"…as a general rule, we’re too inclined to tell the good vs. evil story. As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine every time you’re telling a good vs. evil story, you’re basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more. If you just adopt that as a kind of inner mental habit, it’s, in my view, one way to get a lot smarter pretty quickly. You don’t have to read any books. Just imagine yourself pressing a button every time you tell the good vs. evil story, and by pressing that button you’re lowering your IQ by ten points or more." Tyler Cowen, economist. TED talk, 2010.
I would have said that TED talks temporarily lower your IQ, but I have always been impressed by Cowen.
Which reminds me...
3 comments:
This is the reason why I don't usually call opponents or arguments "stupid." Some of them really are, of course.
There's a transcript of that TED talk here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4kphivjxngJmEdWsN/transcript-tyler-cowen-on-stories
A corollary of this point applies to partisan political arguments.
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