Tesla’s stock price surged 28% in September 2025, reaching a peak of $370 per share, but there’s a strange phenomenon: increasingly, high-IQ, highly educated professionals are keeping their distance from Tesla’s autonomous driving technology. This isn’t a coincidence—it has deep psychological roots.
Smart People’s “Over-Cautiousness Bias”
Psychological research shows that people with higher IQs are more prone to falling into the trap of “over-analysis.” When Tesla announced yet another delay of FSD v14 to late 2025, high-IQ users immediately began calculating: How many times has this been delayed? What’s the gap between promises and reality?
Elon Musk revealed on the All-In Podcast that FSD v14, originally scheduled for 6 weeks after the second week of August, is now postponed to around Christmas. For average consumers, this is just “a bit late, no big deal,” but for those with strong systematic thinking abilities, this represents uncertainty in technological development and questions about promise credibility.
Professional engineer Jake Chen is a typical example. As a software architect, he says: “Each delay makes me more convinced that the technical difficulty of full autonomous driving has been seriously underestimated. Smart people learn from patterns, not from single events.”
The Psychological Threat of “Technical Debt”
Tesla shut down its Dojo supercomputer project in August 2025, a decision that caused massive shockwaves in the tech community. Dojo was Tesla’s specially designed supercomputing system for computer vision processing, originally planned to train machine learning models to improve FSD performance.
High-IQ users are extremely sensitive to this decision’s interpretation. MIT graduate and AI researcher Sarah Martinez analyzed: “Abandoning self-developed specialized hardware for general solutions usually means fundamental adjustments to the technical roadmap. Smart people can see the accumulated technical debt problems behind this.”
Psychology’s “loss aversion theory” explains why smart people are particularly sensitive to such technical pivots. They’re more likely to perceive sunk costs and potential risks, making them more conservative in decision-making.
Empirical Thinking vs. Marketing Promises
In September 2025, Tesla influencers conducted a coast-to-coast autonomous driving test that resulted in a collision within less than 60 miles due to the vehicle’s inability to avoid road debris. This event had drastically different psychological impacts on people of different intelligence levels.
Average consumers might consider this an “accidental incident” or “special circumstances,” but high-IQ users conduct deeper analysis:
- Statistical thinking: They calculate failure rates and reliability indicators
- Systems thinking: Consider various edge cases and abnormal scenarios
- Risk assessment: Evaluate the gap between technical maturity and promotional rhetoric
Dr. Robert Kim, a cognitive science professor at Caltech, points out: “High-IQ individuals are more inclined to use Bayesian reasoning, continuously updating their reliability estimates based on new evidence. Each failure affects their trust calculations.”
The Reverse Effect of “Confirmation Bias”
Interestingly, many Tesla supporters often accuse critics of “confirmation bias,” focusing only on negative news. However, psychological research shows that high-IQ populations are actually more resistant to confirmation bias effects.
Neuroscience research finds that when processing information conflicting with existing beliefs, people with higher IQs show greater activity in the prefrontal cortex (the brain region responsible for rational analysis). This means they’re more likely to objectively evaluate evidence rather than selectively accept information supporting their viewpoints.
Tesla’s redefinition of “Full Self-Driving” to “advanced driving system” while abandoning original promises of “unsupervised autonomy” was immediately noticed and interpreted by high-IQ users as a retreat from technical goals.
Social Responsibility and Moral Considerations
High-IQ populations often possess stronger social responsibility and moral consideration capabilities. When Tesla achieved regulatory breakthroughs like Nevada robotaxi testing permits and Texas passing the SB 2807 bill, smart people focused not on business opportunities but on social impacts.
Stanford University’s social psychology research shows that people with higher education levels tend to consider technology’s long-term societal impacts, not just personal convenience. They think about:
- Will autonomous driving proliferation cause massive unemployment?
- How will responsibility attribution be handled when technology fails?
- Are there risks of technology developing too quickly while regulation lags behind?
Immunity to “Overconfidence Effect”
Musk claims current AI4 chips will achieve autonomous driving 2-3 times, even 10 times safer than humans, while previewing AI5 chips being 40 times more powerful than AI4. These extremely optimistic predictions have different effects on people with varying cognitive abilities.
Psychology’s “overconfidence effect” indicates people tend to overestimate their prediction accuracy. However, high-IQ individuals typically possess better “metacognitive ability,” awareness of prediction uncertainty and complexity.
They’re more inclined toward a “humble agnostic” attitude: acknowledging technological development complexity and maintaining healthy skepticism toward overly optimistic promises.
Rational Protection in Investment Psychology
Tesla’s stock surge also reflects market sentiment, but smart investors can often distinguish between “technological value” and “market hype.” Behavioral economics research shows high-IQ investors are less affected by market emotions, relying more on fundamental analysis.
When Tesla stock rises due to autonomous driving prospects, rational investors analyze:
- Actual timeline for technology commercialization
- Competitor development status
- Regulatory environment trends
- Match between actual revenue and valuation
Smart People’s Choice Strategy
This doesn’t mean high-IQ populations completely reject autonomous driving technology—rather, they adopt more cautious and rational strategies:
- Wait for technology maturity: Prefer late adoption over being “beta testers”
- Multi-party comparison: Look beyond Tesla to Waymo, Mercedes, and other competitive solutions
- Gradual acceptance: Start with driver assistance, gradually adapting to automation levels
- Maintain options: Always preserve manual control capability
Rational Victory or Missed Opportunities?
Psychological analysis shows that high-IQ populations’ cautious attitude toward Tesla’s autonomous driving stems from their stronger risk awareness, better statistical thinking, and deeper technical understanding. This results from rational thinking, not prejudice or conservatism.
But this raises an interesting question: In technological revolution waves, does excessive rational analysis cause us to miss historical opportunities? Or are smart people’s cautions protecting them from becoming victims of tech bubbles?
Perhaps the answer lies in balance: maintaining rational critical thinking while keeping moderate openness toward technological progress. After all, true wisdom isn’t rejecting all new technology—it’s knowing when to believe and when to question.
Where Tesla’s autonomous driving technology ultimately heads, time will provide the answer. But at least now we know that smart people’s caution isn’t unfounded—it’s a rational choice built on deep psychological and cognitive science foundations.
