HealthyGamerGG - Why Smart People Struggle to “Be Normal”

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K explains the "Paradox of the Stupid Intelligent Person"—how high intelligence can circle back around and become a unique form of stupidity. He breaks down the common blind spots that cause smart people to fail and provides a roadmap for leveraging your IQ more effectively. What to expect in this episode: The Tool Mismatch: Why using abstract logic for social situations is like "milking a cow with a hammer" and how it causes your social intuition to "rust". The Mindlessness Trap: How your brain’s ability to predict what happens next causes you to stop paying attention, leading to mistakes in "simple" tasks. Arguing for Error: Why being smart makes you better at defending wrong beliefs, making it much harder to admit when you are actually wrong. Misapplied Rules: A look at why successful leaders often struggle at home by applying "business rules" to their family and children. The "Thinking Disposition": A guide to fixing these blind spots by learning to collect more information and intentionally seeking out contrary opinions. Thinking Critically About Thinking: Why the smarter you are, the less likely you are to question your own logic, and how to break that cycle.HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Alokinoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. All righty-chat, today we're going to talk about stupidity.

So I know everyone's concerned about being intelligent, high IQ. We're going to do cognitive neotropics, cognitive enhancement, right? We always want to boost our intelligence. intelligence. And I know I am certainly guilty of this. I don't know if you guys know what I'm talking about, but there's like smart, intelligent people, and there's stupid intelligent people. And if you're someone who's really intelligent, it turns out that if you're not careful, your intelligence will kind of circle back around and become a unique form of stupidity. Now, when I do this work with people, it turns out really well. We sort of help them, like,

you know, figure out their blind spots, which we're going to go over today. But if you're someone who's who's super smart, but can't seem to like leverage that. I highly recommend you check out our coaching program, which is designed to help you sort of live up to your potential. So what's the difference between someone who's a stupid intelligent person and a smart intelligent person? The first thing that we're going to talk about is the misapplication of intelligence. So one of my favorite examples of this is NASA.

So when NASA was sending astronauts to the moon, they like developed a really like they spend a bunch of money and like did all this research on developing like a pen that writes in space. You know what the Russians did? Used a pencil? They used the pencil. So what's really interesting is we think that intelligence is the primary problem-solving faculty that we have. And if you're a stupid, intelligent person, I know this sounds insane, but one of the mistakes you're probably making is that you are using your intelligence too much.

Now, what the hell do I mean by that? If you look at people with empathy, right? So a lot of people, when they're facing social situations, they'll perform a lot of calculations. And there are these other humans out there who are like sort of ignorant, wandering through life and just making judgments and they seem to be happy and things seem to be working out for them, right? There are a lot of people who like struggle with social situations because they're running a bazillion calculations to try to figure out what to say or what to do or whatever. So here's the key thing to understand. Intelligence from an evolutionary standpoint evolved for certain things. and we have other parts of our brain that have evolved for other things.

So especially when it comes to things like social situations, we have empathic circuits, we integrate a lot of information about body language, tone, facial expressions. Intelligence is not designed to be the tool for social interactions. It's kind of like trying to milk a cow with a hammer. Intelligence from an evolutionary perspective is actually designed to solve novel problems. So a great example of this is like redneck engineering, right? Where you see this really hilarious like, you know, redneck engineering where someone builds this contraption, like someone builds some like mechanized tricycle or something like that because they don't have a car. That's actually

what intelligence is for. Intelligence is designed when we encounter a new problem. We have to be able to pull in a lot of information and come up with a novel solution. We run into trouble when we start misapplying intelligence is the primary tool for a series of things, especially social situations. So when we start to use our abstract reasoning capability, our sort of data analysis capability for things like human interactions, it actually falls short, right? And there's a bunch of like relationship experts who will sort of cite all of this research and like talk about all these theories. They'll develop this really complex kind of stuff where actually the reason that, you know, this stuff doesn't really work great. And if you look at a lot of people who have effortless social

interactions, they are using the right parts of their brain. Now, why does this happen? So this is what's really interesting. I work with a bunch of people. I'm sort of like this. And the reason this happens is because when you have a high IQ, it's so good at solving so many different things. So as you were growing up, you were sort of like leveling up your IQ, increasing your proficiency with your IQ. And since you're using your IQ, you underdevelop other things like EQ, like your emotional quotient. So your ability to be empathic, your ability to feel what other people are feeling, your ability to use your intuition. As you become more intelligent, you start to make more calculations and your intuition starts to rust. Your social faculties start to rust.

