# The Intelligence Trap - David Robson Synced: [[2023_11_30]] 6:03 AM Last Highlighted: [[2019_11_21]]  ## Highlights [[2019_10_30]] (Location 1158) > “People confuse their current level of understanding with their peak level of knowledge,” Fisher told me. And that may suggest a serious problem with our education. “The most cynical reading of it is that we’re not giving students knowledge that stays with them,” Fisher said. “We’re just giving them the sense they know things, when they actually don’t. And that seems to be counterproductive.” [[2019_10_30]] (Location 1377) > We may lack the necessary tacit knowledge and counterfactual thinking that are essential for executing a plan and preempting the consequences of your actions. [[2019_10_30]] (Location 1378) > We may suffer from dysrationalia, motivated reasoning, and the bias blind spot, which allow us to rationalize and perpetuate our mistakes, without recognizing the flaws in our own thinking. This results in our building “logic-tight compartments” around our beliefs without considering all the available evidence. [[2019_10_30]] (Location 1381) > We may place too much confidence in our own judgment, thanks to earned dogmatism, so that we no longer perceive our limitations and overreach our abilities. [[2019_10_30]] (Location 1383) > Finally, thanks to our expertise, we may employ entrenched, automatic behaviors that render us oblivious to the obvious warning signs that disaster is looming, and more susceptible to bias. [[2019_11_12]] (Location 2050) > Igor Grossmann’s research on evidence-based wisdom, which has shown that the highest performers on his wise reasoning tests are indeed more attuned to their emotions, capable of distinguishing their feelings in finer detail while also regulating and balancing those emotions so that their passions do not come to rule their actions. [[2019_11_12]] (Location 2053) > Thinkers from Socrates and Plato to Confucius have argued that you cannot be wise about the world around you if you do not first know yourself. The latest scientific research shows that this is not some lofty philosophical ideal; incorporating some moments of reflection into your day will help de-bias every decision in your life. [[2019_11_12]] (Location 2060) > There is now strong evidence that besides its many, well-documented health benefits, regular practice of mindfulness can improve each element of your emotional compass—interoception, differentiation and regulation—meaning that it is the quickest and easiest way to de-bias your decision making and hone your intuitive instincts. [[2019_11_12]] (Location 2149) > Nelson Mandela once said: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” [[2019_11_12]] (Location 2216) > [[2019_11_12]] (Location 2225) > As Ray Kroc had found in that California diner, intuition can be a powerful thing—but only once we know how to read those funny-bone feelings. [[2019_11_13]] (Location 2299) > According to Schwarz and Newman, truthiness comes from two particular feelings: familiarity (whether we feel that we have heard something like it before) and fluency (how easy a statement is to process). [[2019_11_13]] (Location 2396) > As Cook and Lewandowsky put it: “It’s not just what people think that matters, but how they think.” [[2019_11_13]] (Location 2504) > “Regardless of ideology, no one wants to be misled by logical fallacies—and that is an encouraging and exciting thought.” [[2019_11_13]] (Location 2528) > The first step is to learn to ask the right questions: • Who is making the claim? What are their credentials? And what might be their motives to make me think this? • What are the premises of the claim? And how might they be flawed? • What are my own initial assumptions? And how might they be flawed? • What are the alternative explanations for their claim? • What is the evidence? And how does it compare to the alternative explanation? • What further information do you need before you can make a judgment? [[2019_11_13]] (Location 2593) > Even the former leader of Greenpeace has recently attacked the scaremongering of his ex-colleagues, describing it as “morally unacceptable . . . putting ideology before humanitarian action.”40 I had always felt scornful of climate change deniers and anti-vaccination campaigners, yet I had been just as blinkered concerning another cause. [[2019_11_14]] (Location 2772) > some psychologists now consider that general intelligence, curiosity and conscientiousness are together the “three pillars” of academic success; if you lack any one of these qualities, you are going to suffer. [[2019_11_14]] (Location 2804) > Through the subtlest of actions, their parents’ behavior had shown the children whether exploration was desired or discouraged, enhancing or damping their interest, and over time, these attitudes could become ingrained in their minds. “Curiosity is contagious, and it’s very difficult to encourage curiosity in kids if you don’t have any experience of curiosity in your own life,” Engel said. [[2019_11_14]] (Location 2888) > Dweck’s research has gained widespread acclaim, but the attention is not always well directed, with many people misreading and misinterpreting her work. A Guardian article from 2016, for instance, described it as “the theory that anyone who tries can succeed,”30 which isn’t really a fair representation of Dweck’s own views: she is not claiming that a growth mind-set can work miracles where there is no aptitude, simply that it is one of many important elements, particularly when we find ourselves facing new challenges that would cause us to question