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But neither this, nor what the author is talking about is "the curse of smart people". Conspiracy theorists, evolution deniers, religious fundamentalists, alie

But neither this, nor what the author is talking about is "the curse of smart people". Conspiracy theorists, evolution deniers, religious fundamentalists, alien abductees and so on are examples of people getting together, and successfully rationalizing their belief in some quite twisted ideas. We don't call such groups "smart people", typically. They're not necessarily stupid either. They're just people. So it's just the "curse" of being a human, I guess. Whether we use our mind superpowers for good, or in order to fool ourselves and the people around us is completely independent of one's smartness, and has more to do with wisdom. Many people believe that if you can wrap a convincing narrative around a set of selected facts, the narrative must be truth itself. Stories posing as insight are all around you. Experience leads to wisdom, and wisdom teaches us to be more open-minded and less sure in the stories we hear or tell ourselves.

JulianMorrison 12y ago
The curse, specifically, is that the smart people make their mistaken theories sound good, build them up to the point that it's hard to break them without being equally smart AND also primed to look for subtle glitches in reasoning or technique.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  To me, intelligence is like a fast truck with a lot of cargo space: you can use it to help other people move into a nicer home, you can use it to make great trips, you can run it into a wall and kill yourself much better than you could with a slower truck, and you can load it up with children and drive off a bridge. Intelligence is to stupidity what a power tool is to a screwdriver, you can do more powerful good and bad things with it, but the fact that it's more powerful says nothing about how it will be used. Sadly.
- mreiland 12y ago
  As someone who secretly fears they suffer from exactly what the blog author stated, I can tell you unequivocally that your interpretation is not what I fear.

JulianMorrison 12y ago

The curse, specifically, is that the smart people make their mistaken theories sound good, build them up to the point that it's hard to break them without being equally smart AND also primed to look for subtle glitches in reasoning or technique.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
To me, intelligence is like a fast truck with a lot of cargo space: you can use it to help other people move into a nicer home, you can use it to make great trips, you can run it into a wall and kill yourself much better than you could with a slower truck, and you can load it up with children and drive off a bridge. Intelligence is to stupidity what a power tool is to a screwdriver, you can do more powerful good and bad things with it, but the fact that it's more powerful says nothing about how it will be used. Sadly.
mreiland 12y ago
As someone who secretly fears they suffer from exactly what the blog author stated, I can tell you unequivocally that your interpretation is not what I fear.