#40 – Why smart people defend bad ideas
By Scott Berkun, April 2005
We all know someone who’s intelligent, but who occasionally defends obviously bad ideas. Why does this happen? How can smart people take up positions that defy any reasonable logic? Having spent many years working with smart people I’ve cataloged many of the ways this happens, and I have advice on what to do about it. I feel qualified to write this essay as I’m a recovering smart person myself and I’ve defended several very bad ideas. So if nothing else this essay serves as a kind of personal therapy session. However, I fully suspect you’ll get more than just entertainment value (“Look, Scott is more stupid than we thought!”) out of what I have to say on this topic.
Success at defending bad ideas
I’m not proud to admit that I have a degree in Logic and Computation from Carnegie Mellon University. Majoring in logic is not the kind of thing that makes people want to talk to you at parties, or read your essays. But one thing I did learn after years of studying advanced logic theory is that proficiency in argument can easily be used to overpower others, even when you are dead wrong. If you learn a few tricks of logic and debate, you can refute the obvious, and defend the ridiculous. If the people you’re arguing with aren’t as comfortable in the tactics of argument, or aren’t as arrogant as you are, they may even give in and agree with you.
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.”)
Until they come face to face with someone who is tenacious enough to dissect their logic, and resilient enough to endure the thinly veiled intellectual abuse they dish out during debate (e.g. “You don’t really think that do you?”or “Well if you knew the <insert obscure reference here> rule/law/corollary you wouldn’t say such things”), they’re never forced to question their ability to defend bad ideas. Opportunities for this are rare: a new boss, a new co-worker, a new spouse. But if their obsessiveness about being right is strong enough, they’ll reject those people out of hand before they question their own biases and self-manipulations. It can be easier for smart people who have a habit of defending bad ideas to change jobs, spouses, or cities rather than honestly examine what is at the core of their psyche (and often, their misery).
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.
For example, just because you can’t prove that I’m not the king of France reincarnated doesn’t make it so. So when someone tells you “My plan A is the best because no one has explained how it will fail” know that there is a logical gap in this argument. Simply because no one has described how it will fail, doesn’t necessarily make it the best plan. It’s possible than plans B, C, D and E all have the same quality, or that the reason no one has described how A will fail is that no one has had more than 30 seconds to scrutinize the plan. As we’ll discuss later, diffusing bad thinking requires someone (probably you) to construct a healthier framework around the bad thinking that shows it for what it is.
Death by homogeny
The second stop on our tour of commonly defended bad ideas is the seemingly friendly notion of communal thinking. Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas. The power of peer pressure is that it works on our psychology, not our intellect. As social animals we are heavily influenced by how the people around us behave, and the quality of our own internal decision making varies widely depending on the environment we currently are in. (e.g. Try to write a haiku poem while standing in an elevator with 15 opera singers screaming 15 different operas, in 15 different languages, in falsetto, directly at you vs. sitting on a bench in a quiet stretch of open woods).
That said, the more homogeneous a group of people are in their thinking, the narrower the range of ideas that the group will openly consider. The more open minded, creative, and courageous a group is, the wider the pool of ideas they’ll be capable of exploring.
Some teams of people look to focus groups, consultancies, and research methods to bring in outside ideas, but this rarely improves the quality of thinking in the group itself. Those outside ideas, however bold or original, are at the mercy of the diversity of thought within the group itself. If the group, as a collective, is only capable of approving B level work, it doesn’t matter how many A level ideas you bring to it. Focus groups or other outside sources of information can not give a team, or its leaders, a soul. A bland homogeneous team of people has no real opinions, because it consists of people with same backgrounds, outlooks, and experiences who will only feel comfortable discussing the safe ideas that fit into those constraints.
If you want your smart people to be as smart as possible, seek a diversity of ideas. Find people with different experiences, opinions, backgrounds, weights, heights, races, facial hair styles, colors, past-times, favorite items of clothing, philosophies, and beliefs. Unify them around the results you want, not the means or approaches they are expected to use. It’s the only way to guarantee that the best ideas from your smartest people will be received openly by the people around them. On your own, avoid homogenous books, films, music, food, sex, media and people. Actually experience life by going to places you don’t usually go, spending time with people you don’t usually spend time with. Be in the moment and be open to it. Until recently in human history, life was much less predictable and we were forced to encounter things not always of our own choosing. We are capable of more interesting and creative lives than our modern cultures often provide for us. If you go out of your way to find diverse experiences it will become impossible for you to miss ideas simply because your homogenous outlook filtered them out.
