'you're only winning the argument because you're smart, not because you're right'
I'm pretty sure I'd often end up losing arguments with very smart and debate-happy socialists, libertarians, postmodernists, neoreactionaries, anarchoprimitivists or jesuits if I got into them, but I don't think that means I should end up agreeing with the world-views of all of them.
Very true.
Although I think that has more to do with time investment than raw intelligence. Still I think it's often overlooked that in a world where you know people are a) biased b)dishonest and c) generally more intelligent than you, doing your own thinking becomes a pretty poor strategy.
One of the big variations I see between people is the amount of energy they habitually put into thinking, and I haven't seen this discussed anywhere.
General advice about improving health and lowering intellectual friction would seem to help increase the ability to think, and ideas like "take five minutes to consider the problem" adds impetus, but I'm not sure what the general difference is between me and most people, or Yvain and me.
Intellectual drive isn't an unalloyed good-- cranks have high drive combined with low self-editinig, and some types of depression include a compulsion to think about topics that cause misery and/or inertia. Part (all?) of the value of meditation is getting some time off from thinking. Still, increasing intellectual drive would probably be a good thing for a lot of people.
Has anyone found that rationality training or anything else increases the default desire to think?