When you realize how little actual thinking or brainpower it takes to be significantly smarter than average, it doesn’t leave you feeling so intelligent. The average is terrible. It’s kind of like to a dog, any person seems like a genius.
But there’s a lot more distance between me and someone like Norbert Wiener than the average dog is from the average person. I only seem intelligent because someone at the average is not quite smart enough to discern the difference between Norbert and me.
But unfortunately I have just enough brains to measure that difference, and it’s vast. Far, far more than between me and Joe or Jane Average.
We’re in environments designed to make everyone that much dumber by inducing brain damage. A Weiner born here now would get shunted into picayune destructiveness, if that. And a Weiner born elsewhere would never come here now. Sad.
Average person understatement from skimming: On a logarithmic scale, Weiner is a genuine polymath with significant depths in several fields beyond just wide and varied reading (or one Ph.D) with work that’s foundational to several fields (or at least the precursors). His students were also influential?
It’s the difference between “polymath”, an actual polymath and a polymath on Weiner’s scale.
You’re right. I am not sure we could create in our culture anyone like that now. The bases of learning and meaning have changed too much. We are now operating in unknown states beyond the realm of current reckoning.
Exception mode is now the operating mode.