Thinking at the wrong level
At any moment on any project there are an infinite number of levels of problem solving. Part of being a truly smart person is to know which level is the right one at a given time. For example, if you are skidding out of control at 95mph in your broken down Winnebago on an ice covered interstate, when a semi-truck filled with both poorly packaged fireworks and loosely bundled spark plugs slams on its brakes, it’s not the right time to discuss with your passengers where y’all would like to stop for dinner. But as ridiculous as this scenario sounds, it happens all the time. People worry about the wrong thing at the wrong time and apply their intelligence in ways that doesn’t serve the greater good of whatever they’re trying to achieve. Some call this difference in skill wisdom, in that the wise know what to be thinking about, where as the merely intelligent only know how to think. (The de-emphasis of wisdom is an east vs. west dichotomy: eastern philosophy heavily emphasizes deeper wisdom, where as the post enlightenment west, and perhaps particularly America, heavily emphasizes the intellectual flourishes of intelligence).
In the software industry, the common example of thinking at the wrong level is a team of rock star programmers who can make anything, but don’t really know what to make: so they tend to build whatever things come to mind, never stopping to find someone who might not be adept at writing code, but can see where the value of their programming skills would be best applied. Other examples include people that always worry about money despite how much they have, people who struggle with relationships but invest their energy only in improving their appearance (instead of in therapy or other emotional exploration), or anyone that wants to solve problem X but only ever seems to do things that solve problem Y.
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.”
Killed in the long term by short term thinking
From what we know of evolution it’s clear that we are alive because of our inherited ability to think quickly and respond to change. The survival of living creatures, for most of the history of our planet, has been a short term game. Only if you can out-run your predators, and catch your prey, do you have the luxury of worrying about tomorrow.
It follows then that we tend to be better at worrying about and solving short term issues than long term issues. Even when we recognize an important long term issue that we need to plan for, say protecting natural resources or saving for retirement, we’re all too easily distracted away from those deep thoughts by immediate things like dinner or sex (important things no doubt, but the driving needs in these pursuits, at least for this half of the species, are short term in nature). Once distracted, we rarely return to the long term issues we were drawn away from.
A common justification for abuse of short term thinking is the fake perspective defense. The wise, but less confident guy says “hey are you sure we should be doing this?” And the smart, confident, but less wise guy says “of course. We did this last time, and the time before that, so why shouldn’t we do this again?”. This is the fake perspective defense because there’s no reason to believe that 2 points of data (e.g. last time plus the time before that) is sufficient to make claims about the future. People say similar things all the time in defense of the free market economy, democracy, and mating strategies. “Well, it’s gotten us this far, and it’s the best system we have”. Well, maybe. But if you were in that broken down Winnebago up to your ankles in gasoline from a leaking tank, smoking a cigarette in each hand, you could say the same thing.
Put simply, the fact that you’re not dead yet doesn’t mean that the things you’ve done up until now shouldn’t have, by all that is fair in the universe, already killed you. You might just need a few more data points for the law of averages to catch up, and put a permanent end to your short term thinking.
How many data points you need to feel comfortable continuing a behavior is entirely a matter of personal philosophy. The wise and skeptical know that even an infinite number of data points in the past may only have limited bearing on the future. The tricky thing about the future is that it’s different than the past. Our data from the past, no matter how big a pile of data it is, may very well be entirely irrelevant. Some find this lack of predictive ability of the future quite frustrating, while others see it as the primary reason to stick around for a few more years.
Anyway, my point is not that Winnebagos or free market economies are bad. Instead I’m saying that short term bits of data are neither reliable nor a wise way to go about making important long term decisions. Intelligent people do this all the time, and since it’s so commonly accepted as a rule of thumb (last time + the time before that), it’s often accepted in place of actual thinking. Always remember that humans, given our evolution, are very bad at seeing the cumulative effects of behavior, and underestimate how things like compound interest or that one cigarette a day, can in the long term, have surprisingly large impacts despite clearly low short term effects.
