Why "Smart" People Are "Stupid"

[drwex]

Today's xkcd (http://xkcd.com/c242.html) is funny, but it also illustrates a truism: smart people are more likely than less-smart (in the IQ sense) to make the same mistake twice or even three times.

It's a combination of curiousity asking questions that normal people really don't care about (is that a random thing? is it repeatable?) with the arrogance of the smart (that couldn't possibly happen to me... again).

Contextually, this is part of the discussion about why conventional (IQ-like) measures of intelligence are outmoded or just flat-out wrong. It's part of the science of why intelligence and emotion are really inseparable (and thus why Meyers-Briggs is a load of horsepuckey) and makes me want to get back into reading that body of literature.

Comments

[entrochan.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's *awesome*.

[gentlescholar.livejournal.com]

Depends what you mean by "mistake."

My conclusion, after years of thought about the nature of intelligence, is this:

Intelligence is not a thing. Intelligence is a topic.

It's like looking at two objects and saying one has more "electricity" than the other. If my students do that, I ask, "well, what do you mean? Do you mean more electric charge? A stronger electric field? A higher voltage? More potential energy? Greater flux? Which is greater depends on which thing you're talking about."

There's no such thing as "intelligence"--as in, "the ability to solve problems." There's ability to solve this problem or that problem.

Saying someone is "smarter" than someone else is actually the same mistake as saying that they are "better" than someone else, just to a lesser degree. The response should always be, "AT WHAT?"

[tisana.livejournal.com]

First, Xkcd is awesome in general...sometimes it falls flat with me, but mostly the geekiness is wonderful. I would totally be the curious type trying to find the pattern of why something happens.

As to intelligence...yeah, it's a hot-button topic, especially among intellectual types. I agree that the way most people think of intelligence (the "shorthand" that most of us know isn't correct, just easier to get a concept across) is outmoded, and not terribly accurate. The particular things I get worked up about may be different from others, though...

For me, I differentiate between "smart" and "intelligent" as a semantical difference: "smart" refers to common sense and street smarts, something that eventually develops into wisdom, and "intelligence" refers to book learning. But the capacity to store or use information, and who's better at it is...arguable.

My other twitch, related to the above, is the problem of "skilled" vs. "talented"--one involves study and discipline, one implies god-given knack that does not require working at it--and how often one is percieved as better than the other.

Question: if you don't like Myers-Briggs (I find it faulty myself), what intelligence models do you like? What do you think of Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory?

[ckd]

For all that it just reinforces my undeniable geekitude, I must say that the distinction between "intelligence" and "wisdom" in Dungeons & Dragons character stats, though incredibly simplistic, sure is useful at times.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

What a lot of people don't know is that the original purpose of intelligence testing has been turned on its head.

Waaay back when the first one was made, it was because Alfred Binet was assigned the task of figuring out which kids were underperforming. Teachers noticed that some kids weren't doing very well in school, but when extra time was spent with these kids, some kids benefitted greatly and others didn't. The original purpose of IQ tests was to try to find a measure of intellectual potential that was free of socioeconomic bias, so that kids who were smart but poor could be located and helped to live up to their full potential.

I'm sure the poor guy is spinning in his grave at what they've done to his test.

I was taught to give IQ tests while I was in grad school, and the teacher stressed that the final number was *not* the most important part of the test. Most IQ tests consist of a dozen subtests, and the idea behind testing is supposed to be that the pattern of differences among the scores on the various subtests helps teachers figure out where a kid needs extra help or what a kid excells at. IQ tests are what helped educators figure out that many children who can't read are of normal intelligence and spawned our understanding of what dyslexia is and how to treat it, as opposed to dumping dyslexic kids on the garbage heap.

So although they call it "intelligence," what the IQ test is supposed to measure is the ability to perform well in a conventional school setting. That's all. Nothing else. And it does that reasonably well.

It's true that most conventional IQ tests don't measure a heap of important things, but they were only ever designed to measure the much narrower domain of what-is-taught-in-schools. The tests have been perverted beyond their original purpose by people who don't understand them, as have most personality tests. The MMPI, for example, is supposed to help identify which form of psychopathology a person has when it is known that s/he has something -- it's NOT supposed to be used on random job applicants.

The people who make these tests could almost certainly make up tests of emotional intelligence or suitability for various jobs, but the tests currently in use are not those tests. And the tests currently in use are *not* supposed to be used by anybody other than trained psychologists, who know about the limitations of the tests. But greedy test-printing companies will sell them to anybody with the funds to buy them, even though they claimed that they wouldn't do this when the tests were turned over to them.

It's not the fault of the tests or their makers that they've been perverted to uses they were never designed for by people who are lazy, unscrupulous, stupid, or ignorant.

several thoughts

[unseelie.livejournal.com]

-the tests I have interacted with have been mostly silly and useless.
-XKCD- is SO CUTE and often dead on. (not always)
-I have foundt he D&D "Wis VS Int" thing so very useful in explaining certain behaviors and archtypes, I mean - the Archtypical mad scientist has a huge INT and little Wis. Creating a sentient free willed flesh golumn? Bad idea.
-I have found 'computers' as a way of describing intellegence useful.
"this person has a fast processor" IE: thinks quickly
"this person has lots of RAM" :and can hold a great deal of data in mind while making decisions.
"this person has a huge/fast hard drive" " and remembers huge volumes of information and can access it quickly.
"this person does not have the software to perfrom that process.."

Now it starts to weaken when discussing exceptional people - My exwife shauna's language skills - could not be taught, easily. How to learn other launguages from context, how to write with either hand, or ones toes; legibly? Upside down?
Not software easily found or installed.

M-B is just silly. I have changed 'personality type' repeatedly every time I've taken it, and I dare say my personality type changes as a direct corralation to how much coffee I've had on a given day. Ditto my IQ.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

make the same mistake twice or even three times

I'm not sure any time after the first is a mistake; it's just verification. I'm also not sure what it says about me that I'd probably get other people to pull the lever again in order to figure out what had happened when I pulled it ("Hey, check this out..."), but I rather suspect that would acquire a crowd of zotted people eager to learn the result themselves, so at least I'd be in good company.

I tend to think of arrogance as a trait of the over-educated, generally cured or displaced by worldly experience. Such as pulling a lot of levers. Fits in pretty well with your INT/WIS analogy.

I suspect that knowing that it takes at least three data points to plot a trend, combined with the curiosity to seek out that data, is exactly the sort of basic and critical "critical thinking" combination that things like M-B should be looking for, but aren't.