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Why Smart People Are Stupid (link)

Posted by Baldur on 2012-June-13 21:19:16 EDT, Wednesday
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Thanks to Enochian for posting a link at BoyChat.

"When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics. Instead, 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."

"The results were quite disturbing. For one thing, self-awareness was not particularly useful: as the scientists note, “people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.”"

"And here’s the upsetting punch line: intelligence seems to make things worse."

Cue the comments about educated idiots.

Relevant to us because our enemies never do the math.

Relevant to us because as human beings we are subject to the same biases.

This is why it is important to have diversity in thought, both in the world at large and at this board. Everyone is wrong about something - and probably wrong about an awful lot - but we need others to point it out to us.



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