[khafra]

Anybody can rationalize anything to his own satisfaction, regardless of IQ. The problem with being smart is that there are fewer people who can see through your rationalizations. The skills of dissasembling your own cognitive biases and testing your ideas against reality grow in value as your IQ increases.

[lotharbot]

"Anybody can rationalize anything to his own satisfaction"

... but smart people tend to require a bigger rationalization to be satisfied. And they also tend to be more capable of creating a rationalization of that magnitude.

The question is whether they've developed the habit of "reality testing" and discarding flawed rationalizations.