The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One

By: Satoshi Kanazawa

Narrated by: Paul Neal Rohrer

Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's Summary

A book that challenges common misconceptions about the nature of intelligence.

Satoshi Kanazawa's Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters (written with Alan S. Miller) was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "a rollicking bit of pop Science & Technology that turns the lens of evolutionary psychology on issues of the day." That book answered such burning questions as why women tend to lust after males who already have mates and why newborns look more like Dad than Mom. Now Kanazawa tackles the nature of intelligence: what it is, what it does, what it is good for (if anything). Highly entertaining, smart (dare we say intelligent?), and daringly contrarian, The Intelligence Paradox will provide a deeper understanding of what intelligence is, and what it means for us in our lives.

• Asks why more intelligent individuals are not better (and are, in fact, often worse) than less intelligent individuals in solving some of the most important problems in life - such as finding a mate, raising children, and making friends
• Discusses why liberals are more intelligent than conservatives, why atheists are more intelligent than the religious, why more intelligent men value monogamy, why night owls are more intelligent than morning larks, and why homosexuals are more intelligent than heterosexuals
• Explores how the purpose for which general intelligence evolved - solving evolutionarily novel problems - allows us to explain why intelligent people have the particular values and preferences they have

Challenging common misconceptions about the nature of intelligence, this book offers surprising insights into the cutting-edge of Science & Technology at the intersection of evolutionary psychology and intelligence research.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2012 Satoshi Kanazawa (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Insightful and fascinating!

Very interesting to listen to. Explains a lot of things that one asks himself over the course of life!

Very entertaining

This intelligent person had a great time listening to this book. It’s a dose of humorous humility.

Good Stuff!!

If you are I interested in evolutionary biology and psychology as well as sociobiology, you'll enjoy this book.

great none fiction,

very interesting ideas to challenge the current mainstream culture of PC, great performance by the voice actor.

very academic yet insightful

the conclusions drawn are based only on the western civilization data. would be interesting if other datasets are also used. i understand the availability of such datasets may be an issue.

useful concept

The main concept is good and useful. Some of the traits like having less kids, having kids late, eating healthy... correlate with slow life history which is correlated with higher intelligence. So I'm not sure they provide proof that intelligent people are acting in novel ways instead of in line with evolution. The narrator is awful but still worth listening to.

interesting facts bent to author's agenda

What did you like about this audiobook?

The author describes an extenisve body of work that examines the relationship between IQ and personal characteristics e.g. marriage success, drug taking. There are some interesting and suprising results included that, like all good research, provoke interesting questions. Unfortunately, the author corrales them to emphasise his view that intelligent people (as measured by IQ) are not necessarily better than everyone else. This is clearly an important point for him, but I needed no convincing. People interested in this point would be much better off reading Grit.
His preoccupation with this "paradox" means that he ignores many of the interesting issues and questions that his results suggest. As a consequence, the book is laborious and a little frustrating

How has the book increased your interest in the subject matter?

The book raised some interesting observations that provoked some thought, but the focus of the book is not on these assumptions, but rather on demonstrating that intelligent people are not better.

Evolutionary psychology explains our behaviour

If you could sum up The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One in three words, what would they be?

We can't understand ourselves and our behaviour without evolutionary psychology.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me think deeply more than once. Surely that counts for something?

Any additional comments?

It's very politically incorrect, so please avoid if you are sensitive to texts offensive to progressive worldview.

Fascinating yet repetitive & robotically narrated

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I liked the no-nonsense style, cutting out all the apologising and hand-wringing that what he had to say was politically incorrect. That was like a breath of fresh air.

In short, it's a fascinating, concise book but a little repetitive, too full of statistics for an audiobook and the narrator made rather heavy weather of it. This is an audiobook only for blind pop science fans. Any sighted person should read it instead.", "type" : "Misc", "question" : "Any additional comments?", "id" : -1, "typeString" : "misc" } ]