When I'm playing a weaker opponent in chess I tend to be extremely careless with my queen and I put her in dangerous places that are quite threatening. The strategy relies on the fact that weaker chess players get squeamish when an opponent's queen hangs out on their side of the board and they start investing too many of their moves into defense, thus ceding board control.
The downside is that a strong opponent knows to relentlessly attack the queen until she's either dead or in a position that isn't advantageous. Another downside is that, even against weaker opponents, she's still in a vulnerable position and I tend to lose her that way.
A computer would never do what I do with my queen (and I would never use the strategy vs. a computer . . . again). What makes people intelligent is their ability to make estimates, predictions, and generalizations that compensate for the limitations of memory. I may not be able to beat my computer in chess, but my computer works harder than an entire nation of brains to kick my ass at it.
I don't like the article confusing this way of thinking with irrationality, concluding that, "we're not nearly as rational as we believe." One's thinking can be rational and imprecise. It can also be rational and wrong. These little tests these researchers are doling out catch people on common fallacies. The more intelligent you are the less likely you are to second guess your answer, the more likely you are to rely on a logical shortcut. Like playing a weak chess opponent. And then, when you've lost, your weak chess opponent can point and laugh and say something stupid that he somehow thinks is clever, like, "hah! Smart people are stupid!"
That's why, in the rematch after losing to a weaker opponent, I dot all my i's and cross all my t's. I don't experiment and I double (triple, quadruple, etc.) check my moves before committing to them. Then, after my pride has been returned, I go back to poking and prodding with attempts to scholar's mate my opponent in some variation because no other victory is more satisfying.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Not sure it is pride so much as incorrect training. I immediately leapt to the wrong answer to the bat and ball but then I subtracted the two, got 90 cents, realised I had messed up and corrected myself. What I was always taught as an undergrad in physics - and what I now try to teach to undergrads myself - is that no matter how smart you are you will always make mistakes. The trick is to cross check your answer to see whether it makes sense. You won't catch everything (at least I don't!) but every error caught is one less mistake.
The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us
If you care at all about understanding how your brain works, this is important. The book is very well researched and explained and full of real examples in many areas and backed up with serious science. Our brains lie to us about what they do and how well they do it in nearly every respect. I almost want to force feed it to everyone I know, because it's just that significant. Please read it.
It sounds a lot like when a you watch a friend play a hand in poker and you can see all the mistakes, but when you are in the hand you are blind to them.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
The reason this "problem" will yield a common answer of 1 dollar is because so many of us have seen the same thing over and over in school. It has been over the course of 5+ years engraved into our thought process to separate pieces of the sentence into logical portions and stop as soon as we have enough information (ie: to assume most of it is useless information). So as soon as the reader sees the intentionally deceptively worded sentence, it's effectively an expected response from this programmed behavior: most people stop where I'm about to show you:
Immediately, we have a situation: a + b = 110, a = 100. We immediately deduce that b = 10, and have a solution instantaneously without completing the thought. This is what standardized testing and predictable word problems with extraneous information teaches people. This isn't a result of their intelligence, this is a result of cognitive process sculpted by years of stupid, pointless exercises. You'd have to be outrageously stupid to think this is somehow unexpected. The people who we classify as "smart" are people who perform well at these tasks (high score on standardized test, breezed through courses with similar problems). This is causation -- people who make this mental leap are considered "smart." So you ask "why are all these smart people making this stupid mistake!?" The answer is clear -- your fundamental measure of intelligence is wrong. The solution is that these so-called "smart" people aren't very smart at all. They're just good at solving tricky word problems as quickly as possible, primarily by ignoring information. In my experience, this methodology is often the inverse of an intelligent process.
Now for the second problem:
What most people will do, because this is how they've been taught, is to read sentence one. Note it as an interesting fact, then proceed. Upon finishing the second sentence, we realize we didn't come up with an answer yet, so we refer to only the information in the latter part of the question. What most people just read is:
We aren't used to thinking in terms of exponentiation, so it's natural to assume a linear growth rate when you completely discard the first sentence.
