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The impotence of being clever
- hilbert42 4y agoI'm clever enough to at least know I'm stupid.
- levinb 4y agoI've always told myself that, "I'm smart enough to know I'm not as smart as I think I am."
- erwincoumans 4y agoIndeed, self-evaluating your smartness precisely seems unlikely: you are more likely more or less smart.
- tartoran 4y agoSay that outloud and often and some people will use it against you.
- parthianshotgun 4y agoI've said that in a job interview, how screwed am I?
- hilbert42 4y agoYou're not. (See my post above.)
- hilbert42 4y agoUsually I don't. The issue is that I so often see people who I reckon are brighter than me who fail to recognize their shortcomings or failures, that is they're not good at self-introspection or avoid doing so. Things I'm reasonably good at are self-awareness and being aware my own limitations (if it were ever claimed that I wasn't much good at anything then no one could justifiably claim those). Being aware of them has often kept me out of trouble.
- pkoird 4y agoArthur Conan Doyle 's Sherlock Holmes is also guilty of an unusual kind of cleverness. I remember reading this one story (whose name I forgot) where Sherlock essentially concludes that a person he's looking for is pretty intelligent just because the hat of the person is big and deep (after all, if the head is big, there's got to be more brains).
- politelemon 4y agoThat would be the Blue Diamond. https://targmne.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/thebluediamond_book.pdf https://targmne.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/thebluediamond_b... Page 4
- carl_dr 4y ago> "It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain must have something in it." That’s from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. There are at least a couple of other examples of this line of thought in the books : https://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2011/03/skull-was-of-enormous-capacity-dyin_20.html?m=1 https://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2011/03/skull-was-of-enormou...
- yamrzou 4y ago> Very often, this kind of cleverness comes in the form of seeing through illusions [...] But this kind of cleverness that cuts through illusions can become its own kind of illusion. Sometimes being clever is about the ability of self-delusion as long as it serves one's goal, as described in On Self-Delusion and Bounded Rationality — https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/selfdelusion.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/selfdelusion.html
- civopsec 4y agoAs if such an obvious observation needed to be stated.
- calculated 4y agoIf this is sarcastic and you wrote it after reading the full article I get it. If not no offence but maybe you should read it.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoI read all the way to the end and concluded much the same. The sort of cleverness that the essay is complaining about seems to me to be summed up in the phrase: "you’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself".
- civopsec 4y agoToo clever by half?
- civopsec 4y agoTime for the grand reveal four days later: Yes, I was being sarcastic.
- bloqs 4y agoLooks like someone didnt read the article, or indeed the headline properly
- civopsec 4y agoClever observation.
- spicyusername 4y ago> Who can appear the most above it all? But the circumstances of posting—alone at the controls with no one around but everyone watching—all but guarantee that posts are alloyed with insecurity, however clever they might be. It definitely feels like much of always-online culture is a defense mechanism against feeling scared and powerless, even as it presents itself as anything but.
- maksimur 4y agoBe clever but be humble too. There's not a lot to it. The first will propel you very far and the second will help when the first doesn't suffice anymore.
- cainxinth 4y agoI’m reminded of a line from comedian John Mulaney: “Just because you’re accurate doesn’t mean you’re interesting.”
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoThey're almost inversely related in practise, because accuracy requires understanding of the subtleties, so if you have to explain the accuracy then the audience already doesn't understand the subtleties, and if they don't understand the subtleties it's usually because they don't find them interesting. The above is also an example.
- toolslive 4y agoSometimes I feel like a cyclops: being able to see the future of things, without being able to change the outcome, doesn't make you very happy.
- bazoom42 4y agoYou are thinking of Kassandra of Troy.
- tunap 4y agoI thought of Leto Atreides II in the 4th Dune book. edit: not the op.
