It's not about being smart. It's about being intellectually persistent, an empirical skeptic and relentlessly faithful to evidence-based argument and never, ever subordinating this approach to ideology.

Subordinating ideology to evidence-based argument and empirical skepticism in policy formulation is like deploying lift-wrist-float to engineering a jump shot in basketball. Without a correctly engineered jump shot you can shoot tens of thousands of times and never improve and score more points (except through sheer luck).

I also teach young players how to shoot. My basketball mates in Porto call me sniper.