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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (172084)	10/6/2005 8:09:44 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Wow Chris, you are such a bigot against people doing things other people value. <If intelligence equalled wealth, Stephen Hawking would be the world's richest man instead of Bill Gates. The big brainiacs don't rate a mention in the global wealth game.> Why do you think Stephen Hawking is more of a brainiac than $ill Gates? I don't have test data, but in one way, I'd say $ill is smarter. He has created greater value for billions of people than Stephen. He has enabled vast communication and data flow to enable thought on a colossal scale, which would not have been possible without his products and services. Now he is spending a world record amount of money, through the $ill and Melinda foundation, on malaria and other common problems which other people have not solved. It might be that something Stephen has come up with might create greater value in the long run, such as outrunning a black hole heading for Earth by disentangling the quantum entanglement and thus quantum tunnelling Earth's way to Utopia, using superstring tunnelling equipment. But for now, $ill is King Kong. Nature selects for intelligence and defines it as "Succeeding in the survival stakes by intelligent moves rather than luck". Whether it's luck or smarts is tough to tell and nature doesn't care, which is why trees, which are not very intelligent, are still with us. I think that's because they're sharp enough to know that all you need is enough, and any more than that is useless as far as providing happiness. On your idea about salesmen, <they have the social skills and the lack of moral fiber or conscience necessary to convince other people to buy stuff. > No, they have the empathy to see what customers want, and the ego-drive to ensure they get it. A good salesmen is not so arrogant as to assume the prospective customer wants the same things as they, or others, might want. They enter with empathy into the customer's mind to figure out what that particular person wants, without imposing their own values. You would obviously be useless as a salesman, but good as a government spiv, where wealth is held in contempt and salesmen are crooks. Mqurice