- toolslive 4y ago""" According to legend, the Cyclopes had only one eye after making a deal with Hades, god of the underworld, in which they traded one eye for the ability to see the future and predict the day they would die. """ https://www.greek-gods.info/monsters/cyclopes/ https://www.greek-gods.info/monsters/cyclopes/
- crims0n 4y agoReally enjoyed this essay, the parallels between the flâneur of old and modern lurkers is a brilliant connection. Really makes me question how much time I should be spending on twitter and reddit.
- mdp2021 4y ago> question how much time Advice: question /why/. The rest should follow.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoInteresting read > Another way to redeem passive lurking is by making a clever joke that shows that you are above the whole thing. Twitter’s quote tweet function, especially, enables users literally as well as metaphorically to appear above the conversation and to cleverly one-up their opponents from this privileged position. The game, in effect, is this: Who can appear the most above it all? This sounds like the proletariat mimicking their leadership, in that the above is a description of how politics seems to work. We need a better class of example-setters before we're going to see better behaved societies. The topic of discussion is quickly lost, and any hope of progress towards a resolution along with it, amongst a competition of witticisms. I'm quite happy with this cleverness of mine: "I'd rather be right than popular, and I often am." But this could just be an intellectual hedging of my bets against whatever the real-life-vulnerability equivalent of down votes is; Stern, disapproving glares.
- starkd 4y agoI think this is the downsides of cleverness that Oscar Wilde eludes to. Its overuse can be hollow, snide and become downright mean and cynical. Very emotionally draining.
- chefandy 4y agoI think that's confusing the catalyst with the problem. Many people write hollow, snide, mean and cynical things that aren't clever. Many people write clever things that aren't hollow, snide, mean and cynical. I'm not so sure the connection is direct. I think people tend to remember and repeat clever things and that means clever negativity gets shared more than non-clever negativity. I think the bigger problem is that Twitter has long been a contest of people trying to make those who disagree feel shitty using remarks that are almost required by the platform to be glib.
- mdp2021 4y ago> What should we make of this apparent degradation? Make it apparent. Oh, but in a way the author did. Bad signals: «Even if it can get on our nerves sometimes»; «associations»; «positive»; «is seen»; «many will identify»; «we tend to use»; ... «redeem ... by making a clever joke ... that shows»; «to appear»; «the game» ... The accusation of levity is circular, acted from a perspective firmly installed in levity. Very little appears of any constructive consideration of the Point: we have to manage a World, we need well processed information, we had been since the dawn of time, playing is for spare time - and Stern is mostly playing. -- > the medium’s stupidity In spite of a number of faults, let us hold HN dear for the goods it offers.
- the-printer 4y agoAm I the only one who found this essay to be meandering? It’s frustrating because I felt from the headline that it was going to make a valid point about the odd gloss of humor as a way of social/existential self-defense that is permeating our time. And I think that that’s what the author may actually be getting at. I found the quotes pulled into the comments here to be great re: quote tweets, but I felt like the essay itself was almost like a granite obelisk of one cultural reference after the other.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoI don't intend this meanly, but do you read much non-technical nonfiction? New yorker articles, memoirs, things like that? This one is not particularly an outlier, but also not a ton of that stuff gets posted to HN.
- tpmx 4y agoA ton of that stuff does get posted to HN. There's meandering with multiple sometimes subtle qualities along the way and there's ... meandering.
- raldi 4y agoBased on the fact that this is the top-rated comment, it would seem to be a position shared by a significant chunk of the HN readership.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoI think a significant chunk of the HN readership doesn't frequently read non-technical nonfiction, yes.
- raldi 4y agoIs that not also a true statement about the population at large?
