There’s something I’ve never understood about people: how some (most?) people will adopt a specific position about a subject, and thereafter simply won’t be able to comprehend any argument to the contrary.
Most positions on most subjects are simplifications. If someone says that alcohol is bad, and someone else says it’s good, the chances are that they’re both right in different circumstances; the truth is somewhere between the statements. Alcohol is usually good for loosening up inhibitions, in small doses; it helps a number of social situations, and certain types have been proven to be good for the health, in moderation. It’s usually bad in large quantities, or when it’s used to avoid problems instead of solving them. But once a person adopts one of those statements as his own, anyone who tries to argue anything in between is treated as if he’s arguing the other one, or as if he’s speaking Swahili — what the first person hears is totally different from what the other person is actually saying.
Scott Adams, the author of the Dilbert comic strip, wrote a fascinating blog entry on this today. He says that economists seem to have an immunity to this problem. If you’re trying to figure out people, it’s worth studying.
The better software developers and technicians I’ve met also seem to be immune to this phenomenon, as a group. And for that matter, it seems that the less certain a person is that he knows The Truth about different things, and the more he’s willing to consider alternative viewpoints (whether he ultimately accepts or rejects them), the smarter he is in general. Which might explain why people who are rigidly devout in their religion (and are convinced that everyone who disagrees with them is 100% wrong) are also generally pretty stupid. Nothing in the world is completely black and white; everything is shades of gray, and the fewer shades you’re willing to acknowledge, the further your mental model is from reality. And by definition, the further your mental model is from reality, the further you are from sanity. At it’s extreme, that way lies people who believe that there’s a UFO in the tail of a comet that’s waiting for the souls of the devout.
It seems to me that this is a good general test of someone’s intelligence: find a subject that he has firm beliefs on, have a conversation about it, and see how well he can actually understand statements that are partially contrary to his position. Not whether he agrees to them, just how well he understands them. It’s an interesting theory.