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My god, smart people can be dumb sometimes:

"probably also offers only a constant reduction in risk without decreasing the acceleration of risk, if for no other reason than hundreds of millions of people have taken metformin over the past century yet no gerontologist has ever noticed a massive overrepresentation of diabetics among centenarians"

Ummm, and also WW2 planes that made it back to the base had damage in the least crucial areas.



Sometimes being smart means you're better at rationalizing your beliefs.


That’s a common refrain, and I guess seeks to explain academic blind spots. But I do wonder if it’s not rather a form of victory disease where some of your intelligence can effectively shield you from the consequences of your stupidity allowing to hold incorrect beliefs far longer.

As best I can tell the smartest people hold more true beliefs and have fewer blind spots which has me leaning towards the latter explanation. But as this is purely based on my subjective observations it’s possible that this is merely the result of my own biases.


I wouldn't surprised if that factors in as well.




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