Terrific. I have had the privilege of working with some genuinely intelligent and wise people in the engineering and aerospace fields, and its a truism that the highest general IQs are to be found (in academia, and hence life) within the faculties of math, physics and engineering (in that order). The IQs of the humanities faculties are c…
Terrific. I have had the privilege of working with some genuinely intelligent and wise people in the engineering and aerospace fields, and its a truism that the highest general IQs are to be found (in academia, and hence life) within the faculties of math, physics and engineering (in that order). The IQs of the humanities faculties are considerably lower (not even considering the modern 'studies' faculties). It is also true that physicists are often categorized as being one-dimensionally intelligent, this is broadly not true, higher IQs (general cognitive ability) translate mostly into being more capable in EVERY area of intellectual ability. So while I agree that is not wise to write off your opponents as being thick, the evidence is that many of today's (and yesterdays) 'philosophers' including the 20th C Frenchmen were just not that bright. They may have on occasion had valuable insights, and we can value this, but overall their writing was atrocious. It is quite easy actually to spew sophist drivel, sound smart, but be dumb. It its FAR harder to write clear meaningful pithy prose.
No, as Helen wrote, they were quite brilliant. There is a vast difference between being wrong and being dumb. Sartre, brilliant writer, sometimes unreadable, but wrong on so many topics...
OK but I don't agree. Depends on what you mean by 'brilliant'? What does brilliant mean? Being a fast talker? Having a fast mental analysis speed (brain CPU speed basically)? Being original and creative? Now maybe Sartre had a high IQ, but overall the IQ of people in the humanities if far lower than that of mathematicians. And if someone is mostly wrong, I would say that is a clue to how smart they really are.
I would add that while Sartre is perceived as 'brilliant' I would say his contemporaries like Von Neumann, Feynman (later), Popper and Russell were far more brilliant, and all of whom were mathematicians/physicists or adjacent. Non of the 'post-modernists' even hold a candle to the names I mentioned.
Terrific. I have had the privilege of working with some genuinely intelligent and wise people in the engineering and aerospace fields, and its a truism that the highest general IQs are to be found (in academia, and hence life) within the faculties of math, physics and engineering (in that order). The IQs of the humanities faculties are considerably lower (not even considering the modern 'studies' faculties). It is also true that physicists are often categorized as being one-dimensionally intelligent, this is broadly not true, higher IQs (general cognitive ability) translate mostly into being more capable in EVERY area of intellectual ability. So while I agree that is not wise to write off your opponents as being thick, the evidence is that many of today's (and yesterdays) 'philosophers' including the 20th C Frenchmen were just not that bright. They may have on occasion had valuable insights, and we can value this, but overall their writing was atrocious. It is quite easy actually to spew sophist drivel, sound smart, but be dumb. It its FAR harder to write clear meaningful pithy prose.
No, as Helen wrote, they were quite brilliant. There is a vast difference between being wrong and being dumb. Sartre, brilliant writer, sometimes unreadable, but wrong on so many topics...
OK but I don't agree. Depends on what you mean by 'brilliant'? What does brilliant mean? Being a fast talker? Having a fast mental analysis speed (brain CPU speed basically)? Being original and creative? Now maybe Sartre had a high IQ, but overall the IQ of people in the humanities if far lower than that of mathematicians. And if someone is mostly wrong, I would say that is a clue to how smart they really are.
I would add that while Sartre is perceived as 'brilliant' I would say his contemporaries like Von Neumann, Feynman (later), Popper and Russell were far more brilliant, and all of whom were mathematicians/physicists or adjacent. Non of the 'post-modernists' even hold a candle to the names I mentioned.