How to prevent smart people from defending bad ideas
I spent my freshman year at a small college in NJ called Drew University. I had a fun time, ingested many tasty alcoholic beverages, and went to lots of great parties (the result of which of course was that I basically failed out and had to move back to Queens with my parents. You see, the truth is that this essay is really a public service announcement paid for by my parents – I was a smart person that did some stupid things). But the reason I mention all this is because I learned a great bit of philosophy from many hours of playing pool in the college student center. The lesson is this: Speed kills. I was never very good at pool, but this one guy there was, and whenever we’d play, he’d watch me miss easy shots because I tried to force them in with authority. I chose speed and power over control, and I usually lost. So like pool, when it comes to defusing smart people who are defending bad ideas, you have to find ways to slow things down.
The reason for this is simple. 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.
So your best defense starts by breaking an argument down into pieces. When they say “it’s obvious we need to execute plan A now.” You say, “hold on. You’re way ahead of me. For me to follow I need to break this down into pieces.” And without waiting for permission, you should go ahead and do so.
First, nothing is obvious. If it were obvious there would be no need to say so. So your first piece is to establish what isn’t so obvious. What are the assumptions the other guy is glossing over that are worth spending time on? There may be 3 or 4 different valid assumptions that need to be discussed one at a time before any kind of decision can be considered. Take each one in turn, and lay out the basic questions: what problem are we trying to solve? What alternatives to solving it are there? What are the tradeoffs in each alternative? By breaking it down and asking questions you expose more thinking to light, make it possible for others to ask questions, and make it more difficult for anyone to defend a bad idea.
No one can ever take away your right to think things over, especially if the decision at hand is important. If your mind works best in 3rd or 4th gear, find ways to give yourself the time needed to get there. If when you say ” need the afternoon to think this over”, they say
“tough. We’re deciding now”. Ask if the decision is an important one. If they say yes, then you should be completely justified in asking for more time to think it over and ask questions.
Find a sane person people listen to
Some situations require outside help. Instead of taking a person on directly, get a third party that you both respect, and continue the discussion in their presence. This can be a superior, or simply someone smart enough that the other person might possibly concede points to them.
It follows that if your team manager is wise and reasonable, smart people who might ordinarily defend bad ideas will have a hard time doing so. But sadly if your team manager is neither wise nor reasonable, smart, arrogant people may convince others to follow their misguided ways more often than not.
And yet more reasons
I’m sure you have stories of your own follies dealing with smart people defending bad ideas, or where you, yourself, as a smart person, have spent time arguing for things you regretted later. Given the wondrous multitude of ways the universe has granted humans to be smart and dumb at the same time, there are many more reasons why smart people behave in stupid ways. For fun, and as fodder, here’s a few more.
If you have some thoughts on this essay, or some more reasons to add, leave a comment:
- Smart people can follow stupid leaders (seeking praise or promotion)
- Smart people may follow their anger into stupid places
- They may be trained or educated into stupidity
- Smart people can inherit bad ideas from their parents under the guise of tradition
- They may simply want something to be true, that can never be
References
- Check out my related essay, how to detect bullshit.
- Difficult conversations, a book about confronting people in tough situations.
- The argument clinic, Monty Python (If you’ve never seen it, watch it before reading this script. It’s in the 3rd season, disc 9 of the boxed set). Also see the splunge scene in episode 6.
- Games people play, Eric Byrne. A book on transactional analyis: a model for why people behave as they do in certain situations.
- The informed argument, Robert Miller. Textbook style coverage of both proper and unfair argument tactics.
- With good reason, Morris Engel. a short summary of common logic manipulations, explained with a sense of humor (over a dozen cartoons).
- Why smart people can be so stupid, Salon.com
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140 thoughts on “#40 – Why smart people defend bad ideas”
Makes sense to me. Seems others have a problem, or lack of experience. Of course as another has said, dont follow a leader or group off the bridge. Its along way down.
Another reason in my mind: it might be also because of the experience from the past. For the example, a kid who always get blamed by his / her parents tends to avoid getting trapped of being fault. In the way to defend themselves, these kids want to show that their faults is not really wrong (even though every fault is always wrong). So they end up to give bad/wrong perspectives to escape away.
