From: Thomas Buckner (tcbevolver@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Feb 07 2005 - 19:08:26 MST
--- Phil Goetz <philgoetz@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Recently I read most of Horgan's book /The End
> of
> Science/. It was very interesting, not because
> of
> the argument he makes (which did not impress
> me),
> but because many of the extremely intelligent
> people he interviews come across as fruitcakes
> who have great expertise and intelligence, yet
> have huge mental blind spots that they
> absolutely
> cannot see into, nor become conscious of
> (like Fred Hoyle on the Big Bang). I wonder if
> this is more common in highly intelligent
> people?
>
> - Phil
My favorite author, Robert Anton Wilson, has said
over and over that to be truly wise, you must
detect and deal with every blind spot you have,
*overlooking none*, because if you have but one
blind spot, that's the one that will cause you to
run into a ditch. It's a near-superhuman effort,
but necessary nonetheless.
I would say it's not more common in highly
intelligent people, and that the fool has many
blind spots, but highly intelligent people can
get into more spectacular trouble with their
blind spots. One guy crashes his pickup truck
because he was digging around on the floor for a
cassette; another forgets a metric/English
conversion and crashes a hundred million dollars
worth of experiments into a Martian crater.
p.s. I like Tipler, but he comes off in the
Horgan book in much the same way Dr. Kellogg does
in "The Road To Wellville". Hilarious, but, ahem,
embarrassing.
Tom Buckner
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