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What you seem to be talking about is the overemphasis of structured analytical thought over common sense thought. This seems to be very similar to what Nassim Taleb says about the Intellectual Yet Idiots.
The best example is Taleb's hypothetical interaction between Dr. John and Fat Tony:
Taleb: “I am going to flip this fair coin 100 times, and after the 99th toss, I want each of you to tell me the probability of the 100th being heads. You should know that each toss is independent and the that the coin is fair.”
Taleb flips the coin 99 times and each of the 99 tosses results in a heads.
Taleb: “Now before, I toss the coin for the 100th time, I want each of you to tell me the probability of heads on this next toss.”
Dr. John using principles of probability arrives to the wrong answer, and Fat Tony using common sense arrives to the correct answer.
Your example of mask mandates is a good example of how Dr. John types tend to favor institutional wisdom over common sense, I did argue with many of these types what evidences was there of masks actually working, and no one ever gave me a definitive study. A lot provided this "study" An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19, but when I read it, it says the current studies don't show conclusive evidence, and this paper does is develop a model that shows how effective masks would be if certain percentage of the population uses them given that they do work.
The model actually shows that if mask do not work, 100% of the population using them do not matter.
Now, I'm in the opposite camp, my common sense tells me masks should work, not in protecting me, but in protecting others. I have seen no study proving that though. I used masks not because I knew the worked, but because I didn't know that they didn't. Small price to pay just in case they did work I guess.
I do not think the role intuition has been properly assessed though. In my entry My intuition about intuition, I try to build a case as to why I think it's much more important than people realize. However, I suspect Dr. John types are going to be biased against intuition and in favor of analytical thinking, because obviously if they are good at it, it has to be more important.
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