Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

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Tangled Metal
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Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by Tangled Metal »

There's an interview with a tory minister where he basically said that anyone struggling should go out and get a better paying job. He's obviously intelligent to get where he has but IMHO that comment makes him truly ignorant.

I know people who will never be able to get a better paying job. Unskilled and uneducated they are never going to get away from minimum wage or near minimum wage jobs. However this MP has obviously no experience beyond his privileged, middle class, white collar world. That's ignorance that came out with his stupid comments. Oh it's sensible to go out and get a better paying job but that's not advice that works for a great many people. He didn't know that nor did he know enough to keep his mouth shut when such thoughts came into his head.

What's your view on ignorance and intelligence and whether they can exist in the same person? Do you have examples either way?
francovendee
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by francovendee »

Tangled Metal wrote: 3 Oct 2022, 11:52pm There's an interview with a tory minister where he basically said that anyone struggling should go out and get a better paying job. He's obviously intelligent to get where he has but IMHO that comment makes him truly ignorant.

I know people who will never be able to get a better paying job. Unskilled and uneducated they are never going to get away from minimum wage or near minimum wage jobs. However this MP has obviously no experience beyond his privileged, middle class, white collar world. That's ignorance that came out with his stupid comments. Oh it's sensible to go out and get a better paying job but that's not advice that works for a great many people. He didn't know that nor did he know enough to keep his mouth shut when such thoughts came into his head.

What's your view on ignorance and intelligence and whether they can exist in the same person? Do you have examples either way?
After seeing it was about a Tory minister then I knew that party dogma would cancel any common sense or sense of humanity.
We can't all get well paid jobs, mundane jobs are essential to our lives. Think of cleaners and how our streets, offices, etc. In fact any public place would be if there was nobody to do the work.
It often crossed my mind how, if everyone had the same level of education, intelligence and ambition were all fighting for the top jobs it would work out?
Likely the most ruthless would get the top jobs so they're almost certainly be a Tory.
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al_yrpal
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by al_yrpal »

'Intelligent' idiots abound. Common sense is often missing.

Al
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francovendee
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by francovendee »

al_yrpal wrote: 4 Oct 2022, 8:17am 'Intelligent' idiots abound. Common sense is often missing.

Al
Spot on Al, I guess we've all had dealings with people like this.
Nearholmer
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by Nearholmer »

Since nobody is knowledgeable about everything, it must be the case that every person, however intelligent, is also ignorant, and it might be argued that a person who is incapable of making proper allowance for their own ignorance cannot be particularly intelligent, that a person who makes pronouncements about matters of which they are knowingly ignorant is an arrogant fool, and that a person who fails to deploy whatever intelligence they posses empathically is callous.
deeferdonk
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by deeferdonk »

I assume he's intelligent enough to know exactly what he's saying, just doesn't have any empathy because the options are:

1) Pay low earning people more money, either by legislation (min wage increase), taxation or benefits. He don't want to do that because Tory - he and his ilk might have to pay a bit more tax or take a bit less profit when he returns to the board of EvilCorp- boo.
2) Let low earning people struggle on as they are or worse, because he don't care - doesn't affect him, just those "lazy" poor people. But he can't say that, so has to bat it back with some gumpf about personal responsibility.
pwa
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by pwa »

One wonders how things would pan out if all the low paid workers took his advice and moved to better paid jobs, leaving the low paid jobs undone. No carers, no supermarket employees, no refuse collectors....

Rather unintelligent people can come across as quite clever in certain things, until they say too much and reveal the truth.
Pendodave
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by Pendodave »

Maybe my memory fails me, but is it so long ago that we discovered that these jobs were a bit more important than we realised?
pete75
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by pete75 »

Of course they can.Ignorance is lack of knowledge, intelligence is thinking ability or something similar.
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mattheus
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by mattheus »

Tangled Metal wrote: 3 Oct 2022, 11:52pm What's your view on ignorance and intelligence and whether they can exist in the same person? Do you have examples either way?
Is this what you actually want comments on? Or is this thread actually about slagging off the privileged MP who has wound you up with his comments?
tenbikes
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by tenbikes »

Never confuse clever and intelligent.......It was really really clever to design and make the atomic bomb, but not at all an intelligent thing to do.

