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Inquiring Minds

Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes

Inquiring Minds

Inquiring Minds

Female Host, Critical Thinking, Society & Culture, Neuroscience, Interview, Science, Social Sciences

4.4848 Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2019

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We talk to science journalist David Robson about his new book The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It's Monday, September 2nd, 2019, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds.

0:06.5

I'm in-Joviscontas.

0:07.5

Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

0:14.0

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

0:18.0

You can find us online at Enquiring. Show, on Twitter, at Inquiring

0:21.4

show, and on Facebook. And you can also get an ad-free version of this show by supporting us at patreon.com

0:27.2

slash inquiring minds. And you can subscribe to the show on iTunes or any other podcasting app.

0:42.9

Our last episode featured an interview with David Epstein, one of my favorite writers,

0:47.5

talking about one of my favorite things, which is essentially what happens when we train and how can we train most optimally. His thesis in his book, Range, Why Generalists

0:53.2

Triumph, was that we kind of underrate a general

0:57.0

knowledge, a broad intelligence or broad training, and we specialize too early. This week's guest

1:03.3

is looking at much the same topic, but from a different perspective. He's David Robson,

1:08.3

and he wrote a book called The Intelligence Trap, Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes.

1:13.4

Even though I recorded these two interviews relatively far apart in time, I thought it would

1:18.0

be important to actually play them back to back, because we cover some of the same issues,

1:22.8

but from two very different perspectives.

1:25.2

When we develop expertise, we tend to think that we know what we're

1:28.7

talking about, and often we do, but that also makes us more susceptible to certain kinds of biases,

1:34.6

and that's why we can make some pretty dumb mistakes. David Robson, welcome to inquiring minds.

1:39.8

Absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you. So one of the things I loved about your book is that it kind of

1:43.6

turns over a kind of a theme that we see now in media on its head.

1:49.2

So a lot of people talk about the fact that at least in America and maybe even here in Britain, I should tell our listeners that we are currently recording this interview in London.

...

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