Yes, the socially dysfunctional I have witnessed. Dawkins might be good at
stuff, but he has been tempted by the dark side on TV. He now makes good telly
rather than fielding rational argument, so "shrill" is my impression of him.
I feel no right to abuse anyone, although I am a very impatient person . . . ;-)
Chris
On 13 Apr 2011, at 10:11, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> Very highly intelligent people are often quite socially disfunctional - in
> some cases to the point of psychopathy! I think of such people, including the
> more functional savants, as having a specific talent - like a footballer they
> may have an extremely highly developed talent in one narrow area and be
> pretty hopeless at anything else, including being polite or politic. Often
> they have no tolerance for any disagreement. I have some sympathy for Dawkins
> in that he seems to be surrounded by people who are disgreeing with him on
> utterly specious or irrelevant grounds. It must get very irritating after a
> while. However, many see him as arrogant, usually those who haven't read any
> of his other work. (Try 'Climbing Mount Improbable').
> The term 'savant' is often thought of in terms of the 'idiot savant', an
> extreme example of the single talent problem. A true savant is someone who
> knows 'stuff' but these days, no matter how good your evidence, that is
> little defence against the criticisms of fools. It seems that we all think we
> have an equal right to abuse those with whom we disagree, even if we don't
> understand them.
> But we have often regarded genius as a special and separate class of being.
> I'm more interested in the conventionally intelligent, rather than the
> extreme fractions at either end of the bell curve where the social rules
> break down.
> Andrew Fildes
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