(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Why Smart People Are Stupid

In fact, introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings. We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point. The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.

This is a study that could advance what we know about intelligence, except that it appears they come to a funny conclusion and miss the obvious.

This trend held for many of the specific biases, indicating that smarter people (at least as measured by S.A.T. scores) and those more likely to engage in deliberation were slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes.

The bolded parenthetical is the most important part. What this study highlights to me is that how we are measuring intelligence is lacking, because it doesn't take this "feature" into account. A significant part of the problem is that we assume that people who are highly educated or can do well on certain tests are actually more intelligent overall, and what I would say this data actually points out that that isn't the case.

...demonstrated that we’re not nearly as rational as we like to believe. 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.

A smaller subpoint is that this is not a logical conclusion. Our brain still uses a logical process to get to an answer, it's just using the wrong assumptions. That doesn't make us any less rational.

This post is slightly in honor of panookah, as it's about thinking about thinking, and slightly self-serving, as I can honestly point out that I didn't miss either of the two questions posed in the article (go ahead and test yourself honestly as you read the article). But those are just side points.

This poll is just for fun, if you did test yourself on the two sample questions in the article.
[Poll #1848002]

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If people needed an academic study to tell them that there is a difference between book smarts and street smarts, well congratulations to them for needing someone to prove to them what anyone with a lick of sense already knew.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And frankly put if we're measuring street smarts via mathematics, then the whole point is self-defeating. I could likewise pose stumpers by asking people the following three seemingly simple questions about history and be just as self-righteous about myself as the idiot that wrote this article was:

1) Which Empire lasted for 1,000 years with the name of a modern state but is known by a name that has nothing to do with the actual empire itself, being a pure artifact of modernism?

2) What is the longest war in human history?

3) Who won the Battle of Tallas?

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Well, book smarts against streets smarts would have been an interesting study..but this one has as far as I can tell only tested undergraduates, so, it's hard to tell whether they are book or street smarts, it only tells stuff within the frame of the SAT scores.

[politikitty.livejournal.com]

The study actually isn't about book smarts vs street smarts.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

That's not actually the distinction though.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

I think if you've ever encountered simple text equations, you get the answers without that much effort. Basically because you are not tempted to "wing it" but to work after a system.
This makes me wonder a bit about the conducting of the tests. As we don't have SAT's where I come from I can't really say anything about their intelligence criteria, but I do think this section is
on to something:

" Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves."

However, when reading the abstract to the actual study, it seems to be more about the bias blind spot than about anything else, and further more, nothing is said about those that scored high and their abilities on self reflection or any other common traits. Which strikes me as odd in the frame of the study. I'd be interested to read about that. All test subjects whether bad or good seem to be undergraduates btw.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

A square house has southern exposure on each side; where is the house located?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

North Pole.

[politikitty.livejournal.com]

Wow.

What a terrible oversimplification of Kahneman's work leading to you actually failing to take in new information. That's not proving the point in the slightest.

All scientific research is based on assumptions. They have to be. Even if these assumptions are tenuous or narrow at best.

We have 250 years of economic research that isn't worthless. But it is based on assumptions that are not entirely valid because they make simplifications out of human reasoning. And the difference between our rational assumptions and real people need to be understood if we need to refine the study.

You're really impressed with yourself for being primed to know that a trick question is a trick question and so you go into it looking for the trick?

By reading the article, you're already unable to act as a test subject. You can only get it if you have a microcosm of empathy and can accurately remember how you or most other people might react to the same question in an environment where the subjects are not primed. There's a great example from his book where you ask people to count the number of passes during a basketball game. Halfway through the clip, a guy in a gorilla suit walks through the game, and most people miss it because they're so overloaded by their focus on 1) the basketball and 2) their internal counting mechanism.

Sure. I got the answers correct. But I knew the questions were going to require me to not use the mental shortcuts I might otherwise employ. I switched from System 2 to System 1.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

HA! I just read about the Gorilla/basketball thing! Dawkins mentioned it in "The Greatest Show on Earth."

Same result with the questions. It was clear that these were trick questions, and so I discounted my gut reaction and took the time to actually "do the math." I didn't have the vocabulary to express what you're saying about the two systems we use, but that's an interesting way of putting it.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there's more to the study, but the article makes it seem like getting fooled by math questions (that intentionally lead towards certain incorrect answers) somehow indicates a larger bias or blind-spot. Really, all the ball/bat question does is determine whether a person has experience with this kind of "trick" math question. Like I said, I'm sure there's more to it, but I have to wonder if this is yet ANOTHER example in a sea of science reporting that makes conclusions (or at least overly emphasizes conclusions) that a study's authors never really meant.

[politikitty.livejournal.com]

The fact that smarter people get the question wrong means it's highly unlikely it's a question of exposure. Getting a high SAT score means that you pay close attention for those sorts of tricks, so it should be that a high SAT score means you're *less* likely to get the question wrong.

The point of the study is that it's very exhausting to be smart all the time. Kahneman uses the concept of us having 2 cognitive systems. System 1 which is very slow and meticulous and smart. And system 2 which is quick, automatic and relies on intuition.

As you get smarter, you train system 2 in more and more things. If you play chess, System 2 essentially starts to recognize more and more moves, so you don't have to call up the slower System except in key points in time. The bat/ball question is actually a very basic question. 2x+ 1 = 1.10, solve for x. But most people feel confident enough in their basic algebra skills, they don't call up system 1 to check the answer.