And that creates problems because now you are running a bunch of calculations when you actually have a circuit in your brain that'll do it instantly. instantly, you're just not using it. The second element of stupidity that intelligent people are vulnerable to is actually mindlessness. So if you look at the research and you ask someone, okay, like, what is stupidity? There's different kinds of stupidity. And one of them is being mindless, right? So like, I'm not paying attention or my mind is not focused on the problem, therefore I make a mistake. Now, I've worked with a ton of people who have a high IQ who think they have ADHD because they are mindless, right? My mind doesn't, I'm smart, but my mind does not pay attention.

So this is not necessarily ADHD. There's some comorbidity between IQ and ADHD, but it's not sort of huge. This is actually where intelligence induces mindlessness. Intelligence induces causes you to stop paying attention. And here's how this works. So I want you to imagine a stupid person who is sitting in a lecture. So when a stupid person is sitting in a lecture, they don't understand what the lecturer is talking about. They haven't heard this before.

They haven't processed it before. Since it is new to them, they are going to pay attention. Now, if you have a high IQ, that also means you have a strong predictive capability, right? So if you think about high IQ and playing chess, you can read 10 moves ahead. So when your brain is listening to someone speak, when you are performing a task, and your brain automatically makes calculations ahead when it reads 10 moves ahead. Oh, you're like, this guy's talking about quantum mechanics. Oh, I know what he's going to say.

He's talking about the double-slit experiment. So you stop paying attention. Anytime your mind can read things through to the end, it no longer pays attention. When you no longer pay attention, now you're not paying attention. And that opens you up to making mistakes. And when, this is what's really scary about it, right? So the simpler the thing is, the easier it is to predict. the easier it is to predict the more you stop paying attention.

And the more you stop paying attention, the more mistakes you make. So this is what's really scary, right? This is what makes a stupid, intelligent person. The thing that is really simple is where you are making the mistakes, which is really confusing because then are you like really stupid or are you really intelligent? Turns out that if you go far enough down the scale of intelligence, you wrap around to stupidity. The third thing that we're going to talk about, people who are highly intelligent paint themselves into a corner. So here's how this goes.

In the research, what people kind of describe is that people who are highly intelligent will commit to something that is false. Okay? Now, why do they do that? So imagine once again that I'm an idiot. And then I have a belief that is wrong. So if I have a belief that's wrong, that means that I can't defend it, right? Like, if I'm wrong and I can't come up with a good logical reason for it, then I'm just wrong, and then I have to admit my mistake, and then, like, I don't double down and then like, okay,

I made a mistake, and then I correct it, and then I'm like in the right camp. But if you're smart, and you guys may notice this, right, so if you've ever gotten into an argument with someone with super high IQ on the internet, who is, you know, found on the I Am Very Smart subreddit, what you will discover is that oftentimes people who are really intelligent are really arrogant about it, and even when they are wrong, they will argue with you until their last breath. Now, why does this happen? So you will say, okay, this is because they're arrogant assholes.

But no, this is actually a function of intelligence. That's what the research suggests, okay? So when you have a wrong belief, and if you have the capacity for intelligence, even when you have a wrong belief, you can come up with logical reasons why your wrong belief is correct. And there are some people out there that are famously very intelligent, but are also really stupid and stuck on wrong beliefs that they will, you know, go down with the sinking ship. They just will never admit they are wrong. And part of it is arrogance for sure, right? And we'll get to how that arrogance is the solution to all of this.

