In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
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You'd think after years of exposure to Ivy League professors and other professional intellectuals like Krugman occasionally or, depending on your viewpoint, frequently beclowning themselves online that everyone would've had an Emperor Has No Clothes moment (mine was discovering Peter Thiel rips off Salena Zito tidbits to come off as smart) but perhaps Gell-Mann is even stronger a phenomenon than we think.
More likely, the most intelligent hyper focus on being the most right about their niche area of expertise and that is where their intelligence should be judged. Generalists will always be wrong on something and the best of their lot will just be the least (or least impactfully) wrong. Perhaps the area that needs attention now is the connectors between those two.
People still listen to Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity. At least Krugman has a Nobel and mainstream respectability so it makes sense to assume he's smart if you aren't too familiar with him.
Imagine the stupidest ideas you could come up with, somebody will probably defend them. Isn't that what happened with Flat Earth? I don't think it's because people are stupid. But there's always that temptation to assume that you're smarter than everyone else because you can actually defend something no one else will. Imagine if you were among the only people who could see that the Emperor really does have clothes that look invisible to most people, after all.
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