While I agree, these are both absurd questions, they have something in common: people tend to ignore part of the question and answer the question with incomplete information. This is not something I do very often, intentionally. This is something, though, that I recall being the fundamental "trick" to answering 99.99999999999% of questions on standardized tests. They gave you extraneous information. When literally every problem exposed to you has extraneous information, of 2 forms: A, B or B, A, where B = worthless information, it becomes habitual to process information in this manner, especially when the problem is worded like a problem you'd find on a high-school level standardized test (you know, you never really forget how to ride a bike, like you never forget how to solve very badly designed problems that don't test intelligence in any way).
I don't know, maybe I'm too smart for this researcher. But the answer seems obvious: years and yea
Well there are more factors.
Blue states tend to have more colleges, because blue states have more/bigger cities.
Cities in order to operate work best with liberal principals. Bigger government to offer services because in the city you don't have resources to be fully self reliant. You need city water and sewer because there isn't room for well and septic systems. Too many cars you need a good public transit system to move around faster. When you live in a city the government is the good guy.
Red states are In rural areas you have land and you are more self reliant. Your house your own infrastructure, you will wait public transit just won't work so you need your own car. The government is seen as a force that taxes your income for services you don't use and maker of rules that restrict your freedom. So you are more apt to favor conservatives.
In college the more conservative students are more apt to hit the books and study, while the liberal ones will party more. However the liberal students are less career minded and will more likely go directly into higher education.
So are liberal or conservatives smarter? Probably not much of a difference, in terms of smarts. But more into life choices.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just because you do not understand someones motivation, does not mean that that motivation is stupid. Not everybody picks their major with dollar signs in their eyes.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I don't really agree with the conventional idea of people being "smart" and "dumb", the concepts are used in shallow ways. Most people I've met are "smart" in some form, even as so many have proven themselves dumb in another form. I believe that it's a matter of how it manifests.
Some people are good at memorizing things. Some people have a keen perception of patterns which gives them insight into what might logically come next. Some people just put a lot of effort into studying and work their way into understanding a subject through sheer diligence. Some are fast learners. And that thug loitering on the street corner that barely knows how to speak properly? He picks up on body language in a way nobody else can.
Meanwhile those people all have their flaws. The memorization guy might have horrible social skills. Perhaps insightful pattern guy gets sentimental about the things he believes in, and thus becomes stubborn and irrational about things that don't match his views. The diligent one is really just a stubborn person faking it-- they are terrible and it takes them a long time to learn, but they invest the time beating it into their head. The fast learner picks up on something quickly, but then becomes bored of it right away and moves on with only a superficial understanding of the subject. Or, the fast learner never learned to study, so when the time comes he is in a fix. I think you can fill in the blanks as you wish for the thug on the street corner.
This is the reason why society manages to function while we witness so many stupid people.
I didn't understand this until I learned about my wife. Her ACT score was only ~+1 standard deviation above the norm--nothing special really--but she graduated cum laude in college and then top 15% in medical school (AOA). She has OCD, and it inhibits her on any question presented using the paradox of choice.
I think a lot of people have analogous problems--they may fully understand the concept being tested but remain unable to demonstrate that in their test score or other metric for whatever reason. I think language and terminology are common culprits.
I think you are making up shit that you hope supports your opinion without even trying to get it to fit reality. I went through college without a single loan, working part time and full-time summers (most summers full time working and full-time college). Even with money a serious issue, I didn't turn conservative. Most likely, it's the rejection of people and loss of empathy that you get when the only people you deal with are exceptions to the rules (family) and people you hate (everyone at work or in traffic on the way there, or the DMV for an occasional renewal). If you had remained as socially active and connected as you were in college, you wouldn't have become a jackass (a requirement for the brand of conservativism practiced in the US, where they'll claim "fiscal responsibility" when cutting a program, when it is actually cheaper to fund the program and not deal with the social effects of safety nets being cut).
Learn to love Alaska
If we, for a moment define "right wing" as Republican and "left wing" as Democrat (and ignore for a moment third parties and independent voters and the inconsistencies between labeling them right wing and left wing)
The majority of universities are left wing because that is in their best self interest. Look at who pays professors at state-run universities: the state. In general, democrats spend more on education meaning the university gets more money and they get paid more. Similarly if you are in the "pure science" fields (science for the sake of science) you'd vote democrat because they support public funding for sciences more than republicans.
The majority of students at universities will tend to, at least for a while, support the policies of the democrats. Why? Who is paying for their college? Usually its federal loans and federal grants. Who supports increasing the amount of financial aid? Democrats. Students usually also have a lower tax burden, are working lower-paying jobs and consume more government assistance.