- marcovvssr 4y agoI asked ChatGPT to summarize it after reading the whole thing and made a pretty good job. Maybe is better to read the part about being humble in the full version but still... Cleverness is often seen as a positive quality, but it is also associated with being an outsider. In modernity, this has led to the proliferation of cleverness in public life, often in the form of contrived knowingness and irony. This has led to cleverness becoming a currency online, with people competing for likes and subscribers with clever jokes and analyses. There is an affinity between cleverness and alienation, as exemplified by the detective archetype, who is a detached and calculating outsider. This kind of cleverness often takes the form of seeing through illusions and can be found in popular media, online commenting, and in fiction. The proliferation of cleverness in public life has led to it becoming a nuisance and being criticized by figures such as Oscar Wilde and Søren Kierkegaard. It is important to distinguish between genuine wisdom and cleverness, and not to value the latter over the former.
- mdp2021 4y agoNow the matter becomes to identify the unintelligence expected of ChatGTP in its product. I see a few (e.g. linking 'Kierkegaard' and 'proliferation'), but it would be probably more interesting to do the same on an article presenting some solid argument. > Pretty good job Do you think the summary is really structured? Does it present an argument? Does it identify its nodes? Or is it more like Woody Allen having made that speed-reading course and concluding that War and Peace is about Russia?
- Mathnerd314 4y agoI think it's about as cogent as the original article. Which is to say, a ball of mud.
- marcovvssr 4y agoI tried to ask ChatGPT to make a more comprehensive summary but it gave me a very similar output, i think because "summary", to the model, has to match certain conditions of length, it is a very limiting factor; to my understanding, this tool wasn't meant to be used for this type of article (at the moment), instead, i find it perfect for summarizing long blog posts optimized for SEO. However, if your goal was to just know what to expect from the article and then read it, it made a 'Pretty good job'.
- hprotagonist 4y ago"Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage." Lewis Hyde "Alcohol & Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking"
- cateblanchett 4y agolove john berryman, shout out john berryman
- hprotagonist 4y agoit’s usually attributed to DFW, but that’s because he quotes it approvingly in “E Unibas Pluram”
- parthianshotgun 4y agoThanks I've always attributed it to DFW. Incidentally I'm a bit sad DFW didn't get a mention in the article; seems that his insights into this are apt
- pclmulqdq 4y agoI completely disagree with this piece, and I think the author is missing a few key details that lead him wrong. The author focuses a lot on the trappings of cleverness - the witticisms and the "outsider" nature of the clever individual. This is the wrong thing to focus on. People with conventional ideas today exploit these trappings (with the help of professional marketing and PR teams) to give themselves an air of importance and brilliance. It's no surprise that when you focus there, you will find cleverness to be "impotent." Instead, cleverness defined as a cross-disciplinary ("outsider") perspective is incredibly valuable in the modern world. A lot of cleverness comes from people who otherwise seem very boring - they are clever in their specialty and in their own way, but not the supposed "renaissance men" that media personalities seem to be attracted to.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoYou're hitting the right point in that it's focusing on the first type of cleverness, but that's because that's the type of cleverness that society and social networks find to drive "engagement" and therefore it's treated as far more important than your second definition of cleverness, which is the type that provides progress to technology and society and politics and so on - but it's boring because society's issues that need solving are so deep and complex and niche that any cleverness in the solution is lost to anyone but experts in the same field. And so what the layperson sees, because it's what's chosen by the engagement maximising algorithm, is only ever type 1 cleverness. Hence it's the topic. Which is ironic in itself, a well written article about the focus being wrong because the focus is wrong. (My pithy summation is also such an example, it's clever but adds or solves fucking nothing, welcome to my career).
- starkd 4y agoI don't think cleverness is quite the same as inventiveness or a skill that equips you for a job. It is more a psychological tool people often use to navigate the world. I think that's what the essay was getting at.
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago> "renaissance men" that media personalities seem to be attracted to I believe the word you're looking for is "dilettante".
- trabant00 4y agoThis strikes home for me. The witty jokes I make to isolate myself from a world I often can make no sense of. The isolation that hides insecurities and the lack of courage to take leaps of faith and participate in an imperfect society rather than hang at the periphery and judge it. Whatever the reasons/excuses - genetics, upbringing, current social trends towards individualism, whatever - I can find no solution though. Whenever I force myself to get involved I end up disilusioned and eventually angry. Impotence describes it perfectly. So in the end one must asume that whatever is lacking, be it wisdom or faith, or humblesness, it really is lacking and preventing me from making any significant impact. And being only clever is similar to being a clown.