Cassle, what a brillant observation you have!
I agree.
Great post, it also remind me of cases in a team where a smart person is really defending something that is really right, but the whole team couldn’t see it and believe strongly that he is just somebody who think he is right all the time.
I’m in such a situation before, there a smart person in our team against a certain idea, quoting plenty of research reports and such that it did much more harms and hardly any pros. I’m pretty neutral as I don’t like to argue but the rest of the team is against him & think he couldn’t see the whole picture. But they are wrong. He have in fact done plenty of home work to come to such a strong conclusion. He eventually got the sack.
Years passed and he turn out to be right, the company I worked for has fallen but virtually nobody recalls about the incident, that the whole disaster could have been prevented if they stop thinking that the “smart guy” is just obsessed with his own thought.
I would like to say smart people sometimes have this ability to see the unknown and it could be hard for them to explain it to others who might not understand. As a result, they think this “smart” person have a huge ego and refuse to admit defeat. But sometimes they don’t admit defeat for a reason. Because they know too well.
Still it’s hard to judge, I continue to leave this for the project leader to deal with.
Someone who’s intuitive ..
It´s an important criteria for many companies to hire leaders who can make a difference between important and less important tasks. You have very limited time to get things done, so you really have to know what to focus on and what is likely to be skipped.
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Scott,
I wondered for many years ! !
I guess this article in a way answered many of the questions and disapproved several other assumptions.
Waweru
Nice article! I live with my brother who is like this, and he wants to go back to medical school.
There’s a new edition of the book “Difficult Conversations”. Update your link so I can buy through your Amazon link. Thanks for the article.
i enjoyed your opinions and essay, not only did i gain in-sight on “how to diffuse smart peoples bull-shit” but also gained perspective on my own behavior as well thanx.
-craig
Hi there
Ever read Chris argyris’s “Teaching Smart People How to Learn”
I sort of expected to see it in your references.
By the by – just read your Confessions – and LOVED it – only… I an still REALLY scared of lecturing. Isn’t that sad… I am told I am good at it – but I just KNOW I can do better – I can tell from looking at them that I tend to talk too much. Or maybe I am not provocative enough
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I saw the picture of the nice sandwich, and now I’m hungry.
Oh, the essay?
It’s garbage.
i am very smart and so is my friend and we both have no common sense
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This article is really great. Very interesting and innovative. My boyfriend does this all the time (defend bad ideas, simply because he has to be right about everything), and I actually told him exactly what this article is about -that he needs to be right always even about stuff he do not know about. Great to see that there might be something about it. Thanks!
The problem with some people is they hate it when someone knows almost everything.
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Why you ask? It is because of ego. People have huge ego’s that at times in their life, they defend something that they know that is wrong but still defend it because of their pride.
As a Mensa member with an IQ of 164, I suppose you could call me unusualy smart. The position I take is that I am always knowingly right and say why, and if no one can say why I am wrong then I am right. Therefore I can honestly say that I am always right and also change my position if someone proves me wrong. I can understand people who stick to something even when proven wrong. As a spoilt egotistical child I was that kind of person, who then turned into a depressed teenager who then became a contented adult who can say “I am always right” without being egotistical, but instead trying to provoke someone to try to prove me wrong so that I can decide whether to change my position or not so as to remain in the right. An example I can give is this. The biggest science issue in Mensa today is the debate about Climate Change. The best way to calibrate Carbon Dioxide warming on Earth is to use the Atmosphere of Mars. Using the scientific paper (Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres, Ferenc M. Miskolczi, 2007) I calculated that the total for man made warming was an irrelevant 0.015 Kelvin, I subsequently found that was very close to the figure given by (Jaworowski, 2007) of 0.01 Kelvin. My article for the Space special interest group of Mensa “Global Warming on Mars and Climate Change from Space” was subjected to scrutiny, but to date only one error has been found. This error did not effect the final result because it involved removing six zeros and placing the word million in the article. I made the error of only removing three zeros. However my whole article was dismissed by this one person based on this single issue, also this was the only part of my article that this person commented on. Although he had to be knowledgeable to recognise this error he did not reveal the details of the error or the correct answer. I suggest that he must be one of these smart people who defend bad ideas.
