I've always assumed that an 'intellectual' must be clever or intelligent. However, there are various public figures who are routinely described as intellectuals who strike me as incredibly stupid! Is 'intellectual' just a spin word for 'poor communicator' nowadays? Can an intellectual be stupid?
Yes. Do you remember that line from Danerous Liasions ?
"Like all intellectuals, he is intensely stupid."
Clever is as clever does.
Universities are full of intellectuals (apparently) however rates of pay are poor and hours of work are long. How clever is that?
It could be very clever, if you decide that what you do in a university suits your requirements in life. If you can choose an activity which actually interests you, then the long hours of work are a bonus. The alternative is possibly to opt for a job which does nothing to enhance your life - not a clever choice.Originally Posted by dalriada
Universities are full of intellectuals (apparently) however rates of pay are poor and hours of work are long. How clever is that?
Are you in the Uk Janot?
no - given up and moved to Tenerife. Why?
UK Universities are not the workplaces they were even five years ago, let alone ten...
Yes, I know that, but I also know quite a few academics who are I suppose intellectuals, and who are very comfortable doing what they like to do in a protected environment, and have reached a reasonable level of promotion so the money is not that bad. In addition, quite a few are (lets say) sexually challenged so do not have the financial burden of a spouse and family.UK Universities are not the workplaces they were even five years ago, let alone ten...
Having said that, my son has just given up academia having been worn out by the rat race and poverty.
Horses for courses.
The problem with intellectuals, although undoubtedly intelligent. It seems they are rarely "smart". There was ample evidence of this in "Project Alpha".
My experience of this is yes, incredibly stupid. It seems often to be the case that given a difficult task, an intellectual can shine, but then fail miserably on the blindingly obvious. It is as though some are only capable of supercharged thought processes which don't work for simple problems.
There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
George Orwell
I don't know what defines an Intellectual exactly, but there are far more people in the world without degrees than there are with degrees, so it's statistically quite probable that the world's most intelligent humans might be degreeless.
I suppose if I start banging on about "depends what you mean by intelligence" it might be considered too intellectual? An interesting read on intelligence is Stephen Murdoch's IQ. It tracks the beginnings and use of IQ tests which certainly in the beginning were stupid. Immigrants to the USA in the 1920's were tested for intelligence with questions like: "If I gave you one dog and another person gave you two dogs, how many dogs would you have?" One immigrant famously replied "four dogs" and when questioned on this he said "well sir, I've got one dog already". Now who was the stupid one?
The point is that intelligence can manifest itself in different ways. A brilliant mathematician might not have a lot of common sense, that sort of thing. Einstein fumbled with money when he first went to the USA. Some people score highly on word cognition but that does not mean that someone who is dyslexic is stupid.
Now, where did I leave my glasses?
inteligence is a matter of time and space.
space;if you are in the middle of the rain forrest knowing how to program a computer is useless, it is said, i don't have any evidence for this, that dyslexics have good spacial awarness when using computers, time;but they did not have computers when i was at school so i, as a dyslexic, was concidered stupid.
some intalectuals know, and studdy, their subject to the exclusion of all else. but at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you can't fix the plumbing or make the garden nice all you need to know is how to use the telephone.
I work with a bunch of nuclear engineers and specialists who all have great lists of letters after their names (eg Fred Bloggs CEng FIMechE CRadP MSRP). I've never met such a bunch of useless idiots. They can tell you how many millisieverts you'll get from Strontium 90 under various precise conditions, but find the cupboard with the envelopes in it? No chance. Even though they were shown it yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.
The fortean Colin Bennett calls himself an intellectual, calls people who laugh at him "anti-intellectuals" and calls our rejection of the idea that everything-and-anything-is-real "anti-intellectualism". He famously said at a Fortean Times UnConvention that skepticism was one step away from loading Jews in cattle cars. He thinks that George Adamski really flew to the moon in a flying saucer and that the moon had air and plants growing. If he isn't stupid then I don't know who is. Although, to be fair, I don't think he's actually an intellectual either.
There is more than one kind of stupidity. Being stupid in the sense of not seeing logical connexions or cause-and-effect is one kind and doesn't require intelligence- indeed, is the result of not using intelligence. Being stupid as in being able to see logical connexions that aren't there or misperceived cause-and-effect takes intelligence. There's also the fact that if you apply techniques and assumptions from one area of knowledge to other areas of knowledge they don't work, so someone who misapplies their knowledge and theories may be more stupid in other areas than someone without that knowledge.
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