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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sarkie who wrote (27181)	6/3/2002 6:57:31 PM
From: Roger Sherman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

Hi stranger! I thought of you yesterday... While reading the Sunday Seattle Times, an article jumped out at me. And in it's first paragraph was a question almost identical to one you had asked on this thread, over 6000 posts ago (on 8/22/00). As it turned out, YOU were the "smart" one, and I most definitely was a "stupid" one. In fact, if I had fully appreciated the wisdom contained in that simple five-word question of your post below, I'd be a much wealthier man today: Message 14257294 A few excerpts from the article: archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com Sunday, June 02, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific SOME STUPID QUESTIONS Dumb and dumber (in printed version): Even most intelligent people fall into trap of poor decisions By Gregory Mott The Washington Post We've all had occasion to wonder, when confronted with the monumental misdoings of public figures or personal acquaintances: "What the heck were they thinking?" It turns out there is a significant body of research on this very question. Some sharp minds in academia have undertaken the study of stupidity, and their work has been collected in the just-published "Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid" (Yale University Press), edited by Robert Sternberg, director of Yale University's Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies and Expertise (PACE). Sternberg, an expert in intelligence testing, contends that stupidness is not the opposite of smartness, but rather the opposite of wisdom - defined as the ability to apply knowledge to achieve the common good. Q: Did any kind of unified theory of stupidity emerge from the research? A: I believe there are four main tendencies that lead us into this predicament: € The egocentrism fallacy: We foolishly come to believe that because we are so smart, the world does and should revolve around us. € The omniscience fallacy: We foolishly come to believe that part of the reason the world revolves around us is that we know much more than we do, or even all we need to know. € The omnipotence fallacy: We foolishly believe this knowledge makes us omnipotent. We can do whatever we want and get away with it. € The invulnerability fallacy: Then we foolishly believe we can get away with it because our intelligence makes us invulnerable to attack or even perhaps to criticism. But the problem is that smart people often use their intelligence to find ways to immunize themselves or isolate themselves from feedback. For example, they may hire toadies who just tell them what they want to hear.