Intelligence Trap book review

A slightly edited version of my current Amazon review, which includes an addendum based on my reply to a thoughtful comment someone had posted in response (back when Amazon still allowed people to comment on reviews).

The notion that a high IQ is no safeguard against flawed or uncritical thinking, and that one so intellectually gifted might be as susceptible to cognitive error as anyone else, is something I needed no convincing of before reading this book. But that’s not quite the premise here. Rather, what the author contends is that a higher general intelligence can make one even more prone to such errors than is typically the case with average intelligence. 

To support this claim, he cites instances of bright, well-educated people exploring fringe topics, refusing to take advice, constructing “elaborate arguments to justify their [faulty] reasoning,” and making mistakes that “appear to arise from the particular, flawed mental habits that come with greater intelligence, education, and professional expertise.” His examples draw from professionals in medicine, science, engineering, and law.

Notwithstanding the extensive research (documented in 70 pages of endnotes) that clearly animates and informs his case studies, his examples never succeeded in demonstrating to me how these traps are particularly endemic to a higher IQ, with the unspoken corollary that they’re somehow less likely to afflict everyone else. Rather, I wonder if these are instances where faulty thinking in otherwise keen intellects isn’t actually more common, but instead is a) more egregious because the consequences are potentially more spectacular or dire, and b) more striking because of the sheer gulf between naïve expectation — that brilliance correlates with wisdom, or at least critical acumen — and the sometimes disappointing reality. 

Maybe I’m wrong, but it just seems to me that many (if not all) of the cognitive failings — the various biases, blindspots, fallacies, etc. — that supposedly make up the intelligence trap can be readily observed to affect people more or less equally, regardless of intelligence. If so, such tendencies might be more a function of individual psychology than of intellect. 

That said, one of the things I most appreciated about this book was the acknowledgement that the raw intellectual processing power measured by IQ tests, while undoubtedly important and valid, constitutes but one aspect of intelligence as more broadly and meaningfully defined. Tolerance of ambiguity, epistemic curiosity, actively open-minded thinking, intellectual humility, growth mindset, reflective competence, and “emotional compass” — these are some of the 16 qualities the author elaborates at length (then later summarizes in a “taxonomy of wisdom”) which together point to a kind of cognitive depth and maturity that is clearly a mark of genuinely superior intelligence, and equally clearly not in the domain of what is measured in tests of fluid intelligence.

Another thing I appreciated in this book were the many demonstrations of different types of critical thinking, and the value of each. In fact, even if, like me, you end up unconvinced about the intelligence trap being about intelligence, the book is worth its price just for its illustrations of the relevance of critical thinking in everyday life, both in terms of its benefits when successfully practiced, and its costs when not. 

As for my rating, this is another instance where a more granular scale would be useful, as three stars seems slightly too low a rating, while four seems slightly too high. That I’ve decided to round it down rather than up is a reflection of one additional criticism I had of the book: the author’s materialist/reductionist bias and concomitant tendency to imply that anything suggestive of the paranormal must, a priori, be false.  Be that as it may, and for what it’s worth, my actual rating is 3½ stars.

My reply to someone's comment on my review :

Thanks for your kind and thoughtful comments.  The intellectual pride you mention is something the author explores as being a factor in at least one (though possibly a few) of the traps – “earned dogmatism.” While I agree that one can become enamored of their own brilliance, this still strikes me as being more a function of psychology than of intellectual capacity.  So, if someone’s most dominant and rewarded attribute is their mind, and that person has at least a latent vulnerability to vanity or pride or hubris or arrogance, etc., then that’s what’s most likely to provide the stickiness. In another case, it might be athletic prowess, musical virtuosity, or entrepreneurial ingenuity that dazzles and blinds one to their own limits or flaws.   In any case, it seems to me the central issue is the proneness to becoming inflated, not what's serving as the object or vehicle for the inflation.

When considering the validity of the author’s premise, I think it might be useful to invert it.  He’s implying, in effect, that the overwhelming majority of people of average intellect and education — the billions of proverbial salt-of-the-earth folk the world over — are less likely to evince flawed or uncritical thinking, believe in stuff that can’t be (or at least hasn’t been) proven, commit various fallacies when debating/arguing, become closed to growth once expertise has been reached, etc., than their smarter and better educated counterparts.  This just strikes me as incredible, and I have to wonder whether such a view is based to some extent on being out of touch with, and/or romanticizing, people who are intellectually average.