From: Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Date: Fri Jan 02 2004 - 13:23:38 MST
Wei Dai <weidai@weidai.com> writes:
> I recently speculated in another mailing list that intelligence may also
> have a social cost, which can help explain why we aren't smarter. See
> http://www.mail-archive.com/armchair-l%40mail04.gmu.edu/msg00324.html for
> more details and discussion.
It is important, I think, to keep in mind that there is not just one
type of skill we call intelligence -- there are many.
Intelligence is not mono-axis. One becomes very good at activities
like math, chess, cooking, or picking up members of the appropriate
sex in bars* by spending lots of time and effort getting better at
them, and given a finite amount of time, one might not be able to
learn to do all of them well. This is especially true of activities
that are all consuming, like being an innovative mathematician.
Perry
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