>More importantly, it is far from clear how well intelligence is applied. For example, many physicists smoke, in spite of the fact that it has long been known that smoking ruins one's health and shortens one's life-span. (In the US alone, more than half a million deaths per year can be attributed to smoking, dwarfing terrorism by several orders of magnitude.) One might then argue that other factors (childhood "training", orders from your DNA, etc.) are dominating intelligence, forcing people to do something that doesn't seem very smart. But if intelligence can take a back seat even in matters of life and death, what guarantees that it is in full control in one's career? Yet surprisingly, many physicists are perfectly rational and analytic in their work, while in other matters they seem to shut off that side of their brains, as if they lived in a dualistic world where the same laws of reason did not apply. Often they are incapable of even giving a rational explanation of why they are physicists, or why they chose the area of physics in which they work, and may actually re- sist providing such a reason when prompted for one. Fortunately, science it- self is nothing like scientists in that respect.
thoughts?
thoughts?
