"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them"

Many of the world’s most peculiar and destructive beliefs owe their persistence not to the naive or uneducated, but to the intellectually sophisticated. George Orwell’s observation about certain ideas being so wrong that only highly intelligent people could accept them highlights the paradoxical relationship between intelligence and folly. Intellectuals, armed with highly trained reasoning abilities, an appetite for theory, and sometimes an excess of self-regard, are especially capable of rationalizing implausible or dangerous propositions.

Highly educated people are more likely to encounter and engage with abstract ideas, theoretical constructs, and counterintuitive arguments. Their intellectual agility enables them to entertain complex logic and to weave elaborate systems of thought that can detach them from empirical reality. While the average person may dismiss an idea as absurd at face value, the sophisticated thinker could be seduced by the challenge of defending a novel or radical opinion, no matter how at odds it is with common sense or observable facts.

There is also a psychological element at play: the desire to distinguish oneself from the “herd” and to demonstrate cleverness or iconoclasm. Embracing unconventional beliefs can become a badge of intellectual honor, even if those beliefs are deeply flawed. Academic and cultural circles sometimes reward the rejection of the obvious in favor of provocatively original theories, encouraging a form of contrarianism that breeds bad ideas wrapped in impressive rhetoric.

Examples abound throughout history, from the passionate embrace of utopian political experiments, often by writers, philosophers, and professors, to the construction of convoluted scientific theories that ignore empirical anomalies for the sake of internal consistency. The sheer power of human intellect, combined with pride, can lead to the justification of ideas that are not just false, but catastrophically so. Orwell’s insight warns that intelligence, when untethered from humility and reality, can twist reason into self-destruction.