Intelligent People Are Easier to Fool Than They Think

Intelligent People Are Easier to Fool Than They Think

Most people assume deception works because people are ignorant. In my experience, the opposite is closer to the truth. Intelligent people don’t get misled because they lack brainpower; they get misled because they put their attention in the wrong place. Under pressure, smart professionals often default to explaining, optimizing, or reverse-engineering what’s in front of them—long before asking what the situation is actually about. In my work as a mentalist and speaker, I use live illusion not as a puzzle to be solved, but as a demonstration of this blind spot: how easily capable, thoughtful people mistake mechanism for meaning, and how much clearer judgment becomes when attention is reoriented toward purpose instead of plumbing. The goal isn’t to outsmart the audience. It’s to help them notice what they’ve been looking past.