Smartness Lowers Cost of Bad Ideas

People with higher measured intelligence are more willing to try new solutions, and they continue to do so even when those solutions are only equal or worse than existing ones. Because smarter individuals pay lower personal penalties for failed experiments, novelty‑seeking can spread through social networks even when the innovation is suboptimal. — If cognitive advantage reduces the cost of adopting fads, elites will systematically skew cultural and policy innovation toward novelty that signals status rather than improves welfare.