Very highly intelligent people are often quite socially disfunctional - in some
cases to the point of psychopathy! I think of such people, including the more
functional savants, as having a specific talent - like a footballer they may
have an extremely highly developed talent in one narrow area and be pretty
hopeless at anything else, including being polite or politic. Often they have
no tolerance for any disagreement. I have some sympathy for Dawkins in that he
seems to be surrounded by people who are disgreeing with him on utterly
specious or irrelevant grounds. It must get very irritating after a while.
However, many see him as arrogant, usually those who haven't read any of his
other work. (Try 'Climbing Mount Improbable').
The term 'savant' is often thought of in terms of the 'idiot savant', an
extreme example of the single talent problem. A true savant is someone who
knows 'stuff' but these days, no matter how good your evidence, that is little
defence against the criticisms of fools. It seems that we all think we have an
equal right to abuse those with whom we disagree, even if we don't understand
them.
But we have often regarded genius as a special and separate class of being. I'm
more interested in the conventionally intelligent, rather than the extreme
fractions at either end of the bell curve where the social rules break down.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 13/04/2011, at 3:34 PM, Chris Barker wrote:
> But the term average is a fuzzy one, now that you have used subjective
> standards and anecdotal examples in your argument. I've never heard of
> Gardener or that theory, but I should subscribe to what you describe if only
> on the basis of your suggested attributes for intelligent persons. Many of
> the intelligent people I know are not even-handed or tolerant. The rude git,
> the historian David Starkey comes to mind, or the shrill denier of God,
> Richard Dawkins. And I had always thought of "savants" as hugely
> intelligent, but a savant is not normally adaptable.
--
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