- xyzelement 4y agoThe contrast between cleverness of this form and religion resonates with me as someone who's gone from atheism to deep appreciation of the truth of religion. Our love of our own cleverness is the ego's attempt to assert its relevance. "I am smart. I can figure out the world on my own. I am right in what I think and believe" whereas religion puts us in our place, as mortal and limited beings in an infinite and eternal universe, whose knowledge and even theoretical ability to grasp the ultimate truth is limited.
- mangamadaiyan 4y agoEither that, or you could be fooling yourself by thinking "I'm smart, I've realised that religion has all the answers". Who knows?
- xyzelement 4y agoI haven't encountered religion to claim to have all the answers. I have seen it deeply acknowledge man's limitations and the resultant profound awe of the mystery.
- mdp2021 4y agoThe poster and you are talking about different things. You are describing the reaction of a class of practitioners and he is describing the reaction of a different class of approachers. You have identified two different real profiles.
- riskable 4y ago
- xyzelement 4y agoI haven't seen religion truncate the search for truth. In my understanding, many of the men to whom we owe our understanding of the world were religious. Newton and Darwin were driven to understand how G-d implements his designs. The Big Bang was theorized by a Catholic priest scientist who was looking for (and found) the moment of creation. Edward Hubble who proved the big bang through observation was a deeply religious Christian.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoThe lack of self awareness in this piece was entertaining. Writing about impotent pretensions to cleverness on on the Internet on a site on the Internet hardly anyone will read, quoting Seinfeld, Raymond Chandler, a vintage movie script, and Kierkegaard, and name-checking Oscar Wilde and Einstein, all under the modest tag "Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture" is... quite a look.
- starkd 4y agoWhat an odd comment to make. His central thesis about "cleverness" allowed him to tie together a number of disparate elements. It is what writers do strive to do. If this was in the New Yorker would that confer legitimacy? That feels very elitist. The flow of the writing reminded me a lot of Paul Graham's essays.
- mdp2021 4y ago> tie together a number of disparate elements. It is what writers do strive to do Very hopefully not. A game of associations ("first", "test", "try", "feel", "skin"...) is already «t[ying] together a number of disparate elements». But randomly, in idleness, possibly decadent. Writers (should be supposed to) try to present a coherent complex idea - defending a thesis, modelling a description, disclosing potentially fruitful relations - by making its ideal structure explicit through some relatively fixed perspective form. That remains, structuring information (and in a loop of criticism checks), in a set of globally (as opposed to locally) strong relations (between the nodes). With a so implied Purpose in the statements. Which by the way seems to have been an intended target of TFA. Compromising a lot with its enemy, though.
- jancsika 4y ago> Writers (should be supposed to) try to present a coherent complex idea - defending a thesis, modelling a description, disclosing potentially fruitful relations - by making its ideal structure explicit through some relatively fixed perspective form. That remains, structuring information (and in a loop of criticism checks), in a set of globally (as opposed to locally) strong relations (between the nodes). With a so implied Purpose in the statements. I remember reading something similar from an old Ernest Hemingway interview. Does anyone who knows what I'm talking about have a link?
- mounceyboy 4y agoAnd kierkegaards aphorisms are a master collection of witticisms
- mdp2021 4y agoThanks for the advice! The humor of Kierkegaard: an anthology (edited by Thomas C. Oden) https://archive.org/details/humorofkierkegaa0000kier https://archive.org/details/humorofkierkegaa0000kier
- IAmGraydon 4y ago>Our popular media are drenched in contrived knowingness and irony. And cleverness has become something like a currency online, where hordes of commenters and commentators compete for likes and subscribers with world-weary analyses and smug jokes. What should we make of this apparent degradation? That those people are clearly not clever at all and most can’t think for themselves so they just parrot whatever they heard from others? Trying to feign cleverness and actually being clever are not the same thing.
