Jenni Russell

So here is an unnerving discovery.   I am not the calm， rational， discriminating   person that I hope to be. It didn't take much to discover this; just my   answers to a couple of quick questions. Here's the first： how many pairs of animals did Moses take on the ark？

And the second： Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married   but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person？

It took me no seconds at all to   answer the first; I couldn't， but thought the Bible would tell me. What I didn't spot， because I was too busy looking at the end of the question and not the   premise， was that the answer   is zero. Moses wasn't busy building any arks; that was Noah.

As for Anne， George and Jack， I swiftly concluded we couldn't know， because we hadn't been told the status of Anne. I was of course wrong.   If I had stopped to draw two diagrams of Jack， Anne and George looking at one another， with an unmarried Anne in the first diagram and a married one in the   second， I would have seen   that in either case a married person was indeed looking at an unmarried one.

This is what a new， wide-ranging book by the science writer David Robson has dubbed The   Intelligence Trap， our tendency to assume that general intelligence leads to good thinking.   It doesn't. It doesn't protect us from cognitive biases like the ones I've   just demonstrated. Indeed， Robson shows， our confidence in the efficiency of our brains often makes us more   vulnerable to foolish judgments.

People with high IQs drink more   heavily， may take more   illegal drugs， and are almost   twice as likely as everybody else to hit credit card limits. They have the   same rates of bankruptcy and missed mortgage payments as everybody else   despite having better-paid jobs. Intelligent， educated people are less likely to question their assumptions， to learn from their mistakes， to take advice or reverse their decisions when they discover new facts.   Instead they use their brainpower to ingeniously defend their original   positions.

These tendencies lead us into disastrous   and avoidable situations. In health， 15 per cent of all hospital diagnoses are wrong， often because they are made swiftly and rarely rethought， meaning that more people die from misdiagnoses than from diseases like   breast cancer. In business， a reluctance to think through consequences， question optimism or challenge decisions leads to a myriad of uncounted   collapses and some major disasters.

Robson's term for these failures   is functional stupidity， and his thesis is that these errors could be largely avoided if we could   recalibrate our approach to problems. The intelligence trap is， he says， largely a cultural   phenomenon. Western culture prizes swift decisions， certainty， dominant leadership   and simple answers. From school onwards we are taught to memorise what we've   been told， put our hands up   fast， jump to conclusions， argue our case convincingly， persuade others to follow. It's a common route to success but it's a   dangerously limited way to operate， particularly in our hugely complicated world.

The key insight is our pressing   need to deploy intellectual humility， open-mindedness， curiosity and wide consultation， rather than the blind stubbornness and grandstanding that so often   passes for judgment. It's never been more necessary to recognise and release   ourselves from the intelligence trap.

珍妮·拉塞尔

说起来这是个令人不安的发现。我不是自己所希望的那种冷静、理性、有辨别力的人。发现这一点没费什么事，只需看看我是如何答复两道快答题的。第一道题是：摩西把多少对动物带上了方舟？

第二道题是：杰克望着安妮，而安妮望着乔治。杰克已婚，而乔治未婚。是不是已婚者正望着未婚者？

第一个问题我是秒回的：我说不出来，但我认为《圣经》会告诉我答案。由于我过分关注问题的结尾而不是前提，我没有发现答案应该是零。摩西没有忙着造什么方舟，那是诺亚。

至于安妮、乔治和杰克，我迅速断定我们不可能知道答案，因为不了解安妮的婚姻状况。我当然是错的。如果我能停下来画两张杰克、安妮和乔治彼此对视的示意图，图一是未婚的安妮，图二是已婚的安妮，我会发现无论是哪种情况，确确实实是已婚者在望着未婚者。

这是科普作家戴维·罗布森在新推出的一本涵盖广泛的书中所说的“智力陷阱”，是指我们往往想当然地认为一般智力带来良好思辨能力。事实并非如此。它不会让我们免于出现我刚才所展示的那种认知偏见。事实上，罗布森证明，我们对自身头脑效能的自信往往让我们更容易做出愚蠢的判断。

高智商的人酒喝得更凶，可能服用更多违禁药物，而且达到信用卡限额的可能性几乎是其他人的两倍。尽管拥有薪酬更高的工作，他们破产的比率以及不按时偿还按揭贷款的可能性却和其他人一样。聪明且受过良好教育的人比其他人更不可能去质疑自己的主观臆断、从自己的错误中汲取教训、听取意见或者在发现新情况后推翻自己的决定。相反，他们利用聪明才智巧妙捍卫自己最初的立场。

这些倾向让我们陷入极其糟糕并且可以避免的局面。在健康方面，医院的所有诊断中有15%是错误的，往往是由于这些诊断在仓促之中作出，很少得到反思，这意味着死于误诊的人比死于乳腺癌等疾病的人还要多。在商业领域，不愿仔细考虑后果、对乐观看法提出质疑或者对决定发起挑战导致各种各样不计其数的崩盘和一些重大灾难。

罗布森将这类失败称为功能性愚蠢，他的论点是，如果我们重新调整对待问题的方式，这类错误大体上可以避免。他说，智力陷阱在很大程度上是文化现象。西方文化看重果断、确定性、主导型领导作风以及简单的答案。从上学开始，我们接受的教育是记住被告知的内容，快速举手，迅速得出结论，令人信服地摆明我们的理由，说服其他人给予支持。这是通往成功的共同路径，不过它是一种极其局限的行事方式，尤其是在我们这个极为复杂的世界里。

关键的一点是，我们迫切需要调动理智的谦逊、开放的思维、好奇心与广泛的磋商，而不是经常被当成判断力的盲目固执与哗众取宠。承认并让自己摆脱智力陷阱从没有这么必要过。 （李凤芹译自英国《泰晤士报》网站3月28日文章）

责编：张伊宇