思考与写作apenwarr.ca
聪明人的诅咒
The Curse of Smart People
2014 — 2017，它一次次回到首页
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导读
这篇博客讨论“聪明人的诅咒”：擅长论证和自洽，反而可能让人更容易为自己的情绪、失败或既有立场编出合理解释，变得傲慢、过度自信，并形成经不起检验的世界观。作者借例子说明，聪明并不会自动带来自省，能言善辩有时反而会遮蔽错误。
为什么经久不衰：它点出一个反直觉的风险：论证能力可能变成自我欺骗的工具，提醒聪明人保持自省、承认自己可能错。
HN 评论精选
聪明人因擅长辩论而不断自我强化错误世界观，赢争论不等于观点正确。
这是对我注意到的一个现象的有趣角度，也许解释得更好；但我也把自己的观察摆出来，看能否提供其他启发：聪明人可能形成错误的世界观，因为他们很会辩论；每次赢下一场争论，他们就更加确信自己的世界观无懈可击，而实际上只是又遇到一个没看出其中缺陷的人。极端自由意志主义就是一个例子。很长一段时间，我说服自己它完全站得住脚，因为我和大多数认识的人辩论政治时，都能用逻辑把他们驳倒，“证明”我的观点。那种逻辑和机器人般的一致性让我确信自己无可辩驳地正确。直到我意识到，尽管我成功地把某些论点说了无数遍，我其实并不真正相信其中一些，我才跳出来，意识到我的观点虽然僵硬一致，从公共政策角度看却可能是灾难性的。我向别人合理化了一个立场，最终也向自己合理化了它。别这样做。
hamburglar查看英文原文
This is an interesting angle on something I've noticed, and perhaps a better explanation of it, but I'll put my observation in the ring in case it offers any other insights: Smart people can end up developing faulty world views because they are good at arguing, and every time they win an argument, they convince themselves more and more of the infallibility of their world view, when in fact all that happened was they encountered yet another person who couldn't spot the flaw in it. An example of this is extreme libertarianism. For a long time, I had convinced myself that it was totally sound because if I argued politics with most people I knew, I could shut them down with logic and "prove" my case. The logic and robot-like consistency of it just reassured me that I was unassailably correct. It took me getting to the point where I realized that I didn't truly believe some of my own arguments, despite the fact that I had successfully made them countless times, to snap out of it and realize that my views, as rigidly consistent as they were, were probably disastrous from a public policy standpoint. I rationalized a position to others, which ultimately rationalized it to me as well. Don't do that.
质疑把聪明与过度自信绑定，认为自省才是聪明的核心，专业能力强不等于聪明。
我坚信我们不该轻易把人分成聪明和不聪明两类。智力有很多形式，基因和成长环境会让一个人的智力以不同方式显现。一个人擅长某事并不自动等于高智力或聪明，而更可能是对主题高度熟悉。熟悉可以通过大量练习获得，也可以来自快速理解的禀赋，也就是智力或聪明。但可以说，一个几乎什么都擅长的人必然聪明，因为没时间深度练习所有事。反过来，我绝不会把一个只擅长一件事却不懂其他任何事的人叫聪明。作者说聪明、成功的人因非常精通一件事而受过度自信诅咒。但如果一个人连正确自省的能力都没有，你怎么能称他聪明？那难道不正是定义聪明的东西吗？把问题合理化掉、忽略干扰世界观的迹象、过度自信，都是不那么聪明的人的特征。会写代码不代表你聪明。我要说，这个轶事的结果应该是：人可以在工作上很出色，同时是个白痴。
QuantumRoar查看英文原文
I strongly believe that we should not easily segregate people into a smart kind and a not-so-smart kind. Intelligence comes in many ways and the genetics and upbringing of a person will make their intelligence manifest in different ways. Someone being good at something, does not automatically equate to a high level of intelligence or smartness but rather a high degree of familiarity with the topic. Familiarity can be acquired either through a lot of practice or from a predisposition to understand quickly, which is intelligence or smartness. However, what can be said is that a person who is good at almost everything, necessarily has to be smart because there wouldn't be any time to practice everything in depth. Conversely, I'd never call a person smart who's good at one thing but doesn't understand anything else. The author says that smart, successful people are cursed with over-confidence due to them knowing one thing very well. But how can you call a person smart if they do not even possess the ability to properly self-reflect. Is that not the one thing that should define smartness? Rationalizing things away, ignoring signs that interfere with one's world-view, and being over-confident are all traits of not-so-smart people. Just because you know how to code, does not mean you are smart. I'd say the result of this anecdote should've been that it turns out that people can be good at their jobs and be idiots at the same time.
用“模拟普通人”的比喻解释聪明人为何显得不接地气，直觉预测他人需额外认知负担。
我的私人理论：很多“直觉”和“本能感觉”归结为内部黑箱在预测他人的行为。当你“普通”时，这通常简化为推理你在同样情境下会怎么做，相对容易。如果你偏离均值三个标准差，你就得有意识地补偿，而这既不准确又困难又慢。这就像 UI 设计师很难辨别自己的 UI 哪些部分难用，而最终用户却毫不费力。聪明人最终不得不并行运行 SmartPerson 和 NormalPersonVM(pre-alpha)。普通人只需原生运行 NormalPerson。然后聪明人抱怨 bug 和慢，“聪明人不接地气！”之类。
yakult查看英文原文
My pet theory: much of 'gut feelings' and intuition boils down to having our internal black box predict the behavior of other people. When you are 'average', this often simplifies to reasoning about what you would do in the same circumstances, which is relatively easy. If you are 3 standard deviations out, you'll have to compensate that consciously, which is inaccurate and difficult and slow. This is like how UI designers have difficulty to discern which parts of their UI are hard to use, while the end user could do so effortlessly. Smart people end up having to run SmartPerson + NormalPersonVM(pre-alpha) in parallel. Normal people just run NormalPerson natively. Then they complain about bugs and slowness ('smart people are out of touch with reality!', etc.)
从育儿观察合理化是后天演化出的能力，成年人也会用逻辑包装情绪并借他人认可求安全感。
作为两个孩子的父亲，我确实能看到随着孩子长大，“合理化的演化”在发生。你的孩子会因为某些事或某些人生气等等，不管原因是什么，但通常只是因为饿了或累了。有趣的是，当你观察他们如何试图找出自己为什么难过时，而本质上只是本能或情绪让他们难过。你会注意到他们用来支撑论点的证据缺乏一致性或相关性。但随着他们长大，这逐渐改变。他们变得更有逻辑、更一致。我认为大多数成年人或聪明个体也学会了这样做。每天我都惊讶地发现自己在合理化那么多事情，同时用同样逻辑说服别人，而我大脑的另一部分暗中承认或认识到：我只是让它听起来合乎逻辑，并试图借他人认可来获得自己的安全感。
dosh查看英文原文
Being a parent to two kids, I can definitely see the 'evolution of rationalization' taking place as kids grow older. Your child will feel angry about certain events, or about other people and so forth for whatever the reasons, but usually, it's simply because they are hungry or feeling tired. What's interesting is when you observe how they are trying to find out reasons why they are upset, when basically, it's their instinct/emotion that caused them to get upset. So you will notice the lack of consistency or relevance of their evidence in backing up their argument. But this changes gradually as they grow older. They become more logical and more consistent. I think this is what most adult, or smart individuals learn to do as well. It amazes me everyday to find myself rationalizing so many things and at the same time, persuading others using the same logic, when the other part of my brain secretly acknowledge/recognize that I'm making it sound all logical and trying to get others approval for my own sense of security.
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