- svnpenn 4y agoI dont know if Reddit has always been like this, but it is now. Essentially 90% of all top level comments are some dumbass joke, or some pop culture reference, or some winking cutesie reply. It makes me sick just thinking about it. I'm not saying it all has to be high minded essays for every comment, but what you have now is the equivalent of elementary school playground talk. Grow the fuck up.
- fullshark 4y agoIt was like that before, but the jokes were in-jokes that made it feel like a community, e.g. a reference to bacon, narwhals, or some other nonsense. This was interspersed with genuinely thoughtful replies. Eventually the site got too big, the LCD quips won out and the conversation became junk food for the mind.
- cateblanchett 4y agothe most unintentionally meta essay ever written
- camjohnson26 4y agoThese comments are meta too.
- cateblanchett 4y agoi just dont entirely agree that cleverness should be classed as 'bad'. cleverness is entertaining. it's ok for things to just be fun.
- phonescreen_man 4y agoThe irony of the witty. The cleverest of quips. To be more sure of yourself by standing above the rest. For the clever themselves may just find it was the loudest whom made the news that day. What a breathe Omm
- herodotus 4y agoWhen I was managing programmers I sometimes warned them about being careful to distinguish between cleverness and wisdom. Never realized that Wittgenstein had made this remark. In the context of programming, the best person on my team was wise, but he sometimes could not resist being clever to the detriment of the readability of the code. To me, clever code is the stuff you might find (admittedly these are extreme) on the The International Obfuscated C Code Contest. "Wise" code is code that does what it needs to do but is clear. The weakest person on a team should be able to read and understand (and maybe fix bugs in) this code. We had one example where the person in question had just read about multiple inheritance in C++ and just could not resist the urge to use it in some key code that none of the rest of us understood at all! I made him rewrite it without multiple inheritance.
- remram 4y agoI can't help but think of a parallel between "wisdom vs cleverness" and "difficulty vs complexity". (from Rich Hickey's definition: https://paulrcook.com/blog/simple-made-easy https://paulrcook.com/blog/simple-made-easy) Being clever rather than wise will push you to find those simple/elegant solutions that are not easy to understand or maintain. In reverse being wise rather than merely clever you will go with the boring or seemingly complex solution if it is easier for the team to understand and maintain.
- eternalban 4y agoI am watching Rossellini's Cartesius -- the intellectual biography of René Descartes -- and was thinking of submitting a link to it; it is held to be a very accurate if not an exciting film. Watching this film I think I may have a clue as to when cleverness became a "public nuisance". One of the TIL moments for me in the film is learning why the conservative intellectuals of the day were dead against "new planets" discovered by telescopes. It turns out, since all their natural sciences were governed by Zodiac hand-me-downs from Babylon via Aristotle and Avicenna -- ~"all natural phenomena are caused by the movements of heavenly bodies" -- having their magic number Seven (7) be supplanted was a complete intellectual crisis. It was "cleverness", being "aloof" and "an outsider" that marks the man, Descartes (at least as depicted here). He repeatedly makes the point in the film as to why he chose to live among Dutch merchants and sailors instead of fellow geeks in Paris! ("I want to be left alone to think and reflect"). I think pre-Enlightenment the conservative ethos was held to be 'godly' and 'true'. Then a sequence of brilliant clever men such as Descartes heedlessly began to question practically every received wisdom. And then by the time our witty man of letters comes around, it had become fashionable and no longer the unique instrument of true wits and true minds. - A reviewer: "At first glance this is the most tedious of Rossellini's portraits, double the length, with even more repetitive talk about a more abstract subject: the correct use of mind." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161382 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161382 magnet:?xt=urn:btih:26FF01235DA0205BFA466939EED0EA5100CBB3BE
- whoami_nr 4y ago
- fullshark 4y agoChock full of pop culture references but no reference to this great scene from Fight Club: https://youtu.be/vX8Zc8UGGu4 https://youtu.be/vX8Zc8UGGu4. Which basically makes the same point in 15 seconds.
