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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves
Last edited Sun Jan 7, 2018, 10:01 AM - Edit history (1)
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/how-actual-smart-people-talk-about-themselves/549878/?utm_source=atlfbHow Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves
Hint: not by discussing IQ
James Fallows Jan 6, 2018 Science
snip//
In short (as Lloyd Bentsen might once have put it): Ive known some very smart people. Some very smart people have been friends of mine. And Donald Trump
***
Here are three traits I would report from a long trail of meeting and interviewing people who by any reckoning are very intelligent.
They all know it. A lifetime of quietly comparing their ease in handling intellectual challengesat the chess board, in the classroom, in the debating or writing arenawith the efforts of other people gave them the message.
Virtually none of them (need to) say it. There are a few prominent exceptions, of talented people who annoyingly go out of their way to announce that fact. Muhammed Ali is the charming extreme exception illustrating the rule: he said he was The Greatest, and was. Most greats dont need to say so. It would be like Roger Federer introducing himself with, You know, Im quite graceful and gifted. Or Meryl Streep asking, Have you seen my awards?
They know what they dont know. This to me is the most consistent marker of real intelligence. The more acute someones ability to perceive and assess, the more likely that person is to recognize his or her limits. These include the unevenness of any one persons talents; the specific areas of weaknesssocial awkwardness, musical tin ear, being stronger with numbers than with words, or vice versa; and the incomparable vastness of what any individual person can never know. To read books seriously is to be staggered by the knowledge of how many more books will remain beyond your ken. Its like looking up at the star-filled sky.
We can think of exceptionsthe people who are eminent in one field and try unwisely to stretch that to another. (Celebrated scientists or artists who become ordinary pundits; Michael Jordan the basketball genius becoming Michael Jordan the minor-league baseball player.) But generally the cliche is true: the clearest mark of intelligence, even genius, is awareness of ones limits and ignorance.
Virtually none of them (need to) say it. There are a few prominent exceptions, of talented people who annoyingly go out of their way to announce that fact. Muhammed Ali is the charming extreme exception illustrating the rule: he said he was The Greatest, and was. Most greats dont need to say so. It would be like Roger Federer introducing himself with, You know, Im quite graceful and gifted. Or Meryl Streep asking, Have you seen my awards?
They know what they dont know. This to me is the most consistent marker of real intelligence. The more acute someones ability to perceive and assess, the more likely that person is to recognize his or her limits. These include the unevenness of any one persons talents; the specific areas of weaknesssocial awkwardness, musical tin ear, being stronger with numbers than with words, or vice versa; and the incomparable vastness of what any individual person can never know. To read books seriously is to be staggered by the knowledge of how many more books will remain beyond your ken. Its like looking up at the star-filled sky.
We can think of exceptionsthe people who are eminent in one field and try unwisely to stretch that to another. (Celebrated scientists or artists who become ordinary pundits; Michael Jordan the basketball genius becoming Michael Jordan the minor-league baseball player.) But generally the cliche is true: the clearest mark of intelligence, even genius, is awareness of ones limits and ignorance.
***
On the other hand, we have something known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: the more limited someone is in reality, the more talented the person imagines himself to be. Or, as David Dunning and Justin Kruger put it in the title of their original scientific-journal article, Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
Odds are that the worlds most flamboyant illustration of this dangerous mis-perception, despite his claimed omniscience, would not even recognize the term, nor its ominous implications in his case.
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How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves (Original Post)
babylonsister
Jan 2018
OP
L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)1. Bad news for cap sales.
3catwoman3
(24,142 posts)2. How actual smart people talk about themselves -
- they don't.
Jarqui
(10,131 posts)3. "The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits" Albert Einstein
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_148851
"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be." Edgar Allan Poe
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/edgar_allan_poe_107914
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." Thomas A. Edison
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_109928
hard to reconcile with Trump's golfing habits ...
"A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." James Joyce
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/james_joyce_109198
"You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty." Louisa May Alcott
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/louisa_may_alcott_133247
"Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius." Albert Pike
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_pike_118889
"First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/johann_wolfgang_von_goeth_122196
Trump has fallen very short on that
"Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought." Simone Weil
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/simone_weil_147170
"Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day." Samuel Goldwyn
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/samuel_goldwyn_378840
"The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office. "Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_m_schlesinger_jr_101896
"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be." Edgar Allan Poe
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/edgar_allan_poe_107914
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." Thomas A. Edison
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_109928
hard to reconcile with Trump's golfing habits ...
"A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." James Joyce
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/james_joyce_109198
"You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty." Louisa May Alcott
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/louisa_may_alcott_133247
"Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius." Albert Pike
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_pike_118889
"First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/johann_wolfgang_von_goeth_122196
Trump has fallen very short on that
"Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought." Simone Weil
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/simone_weil_147170
"Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day." Samuel Goldwyn
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/samuel_goldwyn_378840
"The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office. "Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_m_schlesinger_jr_101896