A Curse of Intelligence. It can come with baggage...

I've been called smart, intelligent, and even genius before. I do not call myself these things. In fact, sometimes they embarrass me. I don't always feel that I am worthy of it when someone states it.

I have flaws. We all do. I spend a lot of time studying the only mind I can read. That is MY MIND. I can't read your mind, I can't read the mind of anyone else. All I can do is study my own thinking, and have imaginary debates with myself.

When I see things that other people are doing that don't make sense to me, I often will spend quite a bit of time thinking about WHY I might come to think or act the way they do. That is all I can do. I'll usually try to come up with multiple scenarios rather than just one. Does that mean I am correct in why that other person does something, or thinks a certain way? No. It is speculation on my part. I could be correct, but I could also be completely wrong.

One thing I try not to do is say that my speculation IS why another person does something. I might say it is a possibility, but unless I hear them confirm it I won't state it as fact. This is all I can do. As far as I know this is all any of us can do unless some of you are secretly a God, an alien, or something that is beyond normal human capabilities.

One thing I learned in delving into my own mind is that there are some negative things that seem to come with intelligence.

The level of stubbornness can increase with the level of intelligence. We are less likely to accept someone elses view of reality over that of our own. Especially when people continually reinforce our intelligence and treat us like we are so much smarter than them and thus must be right when they are wrong.

I understand this. I have had this stubbornness, and I still have it to some degree and likely always will.

I have however, noticed this. It has helped me to notice at times when I am perhaps arguing simply due to not wanting to concede that my view of reality must change. Why should it change? I am intelligent. I surely had good reasons for viewing the world as I did.

I'm sure I did have good reasons. I am not omniscient, I don't know even close to everything. Thus, new input that challenges what I think is true MUST be allowed to change my view of reality lest I simply be deluding myself purely due to stubbornness.

So what are some tools we can use to try to keep our tendency to try to ignore changes to our reality from ruling us?

For me a good part of that is introspection. A willingness to have arguments with myself in my own mind. I essentially act out dialogs much like if I was writing a dialog for a play, movie, etc. Examples of these in written form can be found when you read any of my CrankyOldGoat [1 | 2 | 3] posts. Those posts are a slower form of what goes on in my head.

Though that is going to be limited by my own knowledge. So what about learning new things?

For that I speak with people, and I continually try to get better at using critical thinking when analyzing what they say, what I say, and events in the world and what is being said there.

I also try to learn more and more about history, and do what I can to research older sources that cover historical topics. They tend to be less bias.

I'll also read things like "The Lies My Teacher Told Me" and such that tell aspects of history that the school textbooks don't seem to talk about that can contain very important information.

I've come to believe that none of us can master critical thinking. We can only get better at it with practice. It is also a very large topic. It is not something that can be internalized by taking a class on the subject. It takes using it, experiencing it, etc for a lot of its principles to be internalized in our mind. For me I usually will go learn a few new fallacy types, and other critical thinking techniques and work on recognizing them when I use them, when others use them, or in the media (the media is rife with logical fallacies these days). When I feel that I can recognize them instinctually due to practice then I'll go pick some new ones to practice, and study. This is my method. It may not work for others. It also does not mean I don't still use fallacies from time to time. As I stated it cannot be mastered. I make mistakes, the goal is that hopefully the odds of me doing this are less than they were before, and I can get better and better about these errors of MINE.

This is the battle I choose to fight. I am not going to tell people how to fix the world, and what WILL work. I might point out some things that MIGHT work if they haven't been tried. I do think one of the biggest global problems is with education and a lot of that is tied to the fact they are largely based upon the Prussian Education System model which is where the term School comes from. It's inventors praised how it could achieve conformity, and obedience. They were not concerned so much with creative thought, unique ideas, or free thinking. It was less concerned with innovation than it was creating cloned minds that would agree, and offer as little challenge to the authoritative thought as possible.

So what can I do to help the world?

Perhaps I can make people more aware of critical thinking. This doesn't mean I should tell them HOW they should think, and WHAT they should believe.

It does mean I should give them examples of when I see fallacies, point out hypocrisies, double standards, or people assuming motives and what someone meant rather than paying attention to what the person actually said.

The curse of intelligence I believe is that there seems to be a direct correlation in many cases between stubbornness and intelligence.

"Who are you to tell me the truth?"

Answer: "Another person with a different way of looking at the world. You might learn some things, and I might learn some things from you."