I've long been puzzled by the fact that very smart, honest and thoughtful people are often both profoundly wrong and firmly convicted that they are right. But in fact this is a predictable outcome.

Very smart people are capable of reasoning through complex decision trees. The danger in this is that a small error early in the process can lead to a profoundly large error at the end of the process. Since it's difficult to reason backwards so as to audit each step of the process, really smart people tend to be sure that their results are correct. After all, they put a lot of effort into correctness and assimilate a lot of information using rigorous logic.

The evidence supporting my theory is that all, or most, really smart people, don't arrive at the same conclusions. They arrive at different conclusions with more conviction.

On the flip side, I think that people who don't trust, or are not good at deduction tend to rely on pattern matching thought process. This doesn't produce subtle results, but they are surprisingly common and robust over time.

I must be right.

Mike.