MichaelVassar comments on Rationalist Fiction - Less Wrong
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Encyclopedia Brown is an especially bad example. Most of the mysteries he solves, he solves by knowing some piece of minor trivia which contradicts some off-hand statement of the criminal. This promotes "rationality" as "knowing a lot of facts", which is absolutely not what we're trying to promote here, and provides the wrong model of problem solving. Encyclopedia Brown is based on formal logic, not Bayesian probability.
But just "intelligence is useful" takes people farther than many intelligent people get. Seriously.
Empirical data point: Read the Encyclopedia Brown books and liked them, was probably influenced to some degree or other.