Why be wise?
There's a new essay by Paul Graham, whose essays I almost always enjoy. He tries to define wisdom as distinct from intelligence: wisdom is broad, knowing the right thing to do in many situations, while intelligence is narrow, being unusually good at a particular thing. Two different ways of measuring ability--the average versus the maximum of a function--and he pulls out a number of interesting ideas from that basic concept:
"Distinguishing between 'wise' and 'smart' is a modern habit. And the reason we do is that they've been diverging. As knowledge gets more specialized, there are more points on the curve, and the distinction between the spikes and the average becomes sharper, like a digital image rendered with more pixels."
"For both Confucius and Socrates, wisdom, virtue, and happiness were necessarily related.... To me it was a relief just to realize it might be ok to be discontented. The idea that a successful person should be happy has thousands of years of momentum behind it. If I was any good, why didn't I have the easy confidence winners are supposed to have?"
Enjoy! He reminds me of C. S. Lewis in the verve of his writing. Like Lewis he often goes astray, but he's always worth reading.
"Distinguishing between 'wise' and 'smart' is a modern habit. And the reason we do is that they've been diverging. As knowledge gets more specialized, there are more points on the curve, and the distinction between the spikes and the average becomes sharper, like a digital image rendered with more pixels."
"For both Confucius and Socrates, wisdom, virtue, and happiness were necessarily related.... To me it was a relief just to realize it might be ok to be discontented. The idea that a successful person should be happy has thousands of years of momentum behind it. If I was any good, why didn't I have the easy confidence winners are supposed to have?"
Enjoy! He reminds me of C. S. Lewis in the verve of his writing. Like Lewis he often goes astray, but he's always worth reading.