The Hindu Business Line : Let’s pay attention to ‘stupidity’

When one thing happens, and then another thing happens, the first one caused the second one.” This primitive line of reasoning, driven by our urge to connect cause and effect, has flaws, says Madeleine L. Van Hecke in Blind Spots ( www.prometheusbooks.com). Such a simplistic approach believes that a single, apparent, and immediate cause can account for what occurs, and thus loses sight of the idea of ‘multiple causation’, she explains.

Programmed to find patterns, we are perhaps always in a hurry to explain the unusual. “We search for causes using the simple method of asking what happened earlier. If we wake up with an upset stomach, we wonder about the curry that we tried for the first time the night before.”

But before you latch on to the first likely cause that you suspect, ask yourself two questions, the author advises. One, are the causes more complex than the simple or single cause that you have identified?

And two, is the occurrence of the events or factors meaningful or is it a fluke?

“Psychology has a long history of being fascinated with ‘intelligence’ but has only recently turned its attention to ‘stupidity’,” Van Hecke says in the preface. “Our minds work for us in wonderful ways – 80 or 90 per cent of the time. But the rest of the time… our minds work against us.”

Our greatest intellectual strengths represent liabilities when they lead us to miss something that we might otherwise have noticed, she cautions.

That is how blind spots occur, leading people to label us ‘stupid’, and driving us to feel ‘dim-witted’.

If we become aware of our blind spots we can do something about them, the author assures. An analogy is of a car’s side-view mirrors, which have little warnings printed on them that say: “Objects in this mirror are closer than they appear.”

“Once we know about this built-in limitation, we can compensate for it.”

The most common blind spot, among the ten that the book discusses in depth, is this: “What you don’t know can hurt you.” How often have we felt dumb when we are ignorant of information that others expect us to know!

The blind spot here is not so much the ignorance, but the ignorance of ignorance. That is, not knowing that we don’t know.

Another widespread blind spot is the missing of ‘the big picture,’ or missing the forest for the trees.

Watch out: This ‘folly’ can happen simply because we are ‘too close to something, too focused on a single piece, a solitary approach, or a limited time span.’

Smart read you couldn’t be blind to.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com