Stephen Hawking Implicitly Disses Triple Nine?
Click here (registration required) to read an email interview with Stephen Hawking in the December 12, 2004 issue of The New York Times Magazine.
Interview tidbits: Hawking answers a question about I.Q. and calls President Bush's plans to put a human on Mars "stupid".
Money quote: "People who boast about their I.Q. are losers."
posted by Mr. W at 9:27 AM
2 Comments:
I agree that the key is "boasting". I put up a deliberately provocative title to generate interest. (Hey, this is a new blog!)
There's nothing wrong with people with high I.Q.s wanting to interact with other people with similar I.Q.s. Most people don't choose to "hang out" with other people whose I.Q.s are two to three (or more) standard deviations below their own. (0ne reason is purely statistical.)
Of course, we all operate under time and energy constraints, and I do have sympathy for someone who refrains from pursuing a line of discussion simply because he or she has decided that, for whatever reason, it's just not worth his or her effort.
As Calluna so aptly pointed out, Hawking is surrounded by people with high I.Q.s. Indeed, it's very likely that many of them, being prominent physicists, have I.Q.s above the 3rd standard deviation, (99.9th percentile).
Hawking's feigned modesty is endearing. Do you recall the "Star Trek" scene where he's playing cards with Einstein?
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