QuestionClass

What Makes Intelligent People Believe Things That Aren’t True? Intelligent people can believe false things because analytical ability is only one part of belief formation. Motivation, repetition, trust, social influence, and prior commitment all affect what evidence people examine and how willing they are to revise a conclusion. Intelligence usually provides an advantage. People who reason carefully are often better at distinguishing strong evidence from weak evidence and true information from false information. The mistake is assuming that reasoning ability automatically guarantees good judgment. The same mind that can dismantle a weak argument can also construct a sophisticated defense of a preferred conclusion. Intelligence is a tool, and the result depends partly on what the tool is being used to accomplish. Theranos and the Evidence Around the Claim Elizabeth Holmes built Theranos around an extraordinary promise. The company claimed that extensive blood testing could be performed ...

What Happens When Intelligence Changes Faster Than Our Ability to Understand Ourselves? Artificial intelligence can improve the quality and speed of human work without necessarily producing an equivalent improvement in the knowledge, judgment, or independent capability of the person using it. As AI becomes more capable, distinguishing assisted performance from human understanding becomes increasingly important. The benefits of generative AI are easy to observe. Work can be completed faster, drafts can improve quickly, difficult calculations can be automated, and people can produce results that previously demanded much more time or expertise. The less visible question concerns what happens to the human capability behind those results. Improved output does not automatically tell us whether the person gained understanding, developed skill, or would recognize when the system produced a convincing error. AI Can Improve Professional Performance Research has already documented meaningful prod...

What Makes Intelligent People Believe Things That Aren’t True? Intelligent people can believe false things because analytical ability is only one part of belief formation. Motivation, repetition, trust, social influence, and prior commitment all affect what evidence people examine and how willing they are to revise a conclusion. Intelligence usually provides an advantage. People who reason carefully are often better at distinguishing strong evidence from weak evidence and true information from false information. The mistake is assuming that reasoning ability automatically guarantees good judgment. The same mind that can dismantle a weak argument can also construct a sophisticated defense of a preferred conclusion. Intelligence is a tool, and the result depends partly on what the tool is being used to accomplish. Theranos and the Evidence Around the Claim Elizabeth Holmes built Theranos around an extraordinary promise. The company claimed that extensive blood testing could be performed ...

What Questions Should We Be Asking AI? Rethinking Intelligence: Why the Questions Matter More Than the Code Before we unleash AI into the world, we must first tame how we think about it. What should we ask? What should we avoid? And who gets to decide? The question “What questions should we be asking AI?” isn’t just about prompt engineering—it’s about responsibility, foresight, and power.  The quality of our questions determines how AI evolves, who it serves, and who it ignores. From predictive policing to medical diagnostics, our interactions with AI are shaped not only by the data and code—but by the questions that went unasked. Why Now? We’re living through a  “question crisis.”  AI systems are making real-world decisions based on poorly framed problems. Healthcare AI : IBM’s Watson for Oncology offered flawed recommendations because it was trained on hypothetical cases from a single hospital. Missing question: Is our data globally representative? Criminal Justice : To...

What’s More Important, Intelligence or Network? Why Who You Know Can Shape What You Know—And When It Doesn’t  Reframing the Question If you had to choose between being the smartest person in the room or knowing everyone in it, which would you pick? The intelligence versus network debate isn’t just about career advancement—it’s about understanding how value creation works in complex systems. Intelligence represents your capacity to generate insights, solve problems, and adapt to new information. Network represents your ability to access resources, amplify impact, and navigate social systems. But here’s what most analyses miss:  the optimal balance shifts dramatically based on context, timing, and the type of value you’re trying to create. The most successful individuals don’t choose one over the other—they develop what we might call “contextual intelligence”: knowing when to prioritize building connections versus deepening expertise, and recognizing how different types of intel...