Intelligence - generalization

Generalizations are a sort of box, definition or category. Many of them are true and very useful. It will be helpful to make a quick decision.

"Judgement boxes" is powerful, but can also be dangerous if used badly. Any powerful system can be used for the wrong purposes. Any powerful system can be used badly.

A knife is very useful for cutting up food. A knife may also be used to stab someone.

One of the roles of wisdom is to make sure that our judgement-box system of thinking is used sensibly. The key danger of the judgement-box system is arrogance. How can we prevent that shift from useful certainty to dangerous arrogance? We need to use the "boxes" to help us but not to imprision us.

Wisdom suggests we use terms like "usually", "by and large", "most of the time", "probably" and "maybe", instead of the more absolute terms like "must", "cannot", "always" and "never". The shift in expression diminishes the danger of arrogance while retaining the utility of the boxes.

Where generalization are going to be helpful we can accept more "righteousness", but where generalizations are harmful then we need to be much less certain.

Another danger of the judgement box system is that the boxes may be out of date. In a rapidly changing world the boxes derived from the past may not be sufficient to understand the future.