Please critique my essay - Issue - It is dangerous to trust only intelligence.

[Subhash_Ghosh]

While pondering over the thought stimulating question of whether it is dangerous to trust only intelligence, keeping in view several of the aspects from which this statement can be examined, I tend to concur with the statement.

To begin with, to place trust is to perform an act of judgement and decision-making, and therefore the same should take into account several factors. Intelligence is one of those, and there are several other things that can come into picture as kinship, motivation, advancing a common goal in which everyone is an equal stakeholder, lack of prejudice, conflict of interest etc. To choose intelligence alone as the deciding factor for placing faith on someone is to negate and deny the equally significant traits that merit thorough consideration. For example, when a team of analysts submits a report pertaining to financial assessment as credit rating or financial health check reports, quite often the credibility of the report is judged more on the basis of the due diligence rendered by team and the lack of conflict of interest etc., as compared to the incisive skills of the team members.

Then again, as history shows, intelligence can sometimes be like a weapon in hands of unscrupulous individuals, especially if they're only guided by self-interest while being surrounded by unsuspecting people who have placed their total faith on them. The motive and the past streaks of behaviour of a person is also an important factor in knowing how trustworthy can someone be. For example, a system hacker might be a very sharp individual, but no organization would risk keeping faith on people of his ilk. Another example that stands out is the recent occurrence of sub-prime crisis, which is attributed to the team of Finance Engineering professionals working in large Finance Firms worldwide. Here too, the intelligence of these maligned finance professionals is never at question while the lack of several attributes as professionalism and ethics are being discussed seriously worldwide.
Furthermore, sometimes intelligent people can have very big egos and they can push their points in an obstinate and over-confident manner; and this can even happen when they know they're wrong, it is simply impossible for them to accept their oversight or error in calculations or judgement. This can lead to perilous and self-annihilating consequences, e.g., the once famous Netscape browser is no longer in use although it was regarded as the best browser of its times. It is one of the cases where the originators were very creative and gifted, but owing to the lack of vision and overlooking of strength of competitors as Microsoft Internet Explorer, they could not sustain their initial success and gradually wilted under market forces.

On the other hand, it can be argued that intelligence is the most important quality required for dissecting any issue that may require effective and suitable resolution, and that a person with less than average Intelligence Quotient can rarely be relied on for anything important. In addition to this, it can be also stated, and perhaps not without reason that the other factors for reliability are subjective, and are therefore secondary, e.g. ,the intelligence of a scientist versus the
demagoguery of a bigot. The thoughts and deeds of intelligent people like the scientists, free-thinkers, mathematicians, biologists etc. have generally done a lot of good to people, even inadvertently, while that is not the case with average or below average people. Hence it might be reasonable to infer that their credibility or trustworthiness is usually above suspicion.
Admittedly, the intelligence of a human being is definitely beneficial to fellow human beings, however, the utility of such an attribute is always governed by several other important factors as purpose, motivation etc., to name a few, and thus it can be deduced that an intelligent individual should be deemed as fully trustworthy when it is assured that several other positive traits are inherent and evident in him. In all of the examples where the intelligent individuals seem to stand above suspicion, altruism and philanthropy seem to be salient features inherent in him.

In summary, while intelligence is an outstanding trait which definitely gains respect and awe for an individual in eyes of peers and fellow human beings, it cannot be considered the absolute touchstone for verifying the trustworthiness as there are several other important criteria that ought to be take into account, and each of those needs to be satisfied fully before complete faith is placed on a person.