It drives me to distraction when I hear that too. Steven Crowder was saying it recently. "Sam Harris is a very smart man, I'm not denying it, he's incredibly intelligent."
How so? Plenty of people can sound smart--can even write smart-sounding books--but can't take care of themselves, their ideas can't withstand argumentation, their analyses of the present are built of nothing but their desires reinforced by their echo chambers, and their predictions are crap, because they're too smart to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong.
"He's smart. He's smart. He's smart" is all I ever hear about this dumb guy.
Probe anyone and you will find at least some extraordinarily dumb opinions, and question him about it, and you'll see the most laughable rationalizations you can imagine.
What if it's not just an opinion, but an entire worldview, with hundreds of nested opinions and rationalizations bundled together into a giant ball of hypocrisy and stupidity?
That is what makes it more intractable. You cannot persuade someone of something that goes against his entire worldview. And you can't change his worldview until you have persuaded him that most individual elements are wrong. Chicken and egg problem.
Sure, there's also clever and there's cunning and it's been argued that physical agility and dexterity, and social interpretation and navigation (and even physical navigation) are types of intelligence. I'm just not sure the ability to vomit up academic-sounding gobbledegook is any sort of intelligence more than it is a parlor trick.
You can convince a room full of modestly intelligent people that you can read minds or speak to the dead with cold reading and other tricks. There is no shortage of tricks to appear not as you are. It helps to be attempting to trick someone lesser than you in some way, but it's not necessary.
I've never seen or heard anything out of Harris, even when I agreed with it, that struck me as insight.
It drives me to distraction when I hear that too. Steven Crowder was saying it recently. "Sam Harris is a very smart man, I'm not denying it, he's incredibly intelligent."
How so? Plenty of people can sound smart--can even write smart-sounding books--but can't take care of themselves, their ideas can't withstand argumentation, their analyses of the present are built of nothing but their desires reinforced by their echo chambers, and their predictions are crap, because they're too smart to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong.
"He's smart. He's smart. He's smart" is all I ever hear about this dumb guy.
He's intelligent in the sense of being able to memorize ideas and regurgitate them in a clear way. As far as discernment and wisdom, he's childish.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
You know - smart smart. Like Obama.
Probe anyone and you will find at least some extraordinarily dumb opinions, and question him about it, and you'll see the most laughable rationalizations you can imagine.
That does not make someone 'dumb'.
What if it's not just an opinion, but an entire worldview, with hundreds of nested opinions and rationalizations bundled together into a giant ball of hypocrisy and stupidity?
That is what makes it more intractable. You cannot persuade someone of something that goes against his entire worldview. And you can't change his worldview until you have persuaded him that most individual elements are wrong. Chicken and egg problem.
smart = think fast, produce answer, break stuff
wise = thought slow, answer available, build stuff
Some nuance to the above, but if you aspire to the latter you'll get it.
Sure, there's also clever and there's cunning and it's been argued that physical agility and dexterity, and social interpretation and navigation (and even physical navigation) are types of intelligence. I'm just not sure the ability to vomit up academic-sounding gobbledegook is any sort of intelligence more than it is a parlor trick.
You can convince a room full of modestly intelligent people that you can read minds or speak to the dead with cold reading and other tricks. There is no shortage of tricks to appear not as you are. It helps to be attempting to trick someone lesser than you in some way, but it's not necessary.
I've never seen or heard anything out of Harris, even when I agreed with it, that struck me as insight.
The best I can give you for him is "excellent proof that Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma should definitely be three discrete mental stats in D&D".