We'll kind of get to that in a second. But I want you all to understand that the better you are, the better your brain is at producing arguments, the more likely you are to defend. a wrong point of view. And as you are defending a wrong point of view, it opens you up to make big mistakes. Okay. And this is where like I see this literally all the time with the very high functioning people that I work with, which is like since they are right most of the time, the one or two percent of the time that they are wrong, they have a lot of difficulty understanding that they're wrong. Right. So as I, I mean, I don't really explain to them. I figured out how to do this. But if they talk to their co-founders or their advice,

board or things like that, right? Their C-suite kind of group, like they have a lot of difficulty recognizing they're wrong because their mind is always able to come up with arguments that support the incorrect belief. Another kind of stupidity that people with high IQ are predisposed to is something called a misapplied heuristic or a discrepancy between someone's confidence in their abilities. So like a good example of this that doesn't have to do with IQ is, you know, back a couple, maybe about a year ago, two years ago, there was like all these things going around on social media where there were like dudes who were like,

yeah, I could wrestle a bear, bro. Like if I took a bear in a fight, like unarmed, like I would own that bear. Like I'm stronger than a bear, right? You have like people on social media who are making these bizarre claims of confidence. So there's a gap between what you believe you're capable of and what you were actually capable of.

So Dunning and Kruger wrote a seminal paper on this back in like 1999. which is called the Dunning Kruger effect, which is that people who don't know much misestimate their abilities. Is this just a case of like people being arrogant? Because that's certainly the case on social media. But it turns out that there's some really interesting science behind this. And this is something that Kant originally sort of discovered.

And he said that judgment is, I think, the application of a rule, like appropriately. So in a lot of situations, if you apply the correct rules, then you will behave. intelligently or smartly or wisely and if you apply the wrong set of rules to a situation, then that will result in stupidity. In scientific terms, this is something called the problem of misapplied heuristics. So a heuristic is kind of like, you know, a set of rules that we follow. And when we don't correctly read the situation, when we have sort of like an answer key, and we misapply this answer key to a set of problems, that results in stupidity. So a good example of this, I've worked with a bunch of people who are once again CEOs, founders, leaders, right?

And they have a set of rules of when interacting with people. These are the set of rules that lead to success. And when these leaders go home and they have their spouse or partner, when they have their kids, they assume, right? This is why they end up in my office because they're in the midst. Their partner is threatening divorce. they're alienated from their children. They're narcissistic and they're like, I don't understand what's wrong.

Like, why do people hate me? Like, I'm focused on efficiency. They want these things. I tell them to do it this way. If everyone listened to me, everyone would get what they want. I'm smart. I know how to do this. I built a $100 million company.

I don't know why these people are fucking arguing with me. My son is 15 years old and he fucking argues with me. This is a case of a misapplied heuristic. This person is incredibly successful. Somewhat narcissistic, fine. But that's not actually what their mistake is. Their mistake is that they are taking the rule set from being a founder or leader, and they are applying it to a family situation. They're applying it to a 15-year-old son who is in the process of transitioning from a child to an adult.

So even that heuristic used to work when your son was like six. Because when your son is six and you're like 40, they listen to you. They're supposed to listen to you. But as they start to develop independence, right? When your employees are developing independence, you're like, nah, bra, you got to listen to what I'm saying. But that doesn't work with your kid. It doesn't work with your spouse. So as we misapply heuristics, we result in stupidity despite the fact that we're intelligent.

Why are people with intelligence more vulnerable to this? It's because their ability to shape a heuristic to a situation is actually greater. If I were to ask like a super smart person, make me a list of the similarities between a family and a company, they could connect those dots more easily. As they connect those dots more easily, they are more likely to apply heuristics, adapt heuristics, which on some level may work, but is not nearly as good as developing an independent heuristic.

So now the question becomes, how do we fix this, right? So how do we move from being a stupid intelligent person to a smart intelligent person? It turns out that there's another element here. There's another like cognitive principle, which oftentimes if you're intelligent, you don't really figure out.

some people sort of do it naturally, which is how they become smart, intelligent people. But if you don't do it naturally, you can absolutely learn it, okay? And this is called thinking disposition. So this thinking disposition is not your IQ. It is the way that you relate to your thinking, the attitude that you have towards your thinking. So let me give you an example, okay? I am an influencer. So many influencers are like, hey, I'm successful on YouTube.

Therefore, let me become an entrepreneur, right? So they're like these entrepreneur influencers. Many of them will start companies. They'll develop products like myself. I developed a coaching program. And since, by the way, since I'm successful on YouTube, that must mean anything that I develop will work, right? So here I am.

