Why Being Clever Can Make You Stupid
It seemed like a good idea at the time…
A statement that has followed many colossal fu&k ups!
- Titanic — “don’t worry icebergs are easy to spot on a clear night””
- Sharemarket Crash — “Subprime mortgages are a solid investment”
- Chernobyl — “we’ll just do the safety test later”
Sometimes, smart people can be really dumb!
Why is it that sometimes intelligent minds are responsible for such monumental fails?
One word: Conditioning…
Conditioning refers to the process of learning through reinforcement, where a response becomes more probable or intense due to repeated exposure to a stimulus.
We humans are programmed to function on autopilot. We are prone to making assumptions and operating largely on conditioned belief structures.
Why? Survival.
If you had to relearn how to feed yourself every day, or how to perform a specific skill needed at work, it would be pretty stressful, right?
Without conditioning, we would be stuck in an infinite loop, without the capacity to learn anything new and progress forward.
It doesn’t all suck. There are some upsides — which I will get to further on down the page :-)
But what happens when autopilot gets it wrong?
Blind spots and selective ignorance.
Conditioning drives everyday behaviour and decisions. Take confirmation bias for example:
Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that leads people to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs (aka conditioning).
Watch a couple of videos on YouTube about a topic you are interested in, and the algorithm will show you more of the same. If you have an opinion about the topic (left or right), you’ll see more content that reinforces the opinion and belief you have expressed interest in.
Cognitive bias, we are immersed in it every day.
Beliefs and desires shape perceptions while fear feeds a state of denial or reality avoidance.
Societal, family and religious conditioning, moral codes, and peer behaviours all contribute to our unique picture of reality.
It’s our personal operating system running in the background.
What should be believed, who should be followed and what version of clever we should aspire to are all ingredients in conditioning soup.
Society worships (the appearance of) cleverness.
The last decade has seen an explosion of “experts.” Fitness Gurus, Financial Gurus, Self-Help Coaches — you name it.
Hit 100k followers, and bam, you’re a “somebody.”
The smarter we get, the dumber we become.
In what ways can intelligent stupidity manifest?
- Overconfidence and Ass umptions
- Analysis Paralysis
- Social Disconnect or Loneliness
- Overcomplicating Things
- Ignoring Intuition
- Intellectual Arrogance-Based Assumptions
- Risk Taking
- Neglect of Emotional Intelligence
- Tunnel Vision
- Fear of Failure or Rejection
- Being blinded by Love or Lust
- Attachment to a Dream no matter what
Aircrash Investigation TV series demonstrates many examples.
A perfect storm of assumptions, habit, training, bad luck and bad decisions can equal a very crappy day!
It can be hard knowing when to let something go, and change course even when the universe is screaming “hey this is not the path for you”.
Clues might be everywhere, but conditioning keeps the focus elsewhere.
Waking up from the trance
So, what can companies and individuals do when they suspect bias and conditioning are about to take over the cockpit?
Here are a few mindful tips to follow, and something I have been practicing as an immunisation for “social blindspot disease”.
10 Tips for Nurturing Emotional Intelligence.
1. Overconfidence: Reframe “I don’t know” as an opportunity to learn and discover, and seek external feedback.
2. Analysis Paralysis: Simplify decision-making by setting time limits or criteria. Too much info and data can fry the brain. Step outside for a bigger view.
3. Social Disconnect: Engage in active listening and empathize with differing viewpoints. Is there another angle from which to look at this?
4. Complexity Bias: Prioritize straightforward solutions and avoid overcomplication. Sometimes the best part is no part as Elon Musk would say!
5. Listen to Intuition: Balance logic with gut feelings in decision-making.
6. Intellectual Arrogance: Stay open to learning and acknowledge the expertise of others. Having a differing perspective doesn’t make one person wrong and the other right, it just means there are multiple ways to approach something.
7. Risk-taking: Evaluate potential downsides and consult with trusted advisors. What are all the things that could go wrong and what lessons could be learned from that experience without having to travel that path.
8. Neglect of Emotional Intelligence: Invest in developing empathy and social skills. Build in a gap between stimulus and response. It’s ok to sit, and assimilate for a while before doing something about it.
9. Tunnel Vision: Broaden the perspective by exploring related fields or topics. Turn it around like it’s a multifaceted cube, looking at it from different sides.
10. Fear of Failure: Embrace challenges as learning opportunities and don’t shy away from (calculated) risks. Every fail is an iteration, a correction that needs to be made. Mistakes are to be learned from, it’s sometimes the only way to improve.
And a bonus 11th point. Pattern interrupt. Do something to shock you out of the normal response to things. A dip in an ice bath? A different way to walk to work? Change up 1 to 3 things every day for a week to snap yourself out of your autopilot trance.
The common denominators
Have you noticed common threads?
- Cultivating space for other perspectives to enter.
- Accepting the potential learnings for both“the worst and best case scenarios”.
- Understanding how conditioning, fear and desire distort, or filter our reality in the moment.
By cultivating curiosity about our human biases, and openly questioning what’s really behind what we think is true, you’re making room for intelligence to expand.
Intelligence grows through awareness, and questioning everything with a curious, open mind opens new pathways.
There are so many forms of intelligence.
The beautiful thing about humans is that we have a huge capacity to learn and grow.
Fear holds us back: fear of rejection, fear of being excluded, fear of making mistakes, fear of success (yes that’s a thing too).
Our survival programming can be useful, but widening our peripheral view means we can see other potential outcomes. We can stop sleepwalking into situations and start CHOOSING.
Realising that everything is a decision.
Whether you like Elon Musk as a person or not, he’s not afraid to make decisions and changes, throw things out and start again if needed.
Mistakes are an iteration, a learning process. And the faster theories (or actual working parts) can be tested and discarded the better.
Calculated fearlessness means progress.
If we are willing to look at ALL possibilities, even if it is with gritted teeth, the calculated part of “calculated risk” becomes a much smarter informed process.
All possibilities paid attention to early on, mean opportunities for mitigation and building something bigger, better, faster, stronger.
It might be outside the original square we started building in, but it’s got the potential of becoming intelligence manifested into something cool!
My hope is that we all learn to embrace opportunities to grow all types of intelligence to become smarter individually and collectively as humans.
We have the power to be the driving force behind our own conditioning. Conditioning ourselves to practice ways of seeing clearly.
Letting go of the habits and behaviours that keep us stuck on autopilot means we can discover the full potential of our intelligence and creative abilities.
And being stupid occasionally is okay if it’s another opportunity to learn!
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. — Marianne Williamson
To finish off here are some clever quotes:
- The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky
- “Too clever is dumb.” — Ogden Nash
- “Cleverness is not wisdom.” — Euripides
- “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein
- “Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.” — Albert Schweitzer
- “A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” — Albert Einstein
- “The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.” — François de La Rochefoucauld
- “Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.” — Henri Frédéric Amiel
- “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.” — Charles Kingsley
- “The road to wisdom? Well, it’s plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again, but less and less and less.” — Piet Hein
Enjoy these nuggets of wit and wisdom!
(My Kindle book about all the ways we are influenced https://www.amazon.com/Social-Media-Influence-Emotional-Manipulation-ebook/dp/B0C44QVBMX)
