The Intelligence Trap: Why do clever people make stupid mistakes?

I have argued that our universities are not yet addressing, at scale and urgency, some of the systemic existential issues of our time. We are currently facing the Covid-19 pandemic and our collective understanding of this crisis is woefully inadequate. And this underpins some of the ill-judged policy decisions made in response to its impact.

David Robson, the author of a recent book “The Intelligence Trap”, has advocated that there is no direct link between intelligence and wise decisions! Based on many famous case studies, he argues that “smart people can make seriously stupid mistakes”. These include Albert Einstein, Arthur Conan Doyle, Linus Pauling, Kary Mullis and many others. In short ,experts make wrong decisions  again and again. AND geniuses can be wildly irrational too.

 As we enter our fourth week of isolation in the UK, we are subjected to meaningless statistics on everything, from the use or not of face masks and the numbers of deaths, which include ONLY those in hospital. The government’s fallback position in justifying its policy decisions is a parroted “we have followed expert medical and scientific advice”.

The 21^st century presents us with deeply complex problems like pandemics and climate change that require a wiser way of reasoning: one that recognises our current limitations, tolerates ambiguity and uncertainty, balances multiple perspectives, and bridges diverse areas of expertise. So it is becoming more and more important that our education systems help create more people with these attributes.

For some considerable time, a philosopher called Nicholas Maxwell has been arguing, that the quest for wisdom should be at the heart of a university’s purpose. He advocates that they should prioritise this through “an organised inquiry which is rationally designed and wholly devoted to helping humanity learn wisdom and learn to create a more enlightened world.” But, you might ask, isn’t this what they already do? Apparently not. According to Maxwell universities have taught and advanced, in ever increasing detail, our knowledge of science, the humanities, and the social sciences, but with limited understanding of how this knowledge can be applied to benefit wider society. All of which has helped create the modern world. But it has been a mixed blessing, as many of us now recognise. This enhanced knowledge has had a profound influence for public good, in health, agriculture, transport and communication. But this has also been globally damaging for all humanity in terms of modern warfare, terrorism, inequality, destruction of our natural environments and climate change. He posits that our universities have become conditioned by the idea that they are there to enhance our knowledge and technological innovation. But there are limits to knowledge inquiry if it bypasses reason and wisdom. A good introduction to Maxwell’s position can be found here, in a recent TED talk. In it he offers a simple-4 stage solution for giving this intellectual priority in our universities.

The Urgent Need to Bring About a Revolution in Academia: Nicholas Maxwell at TEDxUCL