Intelligent people still make bad decisions
We solve problems in a smarter way than we define them
Ostensibly smart people make dumb decisions because “smart” is a measure of intelligence not a measure of judgement. Good judgement is the application of knowledge, sophistication, and intelligence to facts.
That’s what we think we do all the time but often times smart people use all their horsepower to effectively drive towards poor outcomes rather than good outcomes.
Why is this?
The issue is that intelligence is really about logic and figuring out a solution to a rational problem that has a fixed solution. But what we don’t realize is that we have a choice in defining the problem we are trying to solve.
If we have no money, but we feel that the problem is that it was owed to us by someone, then our intelligence can be harnessed to get that money from them hook or by crook.
On the other hand, if we feel we have no money because we don’t have a good job, then our intelligence can be used to figure out how to increase our knowledge and experience.
In both cases, we are using our smarts, but the definition of the problem limits us to a certain set of solutions. That initial problem definition isn’t necessarily objective and we don’t necessarily use our intelligence in that phase.
Note, earlier I said our intelligence is applied to what we “feel” that the problem is. Which means that instead of a reasoned analysis, our insecurities and deep set drives narrow our focus to exclude what could often be the real problem we need to solve in favor of the problem that most validates our emotions.
What’s worse is that society values smart people and so people attach their egos to being correct. So they find it hard to accept new information that would contradict their earlier judgement because that could imply that they were not as intelligent as they thought they were.
If we make a decision that turns out to be wrong we have a hard time letting go of that because people mistake being correct for being intelligent. So they think that a mistake means they are dumb.
That is actually a very stupid thing because often the most intelligent thing you can do in a situation is focus on what you did wrong so you can correct it. But our ego gets in the way.
Intelligence is also a very vague term. Or rather an inconsistent term.
When we say someone is intelligent we talk about that as if it’s a fundamental innate trait like height or eye color. But when we use the term in practice we unconsciously start off being much more narrowly focused: we take the evidence of some intellectual ability in a particular field or endeavor and we build that up into evidence of a foundational trait.
But almost by definition, we recognize that there are different kinds of intelligence because we measure that intelligence by a person’s success in a particular endeavor. But being skilled in one thing says nothing about being skilled in another.
We don’t judge a doctor to be intelligent by how well they do their taxes. But when we say they are intelligent because they are a doctor, we take that too far and assume that their medical skill means that they are good with their finances.
In fact, the vast majority of the time there is a significant amount of experience, training, etc that results in the quality of ones performance in a particular area. Externalities that have nothing to do with this magical trait of intelligence but are instead the product of conscious decisions and hard work.
All this means that the difference between someone intelligent and not has a great deal to do with the context. It is not a trait of a person as much as it is a measure of ability in a certain domain. While there is definitely correlation, being skilled in one thing doesn’t transfer to being skilled in anything else necessarily.
Letting go of intelligence as a trait allows us to be humble and humility allows us to be open to reality so that we can make objective decisions instead of decisions based on always needing to prove how smart we are.
We can solve our actual problems instead of uselessly digging our holes deeper. We can learn from our mistakes instead of viewing them as validating our insecurities.