Smart people can be humorous. Funny and intelligent, or just crazy. There mental and physiological development are insainly fragile and DNA may result “Smart people”…. to inadvertently not b smart…haha…sad but odds are yeah. U get the idea…
Intelligence;) To observe information and retrieve data by, testing, researching, identifying, any or all information.
(Usualy what the person is searching for)
Now psychology, is a tricky one. Because of the person’s unique start. Now when the “smart person” attempts the above (tiny paragraph), the person identify s objects to his goal. Creating the thought (that should start research) to complete goal in mind. the human obsession takes over and the thought sprouts. This is a big subject due to um……. robot me. i think differently. “have to set a win win goal. think all scenarios. identify, process, Adapt” We are only human. we have faults its true. unless ur dumb…. then we can work on that. The truth hurts but it helps. let it inspire you. Time alone was my key the intercrap slowed me down but the internet set me free. i am a robot i ThinkWildly. Is there a stop to information…
Thats another…..um story….yup the worlds Realy big.
Loved the article. Sorry, but I am a privacy freak. No real ID given.
If you look underneath each of the categories (and you touch on it) all irrational thought derives from primate instictive behaviors, most of which are not well suited to current social and environmental constructs.
H.S. is just another animal . . . yes, really smart, but still an animal. A few people will acknowledge and then, through self-awarenes, mitigate their animal instincts, but the overwhelming majority (83% +/-) either lack the abilty or lack the desire to rise to something more.
I think of them as rabid monkeys and have found it best to avoid their notice.
That said, if we are doomed by the insanity of H.S., well I love a good adventure. Enjoy the ride.
I enjoyed the essay and fascinated with different approaches to this problem. Sometimes intellegent folks talk like they are an authority on topics that they think they have a deep understanding of. But sometimes they have only gone about two and a half inches deep into the topic. And this may be somewhat deeper than the average Joe has gone but their egos prevent them from wanting to entertain further discovery or discourse. I believe some intellegent people consistently do this.
It’s helped me to try and size up the situation at the begining of the debate to see if it is even worth “sparring” with this person. I look at this dilema from a psychological perspective because we all have “issues” but some smart folks will never be aware, nor want to be aware of them. Their narcissism will never allow it. And it’s worth noting that we all have various degrees of narcissism but it’s useful and smart to be aware of it and know that some have toxic levels of it. I believe many toxic egos won’t respond to logic. I think the emotional part of our brain is a valid resource that can be a useful way to enhance our understanding of things and people. It may be useful to become more aware of our own feelings and motives before engaging with some individuals. Logic will work with most people and don’t want to discount it’s usefullness. I just wanted to point out that there are other things to consider and it seems to be what confuses us. It’s just hard to understand why smart people make poor decisions and I think the emotional piece is important.
Another perspective is to define what is smart. Researchers are now defining various kinds of intelligence. To use a computer analogy, some individuals have very good “processors” but poor “scanners”. In other words, they may have been High School Valedictorians but we never hear brilliant innovative thoughts uttered from their fast talking mouths. They just have good processors. I have wondered about some individuals that are considered smart but in some ways have simplistic, narrow ways of thinking. They may, however, be very good at information retrieval. Some, of course, are fortunate to have both.
If this other person is our boss, then there is a bigger problem. Volumes of research could be done on how to deal with toxic egos in the business environment. Sometimes I think unhealthy egos are actually valued in some businesses. But I don’t think politics or our collective egos will allow us to see the real truth. I think logic can be very helpful and I admire the writing skill and smart perspective in this essay. And maybe we can use logic to convince others of the importence of having emotionally centered people in positions of power.
delightful essay! many points common to Mensa groups at least!
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Hmm, interesting and relevant article considering the economic crisis we’re in today. My only thought would be, is someone really considered smart or intelligent if he lets his arrogance for always wanting to be right .. get in the way and make him well, stupid? Someone truly intelligent would be the person arguing against his self-motivated logic. Jus sayin ..
