The modern world worships intelligence. High IQ. Top test scores. Elite degrees. Clever people in glass buildings.
But there’s a problem. Cleverness is not enough. High intelligence is excellent at defending a point of view. It is not automatically good at escaping one.
The smarter you are:
• the more language you have,
• the more arguments you can generate,
• the more elegantly you can explain why you are right and everyone else is wrong.
You become your own in-house legal team.
As Richard Feynman warned decades ago:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
We do it anyway. All day. Every day.
A viewpoint, once adopted, quickly becomes a fortress. The more intelligent the owner, the stronger the walls. They can rationalise, justify, counter-attack. They’re not thinking; they’re litigating.
That’s the Intelligence Trap: using high intelligence to lock yourself into your current view of the situation.
Curiosity is the jailbreak.
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Lesson Three DFQ is:
In 25 words or so how would you define: The Intelligence Trap?
(To qualify for your DipX10(SOT) certificate post your answer in the Comment section below).
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Click here to next lesson: Humans as Walking LLMs.
For me the intelligence trap is all about arguing against the alternative, the new or the different because of the innate bias that we create for ourselves through our gradual develpment of and understanding of the world around us……..
George Bernard Shaw said, “All progress requires change, and those that cannot change their mind cannot change anything” I know that the brain is hard wired to take short cuts and to recognise patterns and so it is much easier (cognitively) to defend what we already believe rather than to learn something new. In a dynamic and volatile world where we need to learn fast, the intelligence trap leaves us very exposed to going down the wrong path (while being convinced we are right!)
Smart people can be the easiest to fool because they rationalise bad ideas better, trust their judgment too much, and stop questioning themselves. They fear alternative ideas as they’re wrong ideas.
The Intelligence Trap can be defined as a collection of bad habits, which have the collective effect of preventing the thinker from considering other perspectives.
An emotionally driven trait to favour defence of position and hence ego over objective evaluation and exploration of situation and possibility, so preventing progress.
Possibly a survival mechanism, knowing more than the software requires could be dangerous? Like trying to teach your dog algebra.
Intelligence trap: Being a super-fast and athletic racing horse wearing blinders and racing in just one direction, versus being a normal horse with peripheral vision, able to chose how to navigate so as to reach the finish line in the most optimal way.
When your accumulated knowledge becomes the very thing stopping you from seeing new answers. Smart enough to justify staying put. Too confident to question the map you’re already holding.