Thinking books · Critical thinking · David Robson, 2019
The Intelligence Trap — the big ideas
Why intelligent, educated people are not protected from bad judgement, and are sometimes worse at it.
Free — no account needed to read
The big ideas
Greater reasoning ability can produce better arguments for a conclusion already reached — so intelligence amplifies motivated reasoning rather than correcting it.
Expertise builds pattern recognition that works until the situation changes, and experts are slower to notice when it has.
What helps is not more intelligence but specific dispositions: actively looking for disconfirmation, tolerating ambiguity, and knowing the edge of your competence.
Practise it — no need to have read it
Take something you are expert in. Write what has changed in that field in five years, and what you may still be assuming from before it changed.
A hint: Expertise is exactly where this is hardest to see from the inside.
Where it shows up in real life
- Working in a field that is changing
- Hiring for judgement
- Checking your own confidence
Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.
Thinking methods from this book
- Mark the edge of what you know — Naming where your competence ends, so you can behave differently outside it.
- The scout question — A check on whether you are trying to see clearly or trying to win.
The thinking it builds
- Critical Thinking — Evaluate claims and evidence
- Reflective Thinking — Examine your own reasoning