Maybe we just argue against that stuff for no reason because we need to be challenged…? My own personal reason for arguing against logical sayings…
Great essay, though I never went to college or university as a 21 year old I totally understand. What you ought to say tho that society made these intelligent people ignorant, maybe the lack of importunity for these people to express their true intelligence in different ways, as they can only use it to help the society in stupid ways to get through life. If these intelligent people act upon your philosophy of thinking it would be very difficult for them to get accepted by the current society. What I’m trying to say is that, they don’t really have much choice.
Prioritising social status over intellegence has been the downfall of youth for many generations. I believe this is one of many roots of this problem, (especially with youths): People more concerned with their social status than intelligence rarely develop to their full capacity. These are the people that become our future. I’m 20 now and I’ve always been a bit ‘trendy’, but I will NEVER understand why almost everyone else around my age thinks it’s cool to reject reading and act like a half-wit.
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This article is helpful in deciphering the difference between arrogant parents and understand parents as well. We always feel subject to such auithorities in thinking they are always right just because they have been around longer. Don’t get me wrong, the elderly are honorablr poeple, but knowing the information given in this article could save you from abuse. As the Holy Bible says,
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:27)
A smart person questions all and reaches their own conclusions from multiple sources of info. They most likely took LSD at least once sometime in their life.
Loved that one. That’s the best definition of a smart person I’ve heard in a long time. Smart people are smart by never thinking they know it all so stay open.
Kitt, it is very possible for a person to be both smart and arrogant. It is a stupid thing to do to argue for the sake of strong-arming someone into conceding you are right, and both people might end that argument knowing full well that he was wrong. They would still be smart, but wise, no.
Wow!
“…That said, the more homogeneous a group of people are in their thinking, the narrower the range of ideas…If the group, as a collective, is only capable of approving B level work, it doesn’t matter how many A level ideas you bring to it.
“Smart people can follow stupid leaders (seeking praise or promotion”)
“Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas.”
These words/thoughts can explain so much about our work-life and about how people in high places such as gov’t can make frightening decisons when one would expect otherwise.
Wow, this is just great.
you know smart people, when people think they are smart and they know they are smart, it really hurts to say “I am wrong”
they always want to be right, but we are human, and because we are human it’s likely to be wrong rather than right.
This essay helped me to be a little bit more open minded, and think things more logical, well to be right.
to know what is the truth!
I don’t consider me smart anymore :(.
at least I’m wiser now :p
(I’m not letting anyone to tell me that I’m smart, intelligent, nerd, or wise. That will make me stupid. I prefer to be normal than stupid. smart people are stupid because they think they are smart, so no-one is smart really LOL!! well maybe there are…… hopefully….)
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I have wisdom. Only 60 years. I know I need more, and welcome it.
WOW. That was the one college course I might have taken. Logic. But we don’t have the same definition. My search for truth concluded: Wisdom = simplicity & logic. Truth is a constant. It has power and is true in every situation and all dimensions. No space barriers. If I want the truth I only watch actions & ask what purpose or destination would those actions bring repeated way out in years if necessary. Long and short term patterns. Actions produce affects and are true. That is logic to me. Ego defends and is week. Truth is power and never defends or needs to convince. It is. Bad or good idea easily computed by action pattern repeated.
Sorry I didn’t read all of it… I’m sleepy.
From my own personal –painful– experience, otherwise intelligent people perpetuate unreasonable, irrational ideas because they must to remain true to their social infrastructures.
Often this extends all the way down to their very scence of self. Many men and women go far beyond merely identifying with a social group, their identify is defined by such.
To deny that, is to deny one’s entire world view, and reject all those you love… it’s a hard thing. Far to hard for older humans, who just want peace and contentment.
That’s why I advocate rule of the young. The young can absorb SO much more, so much more completely, discarding the dras while ruminating over the complex/perplexing/objective reality.
Humanity is NOT simple. Nothing of lasting value we’re every achieved is simple… sadly, much that is complex, convoluted, and yet still beautifully human is lost on most of us. They young are agile. They KNOW they don’t have the answers, so they seek them… and our history has so many answers.
Not to place your faith in some magical being who has no impact on this crazy, mess of a world… but each other.
That’s all we really have you know, each other… the rest, believe what you want, but have faith in those you love, and love more.
no doubt–last post on this id
peace
That is beyond true. Society is so demanding , and people feel obliged to feed upon its needs
In my opinion smart people defend bad ideas because they can, because its a challenge. They most probaly know its wrong but enjoy making others confused. Like a hobbie to keep you from being bored.