our talents. Common sense would suggest that there is still a threshold of intelligence that is necessary for success, but your mind-set makes the difference in whether you can capitalize on that potential when you are outside of your comfort zone. Some people also cite the growth mind-set as a reason to rhapsodise over a child’s every achievement and ignore their flaws. In reality, her message is quite the opposite: overpraising a child for effort or success may be almost as damaging as scolding them for failure. Telling a child that “you’re smart” after a good result, for example, appears to reinforce a fixed mind-set. The child may begin to feel embarrassed if they put a lot of effort into their studies—since that would detract from their smartness. Or they may avoid future challenges that might threaten to take them down off this pedestal. Ironically, Eddie Brummelman at the University of Amsterdam has found that excessive praise can be particularly damaging to children with low self-esteem, who may become scared of failing to live up to parental expectations in the future. [[2019_11_14]] (Location 3010) [[favorite]] > the journalist Tad Friend noted in the New Yorker: “In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s ‘half-life of knowledge’—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three.” [[2019_11_14]] (Location 3101) > The more I improve my performance today, the more I will have learned. • The easier material is to understand, the more I will memorize. • Confusion is the enemy of good learning and should be avoided. • Forgetting is always counterproductive. • To improve quickly, we should only learn one thing at a time. • I remember more when I feel like I am struggling than when things come easily. Only the last statement is supported by neuroscience and psychology, and the rest all reflect common myths about learning. [[2019_11_14]] (Location 3129) > Today, the spacing effect is well known to psychological scientists and many teachers, and it is often represented as demonstrating the benefits of rest and the dangers of cramming. But the true mechanism is more counter-intuitive, and hinges on the very frustration that had annoyed the postmen. By splitting our studies into smaller chunks, we create periods in which we can forget what we’ve learned, meaning that at the start of the next session, we need to work harder to remember what to do. That process—of forgetting, and then forcing ourselves to relearn the material—strengthens the memory trace, leading us to remember more in the long term. People who learn in longer blocks miss out on those crucial steps—the intermediate forgetting and relearning—that would promote long-term recall precisely because it is harder. [[2019_11_14]] (Location 3175) [[favorite]] > The evidence is now unarguable: introducing desirable difficulties into the classroom—through strategies such as spacing, interleaving, and productive failure—would ensure that everyone learns more effectively. [[2019_11_14]] (Location 3240) > Productive struggle: Long periods of confusion as students wrestle with complex concepts beyond their current understanding. • Making connections: When undergoing that intellectual struggle, students are encouraged to use comparisons and analogies, helping them to see underlying patterns between different concepts. This ensures that the confusion leads to a useful lesson—rather than simply ending in frustration. • Deliberate practice: Once the initial concepts have been taught, teachers should ensure that students practice those skills in the most productive way possible. Crucially, this doesn’t involve simply repeating near identical problems ad nauseam, as you might find in the Western maths classroom, but means adding additional variety and challenges—and yet more productive struggle. [[2019_11_15]] (Location 3331) > The research shows that most people—even those of great intelligence—use poor learning techniques; the strategic use of desirable difficulties can improve your memory while also training your brain to be better equipped to deal with confusion and uncertainty in any context.22 You can: • Space out your studies, using shorter chunks distributed over days and weeks. Like the postmen in Baddeley’s initial experiment, your progress may feel slow compared with the initial head-start offered by more intensive study. But by forcing yourself to recall the material after the delay between each session, you will strengthen the memory trace and long-term recall. • Beware of fluent material. As discussed previously, superficially simple textbooks can lead you to believe that you are learning well, while, in fact, they are reducing your long-term recall. So try to study more nuanced material that will require deeper thinking, even if it is initially confusing. • Give yourself a pre-test. As soon as you begin exploring a topic, force yourself to explain as much as you already know. Even if your initial understanding is abysmally wrong, experiments show that this prepares the mind for deeper learning and better memory overall, as you correct for your errors in your subsequent studies. • Vary your environment. If you tend to study in the same place for too long, cues from that environment become associated with the material, meaning that they can act as nonconscious prompts. By ensuring that you alter the places of learning, you avoid becoming too reliant on those cues—and like other desirable difficulties, this reduces your immediate performance but boosts your long-term memory. In one experiment, simply switching rooms during