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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (95255)	11/11/2008 9:52:15 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 541851

I think "the first 100 people in the phone book" is clearly a Paean to the uneducated. While the faculty at Harvard may have its problems, they are likely to be much better informed than the first 100 people in the phone book, and better informed is better armed for decision making. Being an intellectual certainly doesn't mean you have the right answers, but being ignorant means you are almost sure not to have them. And intellectuals are in general educated. While they can (sometimes) be self educated, mostly they are not. We'll just have to disagree about what that article means, or what the main point is. And who believes people just because they are intellectuals? Only the ignorant would do that, and the uneducated- who have to believe, rather than analyze. Intellectuals like to argue. They are constantly reviewing each others studies and papers. The only people who can't really argue are the uneducated, because they haven't the education to understand what they are arguing, nor have they the skills to articulate their argument. How you got to "believing people" just because they are intellectuals is beyond me. What I said was, I'd prefer to put my hands in the educated rather than in the ignorant. That's not a matter of belief, that's playing the odds. Groupthink isn't something only intellectuals engage in. Uneducated morons do it just as well, perhaps even better, since they have few games to play they might just concentrate on that one. "How have intellectuals managed to be so wrong, so often? " This quote is the most ridiculous in the whole article. Why? Because intellectuals, if you define them as people who have spent their lives in academe, have been right so often it would take years to print a list of their achievements. Do we eschew all the breakthroughs made by scientific intellectuals? No. We don't. Most of use want to use those breakthroughs. So please, when you pick a doctor, let me know if you choose the one who eschews being an "intellectual", and who declines to keep up on his field, or the other guy, who might indulge in the "group think" that keeping up with the medical journals is important. (that's a rhetorical "you", not a personal you) "It would be no feat to fill a big book with all the things on which intellectuals were grossly mistaken, just in the 20th century— far more so than ordinary people." Bull crap printed as fact. When I think of professionals who might serve me, and I look at the definition of "intellectual", I'm not seeing the downside of intellectual, and no matter how much some people may hate Harvard, I'd rather have a Harvard MD treating me than one from Joe Schmoe's House of Medics. .............. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This in·tel·lec·tu·al /??ntl'?kt?u?l/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [in-tl-ek-choo-uhl] Show IPA Pronunciation –adjective 1. appealing to or engaging the intellect: intellectual pursuits. 2. of or pertaining to the intellect or its use: intellectual powers. 3. possessing or showing intellect or mental capacity, esp. to a high degree: an intellectual person. 4. guided or developed by or relying on the intellect rather than upon emotions or feelings; rational. 5. characterized by or suggesting a predominance of intellect: an intellectual way of speaking. –noun 6. a person of superior intellect. 7. a person who places a high value on or pursues things of interest to the intellect or the more complex forms and fields of knowledge, as aesthetic or philosophical matters, esp. on an abstract and general level. 8. an extremely rational person; a person who relies on intellect rather than on emotions or feelings. 9. a person professionally engaged in mental labor, as a writer or teacher. 10. intellectuals, Archaic. a. the mental faculties. b. things pertaining to the intellect.

To: Lane3 who wrote (95255)	11/11/2008 10:06:04 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Respond to of 541851

<<<Also, there are clusters of intellectuals with competing ideas. They're all intellectuals but, when they disagree, they can't all be right.>>> I agree. Intellectuals can be wrong. There are so many areas of knowledge that require you to make assumptions before you can come to a conclusion. For the most part, the intellectual community does its best to police itself. That is why it is so important to maintain a good reputation for honesty, integrity, and fairness. You don't want to be anti-intellectual, dishonest, unfair, and lacking in integrity. Telling me that we are better off if we were to be governed by people selected at random rather than people who have dedicated their lives in search of truth and knowledge offends my senses. If intellectuals fail to get at the truth, what we need to do is replace the failed intellectuals with intellectuals that are smarter and willing to work harder. Getting rid of intellectuals and replace them with anti-intellectuals is not the answer.

To: Lane3 who wrote (95255)	11/11/2008 1:27:42 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541851

>>But intellectualism isn't some kind of trump card. It's as much of a mistake, IMO, to believe someone just because he's an intellectual as to eschew intellectualism.<< Karen - Is there anyone who would seriously believe everything someone says just because he or she is an intellectual? And has anyone ever suggested intellectuals are infallible? It's also quite possible for non-intellectuals to make mistakes, but the author didn't seem to feel the need to document, say, those of the Bush Administration, just to pick a random example. I also notice that he used a quote from William F. Buckley, but I don't think he interpreted it correctly. I doubt that l Buckley's problem with the Harvard faculty was that they were too intellectual. If anyone could be criticized for that, it would be Buckley himself. No, I think he'd have been more unhappy with their liberalism, and I'm sure that was his point. - Allen