Trained at Harvard Medical School. Was faculty there. Was there for like seven or eight years. And like now I'm successful on the internet. And these two data points mean that whatever product I develop will be successful because I'm such a genius. That's not actually the attitude that I take, though. We did actually the exact opposite at HG because, you know, we understand based on medical training

and stuff like that, that genius doesn't translate directly over to successful products. That's why we do studies on our coaching program. We have research baked into it to measure whether it actually works with people, right? So we see reductions in depression, reductions in anxiety improvements in a sense of life purpose. We see people like living up to their potential. They tend to be pretty happy with it. 10 to 20,000 people have gone through the program since we started it. it is the way that you relate to your thinking. So just because Dr. K has an idea, even if I'm Dr.

K, that doesn't make it good. And there are a couple of critical components to thinking disposition. The first is collecting information before you make a judgment. So this is what's really like tricky, okay? So the smarter you are, the more quickly you will arrive at a judgment, right? Because you can make all of these natural calculations. They happen pretty quick. And so oftentimes what we don't do even when we know the answer, we don't go looking for information. So the whole point of medical training is that when a doctor jumps to a conclusion, like jumps to a diagnosis, oh yeah, I've seen the flu a thousand times. Flu's going around.

Your kid comes in, he's got the flu, right? So he's got sweats, right? And they don't ask the question, okay, does he have sweats only at night or does he have them all day long? Do they respond at Tylenol? Do they not respond to Tylenol? Has someone else been sick in the house? This is how you separate out something like lymphoma or leukemia

from the flu. The training that we go through for doctors is even when you make a judgment or ideally before you make a final judgment, you can have an initial diagnostic idea. You should still collect information. So be a little bit hesitant to make judgments, make judgments after you go through a process. The second thing for thinking disposition is when you have a particular idea to try to engage with contrary opinions. This is something that we see very, very little of on the internet where you have a lot of intelligent people who become parts of echo chambers and they stop engaging with contrary opinions. So I know it sounds insane, but like when you have an idea of what is OP in a video game because you're so smart and you're someone who is like high

rank and therefore you know everything, when you think is something is OP, you kind of double down, you argue with people, you don't actually go around collecting opinions that are the exact opposite of yours. Maybe you do, and if you do, chances are you're a smart, intelligent person. Right? So if we're intelligent, we actually want to bring in contrary opinions for our intelligence to factor into the calculation. We don't have to believe them, but we really want to collect that data. The third thing, and this is so counterintuitive because we all think we do it, and that is thinking before you make a decision, just because our mind produces a calculation, right? It usually happens very fast. It usually happens unintentionally. Your mind just comes up with an idea,

oh, this is bad. We oftentimes, the more intelligent you are, the less you learn, because you don't need to, right? So if you're very intelligent, you make a calculation, the chances are the calculation is right. So then you sort of fly by the seat of your pants. A lot of people go through life with like this automatic intelligence. That's what predisposes you to make mistakes, because that's not always going to be right. And then we see this weird synergistic effect because if you make a snap judgment, if you don't collect information, and then you have a very, very robust intellectual capability, you will argue yourself into being correct even when you're wrong. So you need to pause and really think about making decisions. So oftentimes when I'm working

with someone, you know, what I'll do is I'll ask them, you guys may have seen this in our interviews, right? I'll ask them lots of open-ended questions. I'll really get them to think about their problems. I don't give them answers and I don't need to. And if you struggle with this because it's kind of hard to do on your own, this is where working with someone who asks you questions to encourage your thinking about the problem, to engage your critical thinking instead of jumping to a conclusion, which is technically what your mind does, that's what leads to smart intelligence. And the last thing is to think critically about your thinking, okay?

This is sort of related. This is why we sort of encourage people to think. But oftentimes the smarter you are, the less critical you are about your own. own thinking, right? So we may think we're critical, and some of y'all may be critical about your thinking. I think that's totally fine. But when I encounter people who are like high IQ and super blackpilled, this is a good example of not being critical about your thinking. They may have read a bunch of research, but they never stopped to think like, okay, there's a bunch of studies on why black pill is correct, but do they spend an equal amount of time studying lots of things that show that

blackbill isn't correct. No, it turns out that there's a selection bias. So if you are someone who is a stupid, intelligent person, it's not about leveling up your IQ or leveling down, well, I guess it is about leveling down your stupidity. And the way that we do that is by changing our thinking disposition. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.