Smart People Can Believe Crazy Things

[struggle4progress]

By Jeet Heer
NOVEMBER 6, 2015

... There’s no gainsaying the undisputed facts of Carson’s life, which are genuinely elevating. He really did go from a ghetto childhood to Yale to medical school to being a world-class surgeon. Why then has Carson felt the need to gild the lily with apparently tall tales of being a a violence-prone kid who nearly murdered a friend, and being offered a scholarship to West Point ...

First, great intelligence doesn’t immunize a person from indulging in magical thinking or pseudo-science. Second, even very smart and accomplished people can be fantasists ...

“Another problem is that smart people might be smart in only one field,” Shermer notes. “We say that their intelligence is domain specific." Carson clearly has a "domain-specific" intelligence — which he freely applies to fields outside his ken (not just Egyptian Archaeology but also American politics, foreign policy, economics, evolutionary biology, and many others) ...

Ben Carson is fast becoming a tragic figure. He’s a man of genuine merit, yet he’s tarnished his reputation through his inability to resist fantastic ideas — and to make up fantasies about his own life. He stands as proof of the fact that intelligence is unconnected to morality.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123394/truth-about-ben-carson-smart-people-can-believe-crazy-things

[fasttense]

1. I have a brother in law like him

My sister married him while they were in the Army after they got their doctorates. When the Army wanted him to go to the middle east for dessert storm, suddenly he had asthma and was allergic to sand. So he never went. But to listen to him now he went over there and kicked butt. He's a great doctor and makes tons of money off it but he's delusional. He never went to dessert storm and quickly got out of the Army after he finished his obligated years.

The Army paid for his Medical School and he was obligated to put in 4 years after he got his degree. But now he goes around saying he worked his way through Medical School.

The man is wacko and I avoid him and his crazy family as much as I can.

[Jerry442]

2. The concept of I.Q belongs on the antiques shelf with phrenology charts.

The idea that there is one measure that describes your level of mental function is wildly in conflict with observed reality. There are all kinds of mental abilities like abstraction, aesthetic sense, emotional empathy, visualization and they can vary independently. We all know people (or are people) who excel in one area and are embarrassingly inept in some other.

Dr. Carson seems to be an admittedly extreme case, but not all that amazing.

[Fumesucker]

3. Indeed, smart people can believe that wine turns to human blood in their throat

And that unleavened bread turns into human flesh in their throat.

In fact there are several members of the Supreme Court who believe exactly that.

[LiberalElite]

6. I was raised R.C. and I was taught that but never believed it -

it was one of those "whatever if you say so" things. It also must be one of the reasons I'm no longer Catholic.

[Lodestar]

4. "Smart" does not = Wise....n/t

[paul ofnoclique]

5. K&R nt