Originally posted by jogiba I love that clip... almost like watching a train wreck. You know you should turn away and not look but darn it, you just can't help it...
Intelligent people are not always "smart" and "smart" people are not always intelligent. One of the most intellectually brilliant men I know (a genuine "rocket scientist" who never went to college) is too stupid to stop drinking and smoking despite being a Type 1 diabetic.
I challenge Bill Maher to try to take apart the engine of his Mercedes and change a main bearing. I challenge him to properly construct a plumb exterior wall of a new house. I challenge him to properly compact a 100yd long stretch of new blacktop on his local highway construction site. I challenge him to survive for 2 days alone in the Mojave Desert in the middle of July without any external help or supplies.
There are tons of people in this country and around the world that are not educated to a wide degree, yet they do perform functions which are important to our society, and many of them perform them to perfection. Not all do of course... there are indeed many genuinely stupid people out there, but lack of "breadth" does not necessarily equal lack of "depth." Nor does it disqualify you from participating meaningfully in society.
Frankly if everyone was equally "smart" in everything, our current society would grind to a screeching halt since most of us rely upon leveraging OUR knowledge and capabilities to enable us to obtain the knowledge and capabilities of others. Of course if we were all exactly equally smart, we might not need society... but I think that would make for a pretty boring world.
IMHO, Bill Mahar is simply a self appointed uber-intellectual who has a much much higher opinion of himself than he should. I also suspect that most of his "this % of Americans believe this or that" statistics are made up off of the top of his head (just like 90% of all publicly cited statistics are...
).
Last edited by MRRiley; 02-01-2012 at 07:42 AM.