3 ms·

>The problem is, for an intellectual, it's important to live in an environment rich with mental talent. My eyes rolled straight into the back of my head. I ag

>The problem is, for an intellectual, it's important to live in an environment rich with mental talent. My eyes rolled straight into the back of my head. I agree that an 'intellectual' (as a social class construct) might require similar socially oriented individuals to feel like they're among equals. I have no respect for such 'intellectuals'. I have a great deal of respect for people who are curious about the world around them and love to make new and wonderful things and think novel ideas. I find that those two groups rarely overlap.

wyclif 4y ago
My eyes rolled straight into the back of my head Yeah, mine too. It's hard for me to take these kinds of arguments seriously in 2023. I'm willing to concede that geographic proximity was necessary for collaborative intellectual work, but the internet has changed that milieu. I also don't think it was true pre-internet, as Einstein himself showed. Linus Torvalds didn't need to be in the Bay Area of California when he created the Linux kernel, yet it didn't happen without a massive amount of collaboration enabled by the internet. Solzhenitsyn, after he emigrated to the USA after getting deported by the Soviet Union, continued his intellectual work and writing in Cavendish, Vermont which was and is extremely isolated. And that was pre-internet!