Posted on 07/21/2023 8:35:13 AM PDT by bitt
"As a rule, I have found that the greater brain a man has, and the better educated, the easier it has been to mystify him."
So said master illusionist Harry Houdini. He said it during his spat with Sherlock Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle over the latter’s belief in seances and fairies. Despite being a literary genius, Conan Doyle nevertheless had some foolish ideas.
He’s not alone. Researchers have even coined ‘Nobel Disease,’ referring to the tendency for some Nobel Prize winners to embrace unconventional beliefs. Charles Richet, for instance, won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine but also believed in dowsing and ghosts.
Taken to the extreme, almost half of all German doctors in the 1930s joined the Nazi Party early, which was a higher rate than any other profession. Their education and intelligence did not shield them from madness – quite the opposite.
We are all deluged with attempts to manipulate us, from Big Tech and politicians to salespeople and colleagues. It is comforting to think that this is only a concern for the less intellectually gifted: we conjure up stereotypes of backwards ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘science deniers’ who need protecting from misinformation.
Yet the reality is that intellectuals are just as vulnerable to bias, if not more so. The scientific term is dysrationalia. Psychology professor Keith Stanovich researched it thoroughly and once concluded that ‘none of these [biases] displayed a negative correlation with [intelligence]… If anything, the correlations went in the other direction.’
Why might that be?
The first explanation is motivated reasoning, where logic is used to satisfy an underlying emotional motivation. Conan Doyle, for example, may have convinced himself of the truth of fairies and seances because he was struggling with the recent death of his son. With a deep psychological need to fill, Conan Doyle’s remarkable intellect simply provided the justification.
People reach the conclusions they want to reach, and then post-rationalise it – but smarter people are better at coming up with these justifications. To paraphrase George Orwell, some things are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.
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Being intelligent really has no bearing on the level of emotionalism a person has, so what we see is that smart people who are ruled more by emotion than intellect are susceptible to the attacks and they respond accordingly.
People who are able to discern false accusations can deflect these attacks because they know they are untrue.
My belief as to why so many people are ruled by emotion goes back to our education system, and the reluctance to demand objective truth. When we are taught that there are no wrong answers, we lose our ability to objectively scrutinize many situations.
And so, we are repeatedly told that when the police are involved in violence against a person of color, it is racist (even when all the people involved are black- i.e. Memphis case of Tyre Nichols); yet, when blacks are perpetrators against white victims, there is not racism involved. Rather than risk being considered to be racist, the intelligent and emotional person will conform to the prevailing narrative. They will look at the full circumstances. Over time, these things just build up; racism, climate change, LGBT issues, and on and on. If they go against the narrative, they are told they are bad people, and they cannot consider any other alternative.
We all are to some degree
Well said!
That said, I am a big Musk supporter.
There are different areas of intelligence. Just because you did a doctorate in physics doesn’t mean you are smart in politics, love or interpersonal relationships. It may mean that you’re a social retard but a mathematical genius.
The problem isn’t with being intelligent. It’s with being self convinced. A lot of people, smart and not, make their decision and don’t move off of it. The “spat” referred to in the story is a great example. Doyle, remember the person who codified deductive reasoning, had such strong belief in the paranormal that he flat out told Houdini that the walk through wall trick Houdini did was magic. Like real MAGIC, not a trick. Houdini of course knew better, since he designed the trick and all, and even offered to show Doyle how he did it. But Doyle didn’t want to hear or see it. He was self convinced. It was magic.
The problem some smart people have is that they know
they are smart...
Intelligence is a vector quantity.
Just wait until the mass disappearance of millions or hundreds of millions
And the guys forcing the va666ine upon the public are already pushing a narrative that they have dismissed for so long.
Sometimes the arrogance expresses itself dramatically, like in the implosion and sinking of the Titan
I think numerous examples of this are hiding in plain sight. Among highly educated people of this era (supposedly intellectual), (probably) most of them have been through the indoctrination mill and have arrived at a point where irrationality looks rational.
Evolutionism (essentially, “rocks can turn into people if left alone long enough”)
Multiverse (it’s been “proven” mathematically possible)
Utopianism (if people only weren’t corrupted by oppression, they’d become perfect and happy ever after, whistling while they work)
Freudianism (oppression, repression and suppression are at fault; the individual miscreant is never at fault; original sin doesn’t exist)
Scientism (there’s a perfectly good scientific explanation
for everything; hence, there is no God)
Anthropogenic climate change (and the projections of near-term global catastrophe unless we spend trillion$ to fight it; it’s settled science)
Trump is evil (despite a panoply of futile effort to pin anything on him)
Trump’s supporters are cult followers and worse than Trump himself (since they oppose efforts to radically transform America)
Trump and his supporters are fascists (despite the fact they cannot even properly define the word or the concept — truth told, they need only look in a mirror to see one)
Etc.
I think this is the correct answer: lack of humility. It certainly applies to most liberals, whether they are “smart” or not.
They believe in the hype about themselves, as being a cut above the rest. It’s even worse with very wealthy people. Donald John Trump is an anomaly in that regard. Not saying he is without ego, but rather that his ego is far more subdued than people realize, or even give him credit for.
Yet Bonhoeffer realised the evil of Nazism as early as 1933
Survival instinct makes us look for signs and trends pointing to coming disasters.
The more intellectuals among us are naturally better at spotting clues and trends.
Unfortunately, it is far too easy for the intelligent to become lazy about testing their conclusions against countering theories and contradicting evidence.
Power seekers and con-artist use this gain fame and fortune.
Social/Peer Pressures also weigh in on this as well. If your social circle believes some falsity you are more likely to keep your unsubstantiated beliefs. If you recognize your error and start advocating a contra veiling thought than your peer group you are likely to be ostracized or subject to ridicule.
It takes a lot of courage or willingness to be excluded from your group to change your opinions.
lack of street time
naivete
The flip side:
It’s very hard for a person to ADMIT he has been fooled, after he has finally seen the light..
You will not surely die.
For a while...
George Orwell had them pegged with his, “Some ideas are so absurd only an intellectual could believe them.”
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