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Samizdata quote of the day Intelligence is not wisdom, many intelligent people have been seduced by the false rationality of ‘scientific’ Marxism and many who are ‘dumb’ have, with simple clarity of thought, seen straight through it. It is not only the simple minded that need fear deception.
– James, commenting on Samizdata here.
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Robert Reich is that kind of intellectual. Too clever by half.
That’s really quite profound.
Yeah, I agree…
I don’t get why people are in awe when faced with some jerk with a university degree or job. Why people assume that a Marxist professor is intelligent. Being an “intellectual” (i.e. university type with humanities degree) doesn’t prove that you’re intelligent, rather, in my eyes, it makes you suspect of the opposite.
Not to disagree, but there are different kinds of intelligence. Also, intelligence does not operate in a vacuum: psychology is a big part of the decision making process, and it is not directly connected to intelligence. Very intelligent people often do very stupid things. Some times they are well aware that what they are doing is stupid, and do it nonetheless. Sometimes they use quite a bit of their intelligence to justify it to themselves and to others. The reasons behind both cases are psychological.
It is rooted in tradition: it used to take an exceptionally intelligent person to acquire an academic degree – this is no longer the case, at least in humanities it isn’t.
There are indeed various forms of intelligence.
But I like the quotation – I do regard wisdom as different thing from intelligence.
Intelligence implies problem solving, wisdom is more about what things are “problems” that need to be “solved”.
Many highly intelligent people are high spectrum autistics,outside their field they are often infantile an emotionally underdeveloped.
Yes indeed Wisdom and intellegence are two different things.
Intellegence is getting yourself out of a locked room when the handle of the door has fallen off on the other side.
Wisdom is not being daft enough to slam it shut in the first place!
Politicians cannot see the difference between these two positions and so show up in the “Stupid” part of our graph…
I have always liked:
“You can’t fool me because I’m too stupid”
From a B&W cartoon in the 30s or 40s.
“Tuffy’s Tavern” I believe.
Ron,
A touch of schizophrenia doesn’t hurt either.
M.Simon,
Nor a touch of egomania.
Ron,
Being high-functional autistic is not an insurmountable barrier to wisdom, it just takes a lot more swings of the hammer.
Thumbs are overrated anyway.
Emperor’s new clothes
Thanks. I am suprised that what I think is my second comment on Samizdata was a ‘quote of the day’.
Marxist academics are not restricted to the arts and humanities, they can be found amongst physicists and mathmaticians too. Einstein had Communist sympathies.
Years ago I wrote:
Information is not Knowledge
Knowledge is not Wisdom
Wisdom is not Understanding
Only to discover that T S Eliot had expressed the same long before and more poetically as:
“How much wisdom has been lost to knowledge;
How much knowledge to information?”
Is not intelligence the ability to discern or apply the relation of bits of perceived information to one another?
As to “Intellectuals” in today’s parlance, one would do well to refer to Nozick’s definition in his ” Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism.”
I misquoted Eliot;
It should read:
“Where is the wisdom we have lost to knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost to information?”
I don’t understand this. Does it say we have some inner wisdom, genetic, innate wisdom, that is lost when we acquire consciously information and knowledge ? Nonsense.
Not all knowledge is correct, but there is no wisdom without knowledge.
Well, perhaps my non-poetic sqib is easier to grasp.
Of course to say that there is no “Wisdom” without “Knowledge” implies we understand what “Knowledge” is, and that seems to have puzzled philosophers fpr some time.
And surely, most of what is accepted to be “Knowledge” is based on information (putting together bits and pieces of information derived from perceptions and determining their relationships).
It has been written that Knowledge is information which has significance to its possesor; and that is possibly true of most living and all sentient beings.
R. Richard Schweitzer
s24rrs@aol.com
And also implies we understand what “Wisdom” is. The term “wisdom” is not easier to understand or define than the term ‘knowledge”. Maybe “wisdom” could be defined as the capacity of acquiring knowledge, in which case one needs to actually posses some knowledge in order to make one’s wisdom felt.
“Many highly intelligent people are high spectrum autistics; outside their field they are often infantile and emotionally underdeveloped.”
(cough)Richard Dawkins(cough).
Also sounds like a consultant cardiologist I have to work with.
Intelligence is about being clever, whereas wisdom is about being right. I can’t be the first to have said that.
How do you know somebody’s clever ? Someone who is wrong most of the time isn’t clever in my book.