It is possible, though, to take a wrong idea- or even just a slightly incomplete impression- and use your intelligence to run very far with it. Amusing example

It is possible, though, to take a wrong idea- or even just a slightly incomplete impression- and use your intelligence to run very far with it. Amusing example: my son refused, for a couple years, to learn single-digit addition facts. He already understood that there was no limit to the number of integers, but since he didn't know that single-digit addition facts could be composed to add arbitrarily large numbers, he silently reasoned that the infinitude of integers doomed any attempt to learn addition. Everyone talking about specific addition problems was a chump! He just went on for a couple grades thinking everyone was stupidly wasting their time before we had a conversation that unearthed his reasoning. And that wasn't even starting with an incorrect belief- just some missing information. Imagine the sorts of explosions you could get yourself into starting with one of those and reasoning as far as you can with it!