Do intelligence and lots of knowledge protect us from making irrational dicisions. I am going to talk about it in this article.
According to Plato, Thales of Miletus the ancient Greek mathematician, philosopher and astronomer on one occasion was so indulged in star gazing so that he fell into a well, while he was observing the sky. This incident symbolizes that sometimes lots of knowledge and the common sense don't meet.
In the early 20th century, when the intelligence tests were developed, scientists hoped, that those tests will predict, that how racionally the test taker will behave that is, they expected the high IQ scored people will behave sensible in the future.
In this article I will bring up a few examples that show that brightness, wisdom, intelligence and rationality are far away from each other.
What would be the spontaneous answer to the following question. A bottle of water and a glass cost 3.50 USD together. The bottle of water cost 3 USD more than the glass. How much is the glass? If your answer is 50 cents then you are going to realize how your intuition sometimes mislead your cogitation. The answer cannot be 50 cents. If the glass is 50 cents and the bottle of water is 3 USD more than the glass than the bottle of water would be 3.50 USD. The right answer is 25 cents for the glass and 3.25 USD for the bottle of water.
Human beings are tend to be doing something irrational even though they know that there is absolutely no point to continue doing it. Imagine that you are in the cinema and the movie you are watching is boring, but you paid full price for your ticket what would you do? There is more than half of the movie left to be watched. Would you watch it till the end or would you stand up an go home? Another example. You are in the restaurant and you ordered desert as well before you even started your meal. You finish your main course and you are full. You cannot take the cake home. What would you do? Would you still eat it?
What do you think who would do such irrational behavior? Well you might think only people who had low IQ test score. This is not true at all. Studies show that high IQ scored people do such things. The intelligence tests measure cognitive ability. The question is that do we use our cognitive abilities when we have to make decisions.
