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It seems very strange to me that they would see these biases as inherently harmful, rather than the root difference between smart people (who can think effectively and quickly using non-linear reasoning) and stupid people (who can't.)

In general I would be reasonably satisfied with a definition of intelligence which described how usefully one is able to employ intuitive cognition.



One could also imply that by your definition smartness should be measured by how good someone is able to following rules and structure.


Not especially, although being able to comprehend rules and structure is a biproduct of systems-level thinking. However, the "non-linear" part of my definition also implied an ability to question, circumvent or simply ignore such systems as well, and includes the ability to reason within a set of rules without believing that set of rules to be accurate or true.

Systems and rulesets can be a useful method to structure memory and reason, but being bound by them is detrimental to long-term correctness and comprehension. Being able to write syntactically-correct programs is useful, but neither necessary nor sufficient to be an excellent programmer. A meta-understanding of the effect such syntax has on the program at hand is more useful than always correctly following it.




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