The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions

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David Robson is an award-winning science journalist. He was a features editor at New Scientist for five years before joining BBC Future as a senior journalist, where he specialised in psychology, neuroscience and medicine. He regularly features on the radio discussing scientific issues, and his writing has also appeared in the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Atlantic and the Washington Post.

It is time for us to learn a new way of thinking: a cognitive toolkit to navigate intelligence traps, fake news and to maximise our potential. How was a brilliant physics professor tricked into carrying 2kg of cocaine across the Argentinian border? Why do doctors misdiagnose 10 to 15% of their patients? Why do Nobel Prize winners spread fake news? We assume that smarter people are less prone to error. But greater education and expertise can often amplify our mistakes while rendering us blind to our biases. This is the intelligence trap. Drawing on the latest behavioural science and historical examples from Socrates to Benjamin Franklin, David Robson demonstrates how to apply our intelligence more wisely; identify bias and enhance our rationality quotient; read and regulate our emotions; fine-tune our intuition; navigate ambiguity and uncertainty; and think more flexibly about seemingly intractable problems. The twenty-first century presents us with complex problems that demand a wiser way of thinking. Whether you are a NASA scientist or a school student, The Intelligence Trap offers a new cognitive toolkit to realise your full potential.

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