studying resulted in 21 percent better recall on a subsequent test. • Learn by teaching. After studying—and without looking at your notes—imagine that you are explaining all that you have covered to another person. Abundant evidence shows that we learn best when we have to teach what we have just learned, because the act of explanation forces us to process the material more deeply. • Test yourself regularly. So-called “retrieval practice” is by far the most powerful way of boosting your memory. But make sure you don’t give in and look at the answers too quickly. The temptation is to look up the answer if it doesn’t immediately come to mind, but you need to give yourself a bit of time to really struggle to recall, otherwise you won’t be exercising your memory enough to improve long-term recall. • Mix it up. When testing yourself, you should make sure you combine questions from different topics rather than only focusing on one subject. Varying the topic forces your memory to work harder to recall the apparently unrelated facts, and it can also help you to see underlying patterns in what you are learning. • Step outside your comfort zone and try to perform tasks that will be too difficult for your current level of expertise. And try to look for multiple solutions to a problem rather than a single answer. Even if none of your solutions is perfect, these productive failures will also increase your conceptual understanding. • When you are wrong, try to explain the source of the confusion. Where did the misconception come from—and what was the source of the error? Not only does this prevent you from making the same specific error again; it also strengthens your memory of the topic as a whole. • Beware the foresight bias. As Robert and Elizabeth Bjork have shown, we are bad at judging the level of our learning, based on our current performance—with some studies showing that the more confident we are in our memory of a fact, the less likely we are to remember it later. This, again, is down to fluency. We are more confident of things that initially come to mind easily—but we often haven’t processed those fluent facts very deeply. So be sure to test yourself regularly on the material that you think you know well, in addition to the material that may feel less familiar. [[2019_11_15]] (Location 3639) > Read Montague, puts it: “You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well.” [[2019_11_16]] (Location 3744) > There is an apparent paradox in these findings: if team members clearly understand their place in the pecking order, overall group performance will be boosted; but this is true only if team members themselves feel that their opinions are valued, and that they can challenge their leaders in the event of problems arising or poor decisions being taken. Stretching [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4259) > Bias blind spot: Our tendency to see others’ flaws, while being oblivious to the prejudices and errors in our own reasoning. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4260) > Cognitive miserliness: A tendency to base our decision making on intuition rather than analysis. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4261) > Contaminated mindware: An erroneous baseline knowledge that may then lead to further irrational behavior. Someone who has been brought up to distrust scientific evidence may then be more susceptible to quack medicines and beliefs in the paranormal, for instance. Dysrationalia: The mismatch between intelligence and rationality, as seen in the life story of Arthur Conan Doyle. This may be caused by cognitive miserliness or contaminated mindware. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4265) > Earned dogmatism: Our self-perceptions of expertise mean we have gained the right to be closed-minded and to ignore other points of view. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4266) > Entrenchment: The process by which an expert’s ideas become rigid and fixed. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4267) > Fachidiot: Professional idiot. A German term to describe a one-track specialist who is an expert in their field but takes a blinkered approach to a multifaceted problem. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4269) > Fixed mind-set: The belief that intelligence and talent are innate, and exerting effort is a sign of weakness. Besides limiting our ability to learn, this attitude also seems to make us generally more closed-minded and intellectually arrogant. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4270) > Functional stupidity: A general reluctance to self-reflect, question our assumptions, and reason about the consequences of our actions. Although this may increase productivity in the short term (making it “functional”), it reduces creativity and critical thinking in the long term. “Hot” cognition: Reactive, emotionally charged thinking that may give full rein to our biases. Potentially one source of Solomon’s paradox (see below). [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4274) > Meta-forgetfulness: A form of intellectual arrogance. We fail to keep track of how much we know and how much we have forgotten; we assume that our current knowledge is the same as our peak knowledge. This is common among university graduates; years down the line, they believe that they understand the issues as well as they did when they took their final exams. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4277) > Mindlessness: A lack of attention and insight into our actions and the world around us. It is a particular issue in the way children are educated. