Where Intelligence Fails

I love reading! When I was in primary (elementary) school, for each high mark I got on my report cards, my parents would buy me a book. Back then, it was anything written by a group of authors all using the pen name Franklin W. Dixon. I couldn’t get enough of the Hardy Boys series. Frank with his intellect and martial arts skills. Joe, his brother, with street smarts and braun. They were, without question, my childhood heroes.

As I got older, Michael Chrichton became my favorite for his heady, action-packed science fiction novels. I once read the original Jurassic Park novel twice in three days. Man! I loved that book.

Reading just about anything enhances cognitive abilities. I attribute my ability to perform well in school to a love for reading and learning in general.

Even with all those “smarts”, intelligence will only take you so far. Roughly ten years ago, I allowed myself to get duped out of essentially all the money my wife and I had saved to that point in our marriage. That one still haunts me. Comically, I’ve tried fixing things around my house that would have cost a much smaller amount of money than they did if I had just hired a professional to fix it in the first place.

We all fall prey to the foibles of lapsed intelligence — when common sense isn’t so common. That is actually an important part of experiential learning and growth. (I think this is where I’m supposed to insert something about learning to walk or ride a bike.)

The point is, certain things require continuous failure before we get any good at them. Learning is a lifelong process. Even if you are widely recognized as the world’s foremost expert on something, chances are good you’ve still got plenty to learn in that knowledge domain.

There’s an old saying — knowledge is power. The way that power is exercised will vary greatly from person to person and circumstance. Still, knowledge and our ability to think critically about things is crucial.

And yet, the ability to think critically and obtain deep knowledge are fading.

What’s going on?

In a recent article, I raised a question: with so much content coming at us all the time, how do we know what to pay attention to?

We’re facing a three-fold assault that is making deep learning more difficult by the day:

Content quantity. So. much. new. content. The amount of content reaching us each day is, frankly, out of control. Even trying to hyper-focus on a subcategory of a subcategory of a subcategory often contains more content than you could consume in a lifetime. Confrontation with so much can lead to paralysis in what to consume. This leads to the second front of the assault.
Content quality. Increased quantity is often associated with decreased quality. We have more content than ever to sift through to find the stuff that’s actually worth consuming. We use valuable time trying to find legitimate information which leaves less time to internalize what we find.
Attention span. Active participation on social media platforms, in all their varieties, can dramatically reduced our ability to focus for any appreciable amount of time. Sometimes, quality content can be delivered with very short copy or video vignettes. However, that is also becoming increasingly rare. Instead, we are literally plagued with attention-grabbing, bite size garbage that requires superhuman effort to avoid all the time. Who do you know who goes on social media and doesn’t spend any time doom-scrolling even for just a moment?

A good conspiracy theorist would probably state that all these things are designed to brainwash us; make us ignore the more pressing issues at hand. In part, they’d be right. Part of it is because those platforms only make money when people use them. People get lost on them because of emotional mismanagement. Social media platforms and streaming services are great for escaping the problems of everyday life.

Undoubtedly, there is an element in power that wants it that way. People who don’t know how to manage their own emotions can be easily manipulated. Even really smart people can have the proverbial wool pulled over their eyes.

What do we do about it?

It’s an endemic societal problem. The only advice I can offer is to educate yourself. Be informed about what’s going on. Seek out the best sources for reliable information and stick with them. Ignore the rest.

Also, be kind and engage in civil discourse. The only way we get through it is together.

But be warned, the world will always build a bigger idiot.

Thanks for reading!