Top Highlights

• in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.
• Part of the problem is cognitive laziness. Some psychologists point out that we’re mental misers:10 we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones.
• When it comes to our knowledge and opinions, though, we tend to stick to our guns. Psychologists call this seizing and freezing.11 We favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt, and we let our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 19...
• Mental horsepower doesn’t guarantee mental dexterity. No matter how much brainpower you have, if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again. Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because you’re faster at recognizing patterns.21 And recen...
• In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias:23 seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias:24 seeing what we want to see. These biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth. We find reasons to...