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4281) > Motivated reasoning: The unconscious tendency to apply our brainpower only when the conclusions will suit our predetermined goal. It may include the confirmation or myside bias (preferentially seeking and remembering information that suits our goal) and discomfirmation bias (the tendency to be especially skeptical about evidence that does not fit our goal). In politics, for instance, we are far more likely to critique evidence concerning an issue such as climate change if it does not fit with our existing worldview. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4284) > Peter principle: We are promoted based on our aptitude at our current job—not on our potential to fill the next role. This means that managers inevitably “rise to their level of incompetence.” Lacking the practical intelligence necessary to manage teams, they subsequently underperform. (Named after management theorist Laurence Peter.) [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4287) > Pseudo-profound bullshit: Seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous under further consideration. Like the Moses illusion, we may accept their message due to a general lack of reflection. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4289) [[favorite]] > Solomon’s paradox: Named after the ancient Israelite king, Solomon’s paradox describes our inability to reason wisely about our own lives, even if we demonstrate good judgment when faced with other people’s problems. Strategic ignorance: Deliberately avoiding the chance to learn new information to avoid discomfort and to increase our productivity. At work, for instance, it can be beneficial not to question the long-term consequences of your actions, if that knowledge will interfere with the chances of promotion. These choices may be unconscious. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4293) > The too-much-talent effect: The unexpected failure of teams once their proportion of “star” players reaches a certain threshold. See, for instance, the England football team in the Euro 2016 tournament. [[2019_11_21]] (Location 4295) > A Taxonomy of Wisdom Actively open-minded thinking: The deliberate pursuit of alternative viewpoints and evidence that may question our opinions. Cognitive inoculation: A strategy to reduce biased reasoning by deliberately exposing ourselves to examples of flawed arguments. Collective intelligence: A team’s ability to reason as one unit. Although it is very loosely connected to IQ, factors such as the social sensitivity of the team’s members seem to be far more important. Desirable difficulties: A powerful concept in education: we actually learn better if our initial understanding is made harder, not easier. See also Growth mind-set. Emotional compass: A combination of interoception (sensitivity to bodily signals), emotion differentiation (the capacity to label your feelings in precise detail), and emotion regulation that together help us to avoid cognitive and affective biases. Epistemic accuracy: Someone is epistemically accurate if their beliefs are supported by reason and factual evidence. Epistemic curiosity: An inquisitive, interested, questioning attitude; a hunger for information. Not only does curiosity improve learning; the latest research shows that it also protects us from motivated reasoning and bias. Foreign language effect: The surprising tendency to become more rational when speaking a second language. Growth mind-set: The belief that talents can be developed and trained. Although the early scientific research on mind-set focused on its role in academic achievement, it is becoming increasingly clear that it may drive wiser decision making, by contributing to traits such as intellectual humility. Intellectual humility: The capacity to accept the limits of our judgment and to try to compensate for our fallibility. Scientific research has revealed that this is a critical, but neglected, characteristic that determines much of our decision making and learning, and which may be particularly crucial for team leaders. Mindfulness: The opposite of mindlessness. Although this can include meditative practice, it refers to a generally reflective and engaged state that avoids reactive, overly emotional responses to events and allows us to note and consider our intuitions more objectively. The term may also refer to an organization’s risk management strategy (see Chapter 10). Moral algebra: Benjamin Franklin’s strategy to weigh up the pros and cons of an argument, often over several days. By taking this slow and systematic approach, you may avoid issues such as the availability bias—our tendency to base judgments on the first information that comes to mind—allowing you to come to a wiser long-term solution to your problem. Pre-mortem: Deliberately considering the worst-case scenario, and all the factors that may have contributed towards it, before making a decision. This is one of the most well-established “de-biasing” strategies. Reflective competence: The final stage of expertise, when we can pause and analyze our gut feelings, basing our decisions on both intuition and analysis. See also Mindfulness. Socrates effect: A form of perspective taking, in which we imagine explaining our problem to a young child. The strategy appears to reduce “hot” cognition and reduce biases and motivated reasoning. Tolerance of ambiguity: A tendency to embrace uncertainty and nuance, rather than seeking immediate closure on the issue at hand.