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In my experience really smart people can be arbitrarily wrong, perhaps moreso than less smart people, because they can create elaborate mental models to justify
by danharaj 9y ago
In my experience really smart people can be arbitrarily wrong, perhaps moreso than less smart people, because they can create elaborate mental models to justify bad ideas, and someone significantly smarter than me can create difficult to refute arguments that serve as a bulwark against pushback. Remember that sophistry requires sophistication but is still little more than the smart person's stupidity.
- exolymph 9y agoMetacontrarianism! I'm always delighted when I get a chance to link to this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metacontrarianism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...
- invalidOrTaken 9y agoTo readers wondering if they should click the link: you should!
- danharaj 9y agoIt's a bit ironic to me that you linked lesswrong, because one example of an argument I consider sophistic is the quantum mechanics sequence. In particular because the relational formulation of quantum mechanics [0] pulls the carpet right from underneath the argument in a rather dramatic way. [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-relational/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-relational/
- psergeant 9y agoOooh, I like that a lot. Many people whose political views I find offensive are people who would identify themselves as intelligent, while generally their views on things seem pretty facile.
- tormeh 9y agoPeople mostly, I think, believe what they want to believe regardless of intellect. Their reasons for doing so are more advanced among the more intelligent. Only when we don't care which of some mutually exclusive ideas are true do we use our intellect to decide.