The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes

Written by David Robson

Narrated by Simon Slater

An eye-opening examination of the stupid things smart people do-and how to cultivate skills to protect ourselves from error. "As a rule, I have found that the greater brain a man has, and the better he is educated, the easier it has been to mystify him" (Harry Houdini to Arthur Conan Doyle). Smart people are not only just as prone to making mistakes as everyone else- they may be even more susceptible to them. This is the "intelligence trap," the subject of David Robson's fascinating and provocative book. The Intelligence Trap explores cutting-edge ideas in our understanding of intelligence and expertise, including "strategic ignorance," "meta- forgetfulness," and "functional stupidity." Robson reveals the surprising ways that even the brightest minds and most talented organizations can go wrong-from some of Thomas Edison's worst ideas to failures at NASA, Nokia, and the FBI. And he offers practical advice to avoid mistakes based on the timeless lessons of Benjamin Franklin, Richard Feynman, and Daniel Kahneman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781980042600

Reviews for The Intelligence Trap

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The dumbest thing about the book is the title. Or maybe I was dumb for avoiding the book just based on its title. But eventually I got round to reading it and was surprised to find it wasn't a shallow back-patting, aren't-those-boffins-dumb self-help book. Turned out to be quite an interesting review of biases and fallacies (especially ones where cleverness doesn't appear to help) and strategies employed to mitigate them.

[jonerthon-437513 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A simple premise: as our quantified "intelligence" measured by IQ and other standardized tests rises, we tend to gain other deficiencies or blind spots that limit the so-called geniuses of our society and in some cases lead them to dark places we would expect them to be too clever to reach. Reasonably argued and well-sourced, but the outliers seemed to end up doing a lot of the work to support this theory.