Intelligent People Are Easier to Fool Than They Think

Intelligent People Are Easier to Fool Than They Think

Intelligent people aren’t misled because they lack intelligence. They’re misled because their attention is pointed in the wrong place. Under pressure, capable professionals often rush to analyze, optimize, or reverse-engineer details before asking what the situation is actually about.

In my work, live illusion isn’t a puzzle to solve but a demonstration of this blind spot: how easily smart people mistake mechanism for meaning, and how much clearer judgment becomes when attention is redirected toward purpose rather than process.