250. Clocks are neat, orderly systems that can be defined and evaluated using reductive methodologies. Clouds are irregular, dynamic. It is hard to study a cloud because they change from second to second. They can best be described through narrative, not numbers.
251. One of the great temptations of modern research is that it tries to pretend that every phenomenon is a clock, which can be evaluated using mechanical tools and regular techniques. This is surely true of the study of intelligence.
252. Raw intelligence is useful for helping you solve well-defined problems. Mental character helps you figure out what kind of problem you have in front of you and what sort of rules you should use to address it.
253. If you give people that rules they need to follow in order to solve a thinking problem, then people with higher IQs do better than people with low IQs.
254. The greatest thinkers seem to possess mental abilities that go beyond rational thinking narrowly defined. Their abilities are fluid and thoroughly cloud like.
255. Wisdom doesn’t consist of knowing specific facts or possessing knowledge of a field. It consists of knowing how to treat knowledge: being confident but not too confident; adventurous but grounded. It is a willingness to confront counterevidence and to have a feel for the vast spaces beyond what’s known.
256. She’d started this business with dreams of success, but once it was under way she was primarily motivated by fear of failure.
257. I don’t relate to what you are offering.
258. People who succeed tend to find one goal in the distant future and then chase it through thick and thin. People who flit from one interest to another are much, much less likely to excel at any of them. School asks students to be good at a range of subjects, but life asks people to find one passion that they will follow forever.
through thick and thin 任何时候
259. These scholars investigate cognition that happens below the level of awareness. Rationality is bounded by emotion. People have a great deal of trouble exercising self-control. They perceive the world in biased ways. They were profoundly influenced by context. They are prone to groupthink. Most of all, people discount the future; we allow present satisfaction to blot out future prosperity.
be bounded by 受约束;
be prone to 有…的倾向，易于;
blot out: If one thought or memory blots out other thoughts or memories, it becomes the only one that you can think about.
260. There is peer pressure, overconfidence, laziness, and self-delusion.
delusion 妄想; 错觉; 欺骗; 谬见
261. Mental patterns are contagious, and everything is judged in comparison to something else. Then there are expectations. The mind makes models of what it thinks will happen, which colors its perceptions of what is actually happening. Then there is inertia. The mind is a cognitive miser. It doesn't like to expend mental energy. As a result people have a bias toward maintaining the status quo. There is loss aversion. Losing money brings more pain than winning money brings pleasure.
inertia [ɪˈnɜ:rʃə] 惯性，惰性
miser 守财奴，吝啬鬼
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