Intellectuals and Occam's Razor
I thoroughly believe there is an inverse relationship between book smarts and an aptitude for handiwork. Those who rely on their intellectual skill to rationalize the challenges they face don't always realize that Occam's Razor is the best way to deal with it. For example, in my limited experience, I find that the people that appear to be the most book smart are the ones who have the most issues with the merchandise I help sell. I work for IKEA, a furniture company famous for its mass produced Swedish furniture with funny, hard-to-pronounce-in-English names. The instructions to assemble everything we sell comes with little to no printed text. That way, IKEA can produce one set of instructions for all the countries they sell furniture. In fact, the lack of words in the instructions tells me that someone who is functionally illiterate can assemble whatever they buy, provided they can follow the pictures. In my experience, people who are book smart tend to over-analyze many aspect