I dont understand all those reasons at the end… in order to consider someone smart shouldnt that person be able to know on their own what is good and what is bad? regardless on what they decide to defend before others?
This essay is like reading the thoughts of a person listening to a conversation with me and my family. :)
well my opinion as a smart ass, i defend bad ideas sometimes cause i am kinda insane and see what others cant, meaning my mentality is diffrent so i usually stick by it and truly believe in it, and ofcourse i know there another stupid type out there that just try so hard 2 be right, but am just saying i do it cause am koko in my own ways :)
The art of argument is the art of politics, lawyers, sellers and others. I believe that there aren’t bad ideas. Each idea is worth for living.
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a friend of mine shared this site with me, I’m impressed by the refined inner workings of the way smart people are. I’m sure that I myself will think a little bit more, when it comes to situations of dealing with less than qualified brain carriers. great essay.
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What do you submit to the quality of others lives with your degree in logic? What a cowardly skill – to verbally defend yourself even when you are wrong. That counters growth and a real exchange of knowledge.
Your article is nothing. The pictures were cute, though. Sorry about the flunking college thing. I’m sorry you’ve run into some people pretending to be smart. The real ones probably don’t engage you.
In general, anyone could defend a bad idea. As long as their “ego” is too scared to “die” by “losing”, they will defend the subject at hand. By “ego” i don’t mean the personality characteristic but rather we as ourselves, defined in the Power of Now (E.Tolle :))
An awesome post, loved this one and would share this with one of my friend, who needs to read out. :)
Excellent thoughts and examples… alternatively, maybe you just need one really smart person (who is right) and the rest can follow!
The real problem is the assumption that the smart person’s idea is bad. Smart people, by definition, might know something you don’t – like for instance why the idea they are defending isn’t bad.
Interesting – confirms my hunch that being “smart” doesn’t necessarily mean having the right ideas or defensible opinions.
I have wisdom. Only 60 years. I know I need more, and welcome it.
Why do you say “be right” when you clearly mean “Be seen as right”?
I think the real reason this attitude is prevalent is the semantics. Growing up hearing that causes people to associate the two concepts and assume that if the other person wins the argument then it means they must be factually correct.
We should stop using that phrase altogether and when talking about people who have a strong need for other people to acknowledge them as right refer to them as having a need to “be seen as right”. We could even persuade them out of that mindset then by saying “but don’t you want to know that which is true? You have to admit to being wrong sometimes if you ever want to be right.”
In a literal sense these people do NOT have a need to actually “be right”. If they did then they wouldn’t cling.
It’s also awkward to say “look, that sounds like it might make sense, but I’m not sure. I’ll think about it and get back to you later.” You need to consider that proper formation of rational thought takes time.
I’ve run into it countless times where someone raises an argument and I’m not sure if they are right or not. It just isn’t socially conventional I suppose to say the other person maybe right, they want you to commit either to yourself being right or to them. There’s even more nuance I may realize “aha they are definitely right about X aspect, possibly right about Y, and definitely wrong about Z”. Thinking fast about how to say that isn’t easy, and if I just sit there thinking about it they’ll be like “why you staring into space?” If only humans came with some kind of light-up signal on their heads that turned on automatically to indicate “hold on a minute, I am turning my thoughts into sentences for your understanding”, which people are loathe to say because it sounds so awkward.
Also ever notice that people insist on using a specific sort of tone in arguments? It always feels fast-paced. Personally I think arguments are more fruitful when people are doing it slowly. I prefer arguing online for that reason. Spoken conversation is too chaotic.
Very interesting site and articles. Really thankful for sharing.Will surely recommend this site to some friends! Regards,
How do I send a copy of this essay to my Congressman? :)
ok.so,if i have some of the previous “symtoms” what can i do to fix them?
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 so my sister, stubborn.
I grow up watching my parents scold her for always defending her ideas and reject all of of others, so I learn by that.
Even If I didn’t agree with others (especially elders)I would avoid saying it by changing the topics or agree with them. This way is easier… Arguing with people who lack common sense is troublesome, most of the time I stuck with my ideas in my head,LOL