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The answer to this question depends to some extent on the role in which the person is functioning. In a role that has high public visibility, such as a political position, the foolish know-it-all usually presents little danger because their incompetence becomes widely observable and their influence is therefore, minimal. We have seen examples of …
The greatest danger in saying, “I am not good at XXXX,” is that it signifies surrender. Once we declare that we are not good at something, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, because we give ourselves permission to abandon the struggle to improve our level of competence. This surrender is most frequently found in the declaration, …
What are the potential negative effects of saying “I’m not good at math”? Read More »
Around 1637, Pierre de Fermat, one of the giants of modern mathematics, issued what became the most famous mathematical conjecture in history. In his copy of Diophantus’ Arithmetica, he wrote: …it is impossible for any cube to be the sum of two cubes, or in general for any number that is a power greater than …
Who proved Fermat’s last theorem and what was the level of difficulty in proving it? Read More »
The Celebrity Entrepreneurs Those celebrities or famous people whose high IQ is most apparent are the billionaire entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk earned degrees in Economics and Physics and was enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Stanford before dropping out to co-found with …
In this post, I won’t declare myself as a wise person, but will describe what I have observed as the steps required to reach wisdom. Let’s start with a logical poser. Peter is looking at Mary, while Mary is looking at Paul. Peter is married. Paul is unmarried. Is a married person looking at an …
There are many cases in the history of science and technology in which ignorance has been more beneficial than knowledge (rather than intelligence), because our “knowledge” is often incomplete or flawed. A dramatic example of this occurred when Einstein was formulating his field equations for his General Theory of Relativity. His original equations, expressed as …
When the quintessential genius Sir Isaac Newton was praised for his brilliance in deriving Kepler’s mathematical laws, mathematizing gravitational force and inventing calculus, he expressed with remarkable insight the vast difference between the magnitudes of solved and unsolved problems: I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem …
People often differ in their assessment of the intelligence of others, because they apply different measures to assess intelligence. If IQ is your measure of intelligence, then there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Elon Musk has a high IQ. The following excerpt from the book Intelligence, IQ and Perception provides a …
Education and intelligence are often assumed to be synonymous because they are highly correlated. However, correlation is a statistical concept, that doesn’t apply at the individual level. For example, there are people of extremely high IQ who have little or no education, and conversely, people of modest intelligence who have collected a variety of degrees. …
Throughout most of our evolution as a species, our knowledge has been empirically obtained. That is, we observed our world and drew conclusions based on what we saw, heard and felt. We believed the earth was flat because we didn’t observe any curvature. We believed that the earth was the center of the universe because …
What are some surprising discoveries made through deductive reasoning? Read More »