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago> The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was tormented by the thought that he was “merely clever” and criticized himself and others for valuing cleverness over genuine wisdom. This torments me too. Growing up I was top of my class/district (same as my parents and theirs, which really suggests a genetic component), but then when I started working with other smart people I realized that only gets you so far. To make wise decisions, you need to have the proper mindstate to make genuine "human" decisions, rather than using just your intelligence. In fact, if you're smart enough, you can "logically" prove wrong things to yourself like "this is impossible". Wisdom is knowing that whenever you say that, you have made a mistake in your logic at some point. It's very hard to teach people to start thinking like this. The junior engineers who can think on their feet are usually mentored better since that's the part you can't teach.. The tormenting part is this: the same can be said of most other areas of life. I've seen so many genuinely smart people completely mess up personal areas of their life by refusing to think, or do things differently. Despite having a strong apparatus for thinking, they don't "wake up" and use it, they just form all kinds of delusions that they can prove to themselves using their strong proving abilities. Despite being wise in some areas, this wisdom doesn't extend to the others. I think this is why depression rates are higher in more intelligent people. There's a better ability to comprehend and change your life, but that usually doesn't translate to the willpower and wisdom needed to do so. Those are separate things one has to have/train. An inbalance in the two causes great upset/lost potential.
- jason-phillips 4y ago> To make wise decisions, you need to have the proper mindstate to make genuine "human" decisions, rather than using just your intelligence. I recognize this as empathy. It is something of a superpower when used to its full potential.
- nwienert 4y agoIt’s more than that. I’d argue there are “IQs” for culture (what’s the best outcome in a meta sense), power (what words/actions lead to maintaining dominance), social (how does everyone likely feel and react to what I say, related to power) and many more. So undervalued by many.
- mrwh 4y agoEntertaining article. For all the references to pre-Internet things and people, I can't help but feel it's mainly about a certain sort of Twitter cleverness. The witty reply to this or that outrage that, in the end, changed absolutely nothing. Not cleverness, then (and really, of all places, tech very much rewards cleverness), but impotent wit.
- xianshou 4y agoThe title reads to me as a tautology - we use "clever" as opposed to "intelligent" or "formidable" to connote self-contained, puzzle-like displays of intellect. If you are clever but also pragmatic and effective, people will start using very different words to describe you.
- randcraw 4y agoI think clever is also used differently among Brits than Yanks. Brits equate it with intellect and imagination. Americans see cleverness less charitably, as an self-serving tactic in a game that leads to winning. A clever person in the States is often just a trickster.
- at_a_remove 4y agoI believe I got a programming job once because, after interviewing applicants, I said, "Programmers should be capable of being clever, but not relying on it." And I meant it in the Einsteinian sense, after many interviews of duds. It was then gently suggested that perhaps I ought to fill the role. However, the other form of being clever, the Fight Club "How's the working out for you? -- Being clever?" is shallow and often contagious, in the sense that a clever turn of phrase or a meme might replace rational thought. I'll give an example: whenever someone might suggest that someone else who is mentally ill might be violent, the stock response (I'll give you a bit to think of it) is some variant "Mentally ill people are in more danger of having violence inflicted on them than average people." It's interesting as a response, it might even be true, but it in no way answers the actual question: is there a statistically larger incidence of violence from the mentally ill as compared to the norm? And then if you press further, you can get something like "The vast majority of people with mental health problems are no more likely to be violent than anyone else," which is yet another clever evasion and still doesn't answer the question. This is just one example, but a lot of "memetic politics" contain such obscuring cleverness. It's a magic trick, at best, and should be stamped out wherever it appears, as a terrible shim jammed in, separating us just a little bit more from the real world.
