A quotation from Dr de Bono that often springs to mind is “You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper.” Intelligent people/experts can be very effective diggers of single deep holes. My second book is The Expectation Effect. It examines how our mindset can influence our health, fitness, happiness and longevity. Overall, this book was fine – and certainly worth reading if you have not read any of the books I’ve mentioned above, although, I would probably recommend Thinking: Fast and Slow over this, and perhaps any of the others too, now I think about it – but that might just be because I read those first, if you know what I mean. In fact, the book I would really recommend on this topic is The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making – it contains all the stuff you need to learn with none of the crappy case study examples of people being idiots - often in aeroplanes, for some reason.

The unexpected failure of teams once their proportion of ‘star’ players reaches a certain threshold. See, for instance, the England football team in the Euro 2016 tournament.”The solution is to use the PMI technique to improve your thinking. The PMI technique is a thinking technique to find the Plus Points, Minus Points, and Interesting Points about the issue before you form an opinion. We assume that smarter people are less prone to error. But greater education and expertise can often amplify our mistakes while rendering us blind to our biases. This is the 'intelligence trap'. Part 2 presents solutions to these problems by introducing the new discipline of ‘evidence-based wisdom’ (EBW), which outlines those other thinking dispositions and cognitive abilities crucial for good reasoning. It offers some practical techniques to cultivate EBW. We discover why our intuitions often fail and the ways we can correct those errors to fine-tune our instincts. We explore strategies to avoid falling for misinformation and fake news so that we can be sure that our choices are based on solid evidence rather than wishful thinking. A failure to spot contradictions in a text, due to its fluency and familiarity. For example, when answering the question, ‘How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?’, most people answer two. This kind of distraction is a common tactic for purveyors of misinformation and fake news.

Stanovich emphasizes that dysrationalia is not just limited to system 1 thinking. Even if we are reflective enough to detect when our intuitions are wrong, and override them, we may fail to use the right “mindware”—the knowledge and attitudes that should allow us to reason correctly. If you grow up among people who distrust scientists, for instance, you may develop a tendency to ignore empirical evidence, while putting your faith in unproven theories. Greater intelligence wouldn’t necessarily stop you forming those attitudes in the first place, and it is even possible that your greater capacity for learning might then cause you to accumulate more and more “facts” to support your views. I’m not even going to begin discussing why you might want to start off here by defining ‘intelligence’ – this book covers many of the problems with that more than adequately. Rather, I want to chat about the ‘trap’ part of the title. In a lot of ways this book is a rehash of stuff which is perhaps better covered in books like Mistakes Were Made (But not by me) or Sway – there were endless books of this kind printed about a decade ago, and I would still recommend most of them. The ‘trap’ part of this is the bit where we use our intelligence to work against what might otherwise be our better judgement. The examples given in the book include lots of scientists who become convinced of some crazy nonsense about HIV-AIDS or vaccinations or alien abductions – and then, once they are so convinced, no amount of evidence is enough to convince them otherwise. The point made here is that their intelligence is actually a large part of the problem. They actually use their superior reasoning skills to find increasingly ingenious reasons to explain why the holocaust never happened, say, or why 9/11 was a false flag / inside job, or why climate change is a huge conspiracy of scientists seeking additional research funding. I will be reading and rereading this again. As a professional who holds a leadership position, this read was a must for me. Life changing to say the least!!!Humble leader avoids disasters. Authoritarian leaders achieve higher heights but leave more casualties.

Instead, the process of structuring your thinking helps you see the full forest and to see the forest for the trees. How I use the PMI Technique at Work David Robson agrees that IQ tests do reflect something very important about the ability to learn and process complex information, an ability particularly useful in academia and several professions. He moves on to discuss other qualities important for success in life. Such qualities include Sternberg's descriptions of analytical, creative and practical abilities.It takes just a handful of seconds, or a matter of moments, and it completely reopens my perspective again.

Once you form your initial opinion, you use your thinking to support your position, rather than to explore the subject to broaden your thinking. The stories of the following four children are told in much greater detail, along with the lives of the other Intelligence is not something that can be measured with an IQ test or with numbers. It’s more likely to be able to measure someone’s intelligence based on their field of study or profession, or based on how they’ve chosen to spend their life. The belief that intelligence and talent are innate, and exerting effort is a sign of weakness. Besides limiting our ability to learn, this attitude also seems to make us generally more closed-minded and intellectually arrogant.”Ask Why: Take a pause, and think why you’re making the decision that you are about to take. Unpopular belief, but there is no harm in second-guessing yourself. It ended as it began—with a séance. Spiritualism was all the rage among London’s wealthy elite, and Conan Doyle was a firm believer, attending five or six gatherings a week. He even claimed that his wife Jean had some psychic talent, and that she had started to channel a spirit guide, Phineas, who dictated where they should live and when they should travel. I’m not even going to begin discussing why you might want to start off here by defining ‘intelligence’ – this book covers many of the problems with that more than adequately. Rather, I want to chat about the ‘trap’ part of the title. In a lot of ways this book is a rehash of stuff which is perhaps better covered in books like Mistakes Were Made (But not by me) or Sway – there were endless books of this kind printed about a decade ago, and I would still recommend most of them. The ‘trap’ part of this is the bit where we use our intelligence to work against what might otherwise be our better judgement. The examples given in the book include lots of scientists who become convinced of some crazy nonsense about HIV-AIDS or vaccinations or alien abductions – and then, once they are so convinced, no amount of evidence is enough to convince them otherwise. The point mad