The higher education you have the more likely you are to be in a university job which means you want more funding which means you vote democrat.
On the other hand, the person who gets a decent paying job doing manual work is likely to pay higher taxes sooner (though perhaps less overall because they most likely will make less in their lifetime), they would favor less government assistance (when the college kids are making part-time minimum wage, they are advancing the ladder in their chosen trade and generally wouldn't qualify for assistance and aren't going to use grants and federal financial aid) and would vote republican.
Education makes you more liberal is true, but it is simply on a matter of self interest and should not be taken as those who think better are liberal, merely that those with higher education levels tend to work in areas financed by the government such as universities and "pure" sciences which receive grants while those with only high school or bachelor's degrees tend to work for the private sector.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I agree. It's like how economists are always so shocked that girls with the least principle always seem to draw the most interest.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Red states are In rural areas you have land and you are more self reliant.
Actually Red states are higher recipients of Federal aid than Blue states.
In college the more conservative students are more apt to hit the books and study, while the liberal ones will party more. However the liberal students are less career minded and will more likely go directly into higher education.
Complete and utter horse-shit. When I was in school, it was the more liberal students who kept long hours in the library and hit the books, whilst the more conservative-leaning tended to join social fraternities and stay drunk. Associates of mine, regardless of whether they went to state schools or private institutions, will back me up. Your post seemed somewhat insightful until that last paragraph, with which your entire argument ran off the rails.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
LSD is great for getting a better understanding of your subconscious processes. When you look at things on acid sometimes it's like you're seeing the thing for the first time without a lifetime of biases built up. Other times you become conscious of all the associations you have with certain things, sometimes going far back into your childhood. It's really a shame it's illegal.
As parent is AC, the comment may be overlooked by a lot of people. I fully and completely agree with this.
My first experience with a large dose of LSD I was only able to describe as having "multiple levels of consciousness" - that is, I'd be looking at something and thinking about it; while another "part of me" was simultaneously thinking about the part of me that was thinking about what I was looking at; and yet another part would be examining those thought processes and so on. At one point, I managed to count 5 distinct "processes of thought" (and later I realised it might have been six, having one counting the others).
One of the things with this kind of self-reflection is the ability to appreciate what you see/hear/experience as if it were totally new. You see something that you've seen a hundred times before and for the first time you really get a deeper understanding of it than you had before. Nothing is irrelevant, and your own constructed filters (necessary for day-to-day life, I'll happily admit) are just gone.
When my daughter was born, I considered that perhaps that's how life must be for her as a baby. She doesn't know yet what is "important to notice" and what isn't, so the filters aren't there and she can take in everything. Relatedly, I've also considered whether that perhaps aids in the learning process for children; and therefore by extension, LSD use under controlled situations can aid in the learning process for adults. It seems to help me, but I wouldn't accept my own anecdotal case and any kind of evidence without further study.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
And what about your pride about not littering your Slashdot posts with strange bird droppings (â)?
Personally as a member of the human race I think that would be a fairly ignominious way to die off.
Alien Teacher: You see in this example the race of "Humans" actually managed to kill themselves off by creating a common "lily pad" (similar to our Xanopods here on Trellic) that reproduced much too quickly. It quickly choked out all food supplies and eventually the Humans themselves.
Alien Kid: But teacher, that is stupid why would they do that?
Alien Teacher: Because class, sometimes even very smart people can be stupid when they take cognitive shortcuts. OK class that is all for today, dismissed!
I was skeptical, and looked up some data. It seems this is indeed correct.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/federal-spending-received-dollar-taxes-paid-state-2005
Quite interesting.
You could have cut down your entire post by simply acknowledging that Universities lean left because critical thinking, empirical evidence, scientific inquiry, meta-cognition, and heavy doses of skepticism are staples for both.
You also failed to acknowledge that what qualifies as "right wing" and "left wing" swings wildly based on era and geography. I registered Republican in the 1980s. I haven't had anyone in my party to vote for since G. H. W. Bush left office. I've also lived in Georgia and Texas, but grew up in the Northwest. I'm more liberal than some so called "Democrats" in those states. I've also lived in England and Germany, where the concept of right and left are on completely different scales.
So, no, I don't think your analysis is very accurate. In fact, it sounds like the same sort of anti-intellectual rationalization for not having an education that I hear daily on conservative talk radio.