We are all ignorant of many facts and should accept this. What is inexcusable is ignorance in terms of maners.
Psamathe
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by Psamathe »

Tangled Metal wrote: 3 Oct 2022, 11:52pm There's an interview with a tory minister where he basically said that anyone struggling should go out and get a better paying job. He's obviously intelligent to get where he has but IMHO that comment makes him truly ignorant....
I think people can get to senior positions of power without being intelligent. Saying the right thing to the right people can be enough. I once worked for an "entrepreneur" who from him starting out on his own built a business with a turnover £25m a year at 8% profit - except he was not a very good business person but was in the right place at the right time and his chosen market suddenly matched with his only real supplier who supported him until they changed their business focus and his business struggled and faded and disappeared.

Massaging the egos of others, having gone to the right schools/University, having good friends who do achieve, etc. can all carry a rather dumb individual way beyond their capability.

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Psamathe
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by Psamathe »

As I recently posted in a different thread, I thing "intelligence" is a very slippery word. Ignoring the IQ test result meaning, it could mean having an encyclopaedic memory as people who repeat blind fact on the spur of the moment can be regarded as "intelligent" by some, in which case my computer hard disk drive is fabulously intelligent.

I tend to interpret "intelligence" as being able to understand, analyse, draw supportable conclusions and appreciating the limitations and unreliability of those conclusions, etc. as being intelligent. And I think such capability has been severely lacking in our political classes who seem more driven by personal ideology and career progression.

Ian
mattheus
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by mattheus »

Psamathe wrote: 4 Oct 2022, 11:28am I tend to interpret "intelligence" as being able to understand, analyse, draw supportable conclusions and appreciating the limitations and unreliability of those conclusions, etc. as being intelligent. And I think such capability has been severely lacking in our political classes who seem more driven by personal ideology and career progression.
Perhaps their sort are intelligent but selfish?
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Cugel
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Re: Can ignorance and intelligence coexist in the same person?

Post by Cugel »

francovendee wrote: 4 Oct 2022, 8:31am
al_yrpal wrote: 4 Oct 2022, 8:17am 'Intelligent' idiots abound. Common sense is often missing.

Al
Spot on Al, I guess we've all had dealings with people like this.
Hmmmm. I've had many encounters with people full to the brim with "common sense". One translation of this category of beliefs is "reactionary bigotry". Another is "the generally accepted dogmas".

Of course, there are other kinds of "common sense" that may represent a body of usefull and effective understandings ... but somehow the term "common sense" seems badly named as what is taken to be common sense by many is neither sensible not that common. Take, as an obvious example, the opinions installed by the Daily Hate Mail into the wetware of their read-and-repeat-puppets. The puppets will all insist that their hateful opinions are" obvious common sense". Many (perhaps most) others (especially the "others" of certain kinds vilified by The Hate Mail) will feel the puppets are, at the very least, mistaken.

************
But to the Tangled Question! I can only answer with more questions.

* Is our commonly-held (!) notion of intelligence meaningful, well-connected to all aspects of our "world" (physical and metaphysical) and in anyway any kind of objective "truth"? (Is the IQ-test notion "common sense", one might ask).

* In measuring one's state of ignorance or knowingness, what categories of knowledge count as essential and which are peripheral?

* In measuring ignorance, is it a matter of relativity or an absolute measurement?

* Also, where does "stupidity" fit in? And "wisdom"?

Cugel, knowing enough to realise how ignorant of so much I remain whilst being only just intelligent enough to still be alive and well in a world seemingly filled with ignorance, stupidity and toxic common sense*

* All Cugel definitions only, of course.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
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