[foreverbeach.livejournal.com]

I got them right, but in part I got them right because I focused on them. That right there is another bias you could talk about. I expected 2 questions which most people would make mistakes on, especially mistakes of the "answered too quickly without giving them due consideration" type. Had I not been prepared for such questions, I probably wouldn't have given them any real consideration and might have made such a mistake.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Answering them after being even slightly exposed to the premise of this post invalidates the exercise.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

If street smarts lead people to conclude that global warming is a hoax, then it's overrated.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

That does not require street smarts, but a certain knowledge that the Bible is absolutely true.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

lol

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

You cheated.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I initially tripped on the first question, but recovered before moving on to the answer. The second one was pretty straight-forward. I could not possibly have messed that one up.

The other day I got into an intellectual discussion with some folks who were familiar with the story of Empress Theodora. When a woman asserted that she was not chaste, I disagreed. Many men were after her. This kind of response can either be taken for the humor it was intended to be, or it could be taken as my ignorance of the word "chaste."

Here is a puzzle for you: An airplane crashes on the border of the US and Mexico. In which country do they bury the survivors?

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Five yellow parrots and four green parrots were perched on a tree branch. A hunter shot one green parrot with a rifle, how many parrots remained on the branch?

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> . A significant part of the problem is that we assume that people who are highly educated or can do well on certain tests are actually more intelligent overall,
> and what I would say this data actually points out that that isn't the case.

One thing that springs to mind... the kind of brain that is good at assimilating information provided by culture (such that it scores well on SATs) is to keyed for copying, even when the copied behavior is a sub-optimum behavior.




> Our brain still uses a logical process to get to an answer, it's just using the wrong assumptions. That doesn't make us any less rational.

There's a difference between saying a thing is rationally explicable, and saying it is rational.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between saying a thing is rationally explicable, and saying it is rational.

What difference is that?

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

There are multiple types of intelligence, not simply logico-mathematical intelligence, at least if you define "intelligence" as the ability to problem solve. Somebody can be a genius with respect to, say, logico-mathematical, and be slow with respect to say, interpersonal intelligence; in fact, that's largely the definition of Asberger's. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences) ()

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

This whole post seems like a convenient excuse for when someone says something dumb. "Oh I just had a mental misstep."

[oportet.livejournal.com]

Let's say the original Lily pad patch was 1 sq. inch (that's a lot smaller than any lily pad patch I've ever seen, but let's pretend)

Won't the lily pads (and lake) cover a little over 2 billion square miles by day 48?

They must be stopped...

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

It will only be a problem after the Pond People invasion covers the earth.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I I got them both right, but I didn't ponder them out, I tried to answer as quick as I could but quickly threw out the wrong answers. For instance, the bat and the ball, first thing I thought was dollar and 10 but its quick to think that would only make the bat 90 cents more than the ball so you look for another answer.

The lily one, 47 was my first thought simply because it doubles each day, so the previous day it was half, makes sense. That didn't seem particularly misleading to me. Maybe I'm a weird thinker.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

[oslo.livejournal.com]

What this study highlights to me is that how we are measuring intelligence is lacking, because it doesn't take this "feature" into account. A significant part of the problem is that we assume that people who are highly educated or can do well on certain tests are actually more intelligent overall, and what I would say this data actually points out that that isn't the case.

But you haven't explained why the data does show that something is being left out of how we measure "intelligence."

Look at it this way: Reading about this study, you gather that the effect that it's measuring - the "bias blind spot" - is something that ought to be part of how we evaluate "intelligence." Why is that? What makes the ability to "see" one's own biases an important part of what we mean when we refer to a person as "intelligent?"

I think that, to the extent we want to measure "intelligence," we have to be specific about why we're doing it. I'd agree, for example, that the SATs might not be the best indicator of "intelligence"; one's SAT score really just tells you how good they are at taking the SAT. But insofar as we want "intelligence" (the article refers to a different rubric, which I'd prefer: "cognitive sophistication") to refer to the quality of a person's being intellectually hard-working and disciplined, capable of intellectual growth, open to criticism, etc., maybe the SATs are a reliable indicator, if only as a proxy for other characteristics. Would a "bias blind spot" test show a similar correlation?

Part of the point of the article seems to be: No, it wouldn't, except insofar as you're looking for a negative correlation. That is, the "bias blind spot" doesn't seem to be positively correlated with what we normally mean by "intelligence." Now maybe what we mean by "intelligence" is wrong; if you think so (and your assertions would tend to suggest that you do), then you should explain what we ought to mean by it. Maybe it's not SAT scores. But what else should we look to?

Personally, what the "bias blind spot" studies tell me is that we have to remember that thinking well is a cooperative exercise. We need to speak and listen to one another, because we should recognize that we're always our least capable critics. I'm less interested in getting isolated questions pulled from a New Yorker piece "right," and less interested in what my standardized scores tell me about the "percentile" to which I belong, than I am in just getting to good answers for hard questions and good solutions to hard problems.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

is something that ought to be part of how we evaluate "intelligence." Why is that?

Because it obviously lets us see who can solve problems better/faster/easier.

Intelligence, in my opinion, is being able to grok something easily, and then use that knowledge and insight to solve problems.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

oh, are we doing anti-intellectualism again?

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

If you ask me the point isn't being smart or not, the point is being right. Data, facts, and doing things the right way is what counts.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Soon, robots will be doing the right things for us, while we'll be eating popcorn watching the Superbowl. Yay for technology!

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

I got both answers right instantly, as they can be represented by simple equations

A-B = 1
A+B = 1.10
A = ?


2^48 = x
2^y = x/2
y = ?

If anyone gets either answer intuitively wrong, it's only because they're not used to solving arithmetic routinely. It's not because there's some hidden psychological fact about them which obscures the correct answer. my score on math SAT was perfect, FWIW.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Your comment gave me an algebra-erection.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

There's a whole book about it

http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Smart-ebook/dp/B0052RE5MU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1340205323&sr=8-2&keywords=you+are+not+smart