- parthianshotgun 4y agoI don't think the response to the mentally ill claim is a clever dodge, feels like the fictitious interlocutors are just having a bad faith (or maybe just plain ol' bad) argument. Why would someone suggest someone is violent? If it's unfounded, then why even mention it, ultimately seems like it could devolve into measuring skull sizes if you're not careful
- skybrian 4y agoThe article doesn't really get at how wittiness works in social media, where clever jokes tend to work against actually explaining things and genuine curiosity about what's going on. We know less than we pretend, but the knowing attitudes often hide the gaps in our understanding. Better to ask sincere questions and look for their answers. And if you're not actually curious, at least support the people who are.
- thenerdhead 4y ago> Very often, this kind of cleverness comes in the form of seeing through illusions. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, especially seeing the same individuals bring an insane amount of attention to whatever they want. Most of it looks controversial to the general public, but is not so much based in their realities. I think most clever people are simply beyond the good and evil we define as a society and make up their own values & ethics (A very Nietzsche way to look at it). The Seinfeld example is great in this article because that's exactly what I think about when I think of Larry David. He's a very clever person given the best comedy is relatable, even if it is morally wrong as defined by society.
- bjornlouser 4y ago"Is there really something wrong with being clever? ... cleverness functions more as a cover for vulnerability ... reframe forced alienation ... use forms of cleverness to evade such suffering ..." I appreciate cleverness in others when it helps me avoid my own suffering. Unfortunately I still suffer most of the time.
- brudgers 4y agoPossibly related: Too Clever by Half https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079369
- Konohamaru 4y agoFrom the essay: > Think of the way adolescents try a knowing remark to project worldliness when their egos are threatened. What does this mean?
- photochemsyn 4y agoLanguage expressing value judgements on the quality of intelligence: genius -> brilliance -> intelligence -> cleverness -> cunning I think Dungeons & Dragons character sheets were insightful in prodiving separate values for 'intelligence' vs. 'wisdom' (with the former being more valuable for wizards, and the latter for clerics). What exactly differentiates these categories is a matter of dispute, although many examples come to mind - such as, building FTX/Alameda took a lot of cleverness, though not much wisdom. Generally, wisdom implies the possession of an internal moral compass or at least incorporation of risk assessment into one's decision-making process. Coming up with well-regarded tests for both intelligence and wisdom in individual people, however, seems to be an unsolved problem. One issue in assigning such quantitative values to people is that, as with strength and dexterity, human beings can improve these characteristics to some extent. Some will claim that the limits of character value development are genetically determined, but the reality is that most people don't spend the time and energy training themselves up to any such limit.
- yason 4y agoCleverness, like fire, is a good servant but a bad master.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bloomingeek 4y agoInformation is not same as knowledge and knowledge isn't the same as wisdom. Can't remember whose quote this is, but I've never forgotten it.
- Hermitude 4y agoAs an amateur reader of the subject, I wasn’t able to trace all of its connections. But it still presents several valuable insights and concludes satisfyingly.
- graymatters 4y agoTo become wise, rather than merely clever, two additional elements are necessary. One is humility. Cleverness often leads to various forms of hubris. The most dangerous of which is to overvalue one’s deductions/decisions (as opposed to others’) because too often one’s previous deductions/decisions were “more right” than those of the others. “Right too often trap”. The other one is experience. Experience teaches us that the problems/dilemmas often have more dimensions than one initially sees. Often times the non obvious dimensions are the key ones, rather than the ones we see originally. “Wrong dimensions trap”.
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
- lamontcg 4y agoThis article is a hot mess of doing the very thing it wants to criticize.
- pardon_me 4y agoI (internally reluctantly) agree. A clever idea stretched out and headlined for attention. Structured well as an essay but most often a clever idea doesn’t stretch to 2000 words. This is an example. Such a shame.