How to Avoid being a Fool

Anyone can be a fool, but smart people are better at it. And smart people are more likely than less-smart people to be dangerous fools, because they’re better at constructing elaborate ideologies around their dumb ideas and more likely to achieve positions of power, allowing them to impose these dumb ideas on others. See, for instance, the Great Leap Forward.

How to avoid being a fool? There are no guarantees, but embracing science as a way of thinking helps. That means holding beliefs at arms length – as if they were hypotheses to be tested. It also means being careful, tentative, incremental, precise, and alert to alternative explanations. Above all, it means to be ruthless with oneself – ever ready to acknowledge ignorance and error.

(Short posts will be the rule until mid-March, when I return from vacation)

Reference:

Shermer, Michael. The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. New York: Times Books, 2011. Kindle