Friends,
First an amuse-bouche catered by ChatGPT:
The story of Leopold and Loeb
Leopold and Loeb, formally Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, were two wealthy University of Chicago students who, in 1924, kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago. Their crime was among the most notorious of the 20th century, not just because of the brutality of the murder or the age of the victim, but because of the motives of the perpetrators. Leopold and Loeb committed the murder as an intellectual exercise; they wanted to assert their perceived superiority by committing the "perfect crime" and believed their intelligence would enable them to evade capture.
Nathan Leopold was an intellectual prodigy who spoke multiple languages and was an expert in ornithology, while Richard Loeb was fascinated by crime and held a strong belief in Nietzschean philosophy, particularly the concept of the "Übermensch" or "superman" who was above the laws that govern normal men. They spent months planning the crime in meticulous detail, believing themselves to be too smart to be caught.
However, their plan unraveled quickly. A pair of eyeglasses belonging to Leopold was found near the body, serving as a crucial piece of evidence that led to their arrest. Once in custody, they both confessed to the crime, and the subsequent trial became a media sensation. Clarence Darrow, one of the most famous lawyers of the day, defended them, arguing against the death penalty. His 12-hour-long plea is considered one of the finest speeches in American legal history.
Ultimately, Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years for the murder and kidnapping, respectively. Loeb was killed by a fellow prisoner in 1936, and Leopold was paroled in 1958, after serving 33 years. He moved to Puerto Rico, where he lived until his death in 1971. The case has since been the subject of numerous articles, books, and films, often cited as a grim example of crime motivated not by need or emotion but by a cold, detached intellectual curiosity.
This will all make sense at the end of the post.
Charlie Munger speaks of something called a rationality quotient or RQ. If you think about IQ as horsepower, the RQ is how you get the power to the wheels.
Tren Griffin quotes and comments on Munger’s view:
“We have a temperamental advantage that more than compensates for a lack of IQ points.” “A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments. And that is why we say that having a certain kind of temperament is more important than brains.”
Charlie Munger is making the point that high IQ does not mean you have high rationality quotient (RQ). Temperament is far more important than IQ. Warren Buffett has said about Charlie Munger: “He lives a very rational life. I’ve never heard him say a word that expressed envy of anyone. He doesn’t waste time on senseless emotions.” Warren Buffett suggests that some of this aspect of human nature may be innate: “A lot of people don’t have that. I don’t know why it is. I’ve been asked a lot of times whether that was something that you’re born with or something you learn. I’m not sure I know the answer. Temperament’s important.” High IQ can be problematic. What you want is to have a high IQ but think it is less than it actually is. That gap between actual and perceived IQ creates valuable humility and protects against mistakes caused by hubris. It is the person who thinks their IQ is something like 40 points higher than it actually is who creates the most havoc in life.
This distinction has colloquial aliases. Book smart vs street smart. Brains vs common sense. Munger’s RQ vs IQ frame, like the EQ vs IQ dichotomy, feels all a bit made up to me.
The overreach starts with imputing too much weight on intelligence in the first place. Smarts are context dependent and the overlap of contexts in life can make a narrow type of smart feel like a bigger tent than it really is.
[This seems more true today where contexts are collapsing into more and more abstraction. It wasn’t so long ago on the human time scale that you’d be better off being Hulk than Bruce Banner.]
When we overweight intelligence we are falsely surprised when “smart people do dumb things”. This genre is always open for business because we imbue intelligence with capabilities it doesn’t have in the first place.
[Also, schadenfreude, as sure as a boner, seeks a target. Smart is not sympathetic. It’s smug even when it’s not. You can probably round up a million people who think Mark Rober is an asshole. This observation should liberate you from your self-consciousness by the way.]
If we don’t confer intelligence with powers it doesn’t have, then you won’t think IQ and RQ are married. Friends with benefits at best.
Which brings me to a post that has major relevance in 2024: