i’m curious about the definition here of “thinking clearly” and being “intellectually capable”:
“What does it mean to be intellectually capable? There are many different ways of putting this. How many novel ideas have you put out there that have changed people’s thinking? How many discoveries have you made at the frontier of human knowled…
i’m curious about the definition here of “thinking clearly” and being “intellectually capable”:
“What does it mean to be intellectually capable? There are many different ways of putting this. How many novel ideas have you put out there that have changed people’s thinking? How many discoveries have you made at the frontier of human knowledge? How many great essays/lectures have you produced that were viewed as insightful by other people who have produced insightful essays/lectures? How good are you at asking questions? How good at you at identifying ideas that are likely to be consequential in the future? How good are you at spotting intellectual grift?”
to me, these are all questions not of clarity or capability, but of influence and of thinking as a social activity. the questions here involve a sense of social others (either authorities, experts, or the general public), with capability defined as the ability to impact or influence these others using “thought”. it feels like you’re moving away from thought or truth as objective, verifiable, self-contained and self-justified (like pure mathematicians naively assume), and moving towards thinking as a collective, embedded, relational, social enterprise.
i’m curious about the definition here of “thinking clearly” and being “intellectually capable”:
“What does it mean to be intellectually capable? There are many different ways of putting this. How many novel ideas have you put out there that have changed people’s thinking? How many discoveries have you made at the frontier of human knowledge? How many great essays/lectures have you produced that were viewed as insightful by other people who have produced insightful essays/lectures? How good are you at asking questions? How good at you at identifying ideas that are likely to be consequential in the future? How good are you at spotting intellectual grift?”
to me, these are all questions not of clarity or capability, but of influence and of thinking as a social activity. the questions here involve a sense of social others (either authorities, experts, or the general public), with capability defined as the ability to impact or influence these others using “thought”. it feels like you’re moving away from thought or truth as objective, verifiable, self-contained and self-justified (like pure mathematicians naively assume), and moving towards thinking as a collective, embedded, relational, social enterprise.
wow this sounds exactly right