By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 03:07:16 +0000

The second and third factors “always looks carefully and sceptically” and “has expert knowledge” seem like good reasons to believe someone, even when your own (hastier and less expert) judgement suggests it may be wrong. For example, I long believed that using gas appliances had to be more energy efficient than using electricity generated by burning gas, due to transmission losses. But the experts said the opposite and they were right. I’d mistakenly ignored efficiency losses in the appliances

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 06:13:36 +0000

Never thought about the “trust is multi-factor” part, great point!
I guess another reason for smart people doing stupid things is just hindsight bias, of things seeming obviously stupid in hindsight when in fact they probably weren’t. Eg right now many smart people believe in Bitcoin, while many other smart people think it’s a bubble or pyramid scheme or otherwise useless. And many people in both groups seem to think the other side is stupid. Once Bitcoin settles into one of the two extremes, to them it will even more look as if many smart people on the other side were deluded to believe in the wrong outcome, when in fact the final outcome is just unclear at this point, and it’s not stupid to believe in either hypothesis.

Comments on: A major (overlooked) reason why smart people fall for stupid things

By: John Quiggin

By: Bob