Herstein's First Law: Never underestimate human capacity for denial.
Herstein's Second Law: Never assume intelligence when stupidity will do the job.
I'm still working on the third law (there's *ALWAYS* three.) #1 is over 30 years old, so I've been chewing on this for a while. (#2 is only about 5 -- 10 years old.) One possibility for #3 would be something like, "Never confuse schooling with education." One of the best educated people I ever knew was a waitress with only a GED.
Speaking of intelligence, one characterization I've variously noodled with over the years is this:
-- INTELLIGENCE: The broadly ranging multi-modal capacity for, and interest in, variegated forms of inquiry and experience.
My thought here is that stupid people with a lot of schooling are persons who have aggressively compartmentalized what ever materials they may have learned in school, as well as the habit of learning itself, so that they can rattle off the answers to the quiz and get the grade, but never actually risk their cherished beliefs by anything so dangerous as thinking. The formula still needs some refinement, because account must be given not only to breadth but depth, not merely a lot of isolated data, but a coherently assembled grand view as well.
Herstein's First Law: Never underestimate human capacity for denial.
Herstein's Second Law: Never assume intelligence when stupidity will do the job.
I'm still working on the third law (there's *ALWAYS* three.) #1 is over 30 years old, so I've been chewing on this for a while. (#2 is only about 5 -- 10 years old.) One possibility for #3 would be something like, "Never confuse schooling with education." One of the best educated people I ever knew was a waitress with only a GED.
Speaking of intelligence, one characterization I've variously noodled with over the years is this:
-- INTELLIGENCE: The broadly ranging multi-modal capacity for, and interest in, variegated forms of inquiry and experience.
My thought here is that stupid people with a lot of schooling are persons who have aggressively compartmentalized what ever materials they may have learned in school, as well as the habit of learning itself, so that they can rattle off the answers to the quiz and get the grade, but never actually risk their cherished beliefs by anything so dangerous as thinking. The formula still needs some refinement, because account must be given not only to breadth but depth, not merely a lot of isolated data, but a coherently assembled grand view as well.
I'd never heard of this, it's genius!