[extropy-chat] Why smart people defend bad ideas

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sat Jul 2 07:35:54 UTC 2005


<http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay40.htm>

Nice essay, with lots of home truths.

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The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and
sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they're
wrong. This is bad. Worse, if they got away with it when they were
young (say, because they were smarter than their parents, their
friends, and their parent's friends) they've probably built an ego
around being right, and will therefore defend their perfect record of
invented righteousness to the death. Smart people often fall into the
trap of preferring to be right even if it's based in delusion, or
results in them, or their loved ones, becoming miserable. (Somewhere
in your town there is a row of graves at the cemetery, called
smartypants lane, filled with people who were buried at poorly
attended funerals, whose headstones say "Well, at least I was right.")

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Short of obtaining a degree in logic, or studying the nuances of
debate, remember this one simple rule for defusing those who are
skilled at defending bad ideas: Simply because they cannot be proven
wrong, does not make them right. Most of the tricks of logic and
debate refute questions and attacks, but fail to establish any true
justification for a given idea.

----

The primary point is that no amount of intelligence can help an
individual who is diligently working at the wrong level of the
problem. Someone with wisdom has to tap them on the shoulder and say,
"Um, hey. The hole you're digging is very nice, and it is the right
size. But you're in the wrong yard."

----

Smart people, or at least those whose brains have good first gears,
use their speed in thought to overpower others. They'll jump between
assumptions quickly, throwing out jargon, bits of logic, or rules of
thumb at a rate of fire fast enough to cause most people to become
rattled, and give in. When that doesn't work, the arrogant or the
pompous will throw in some belittlement and use whatever snide or
manipulative tactics they have at their disposal to further discourage
you from dissecting their ideas.

----

BillK



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