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What makes a person seem wise?

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Re: What makes a person seem wise?

#61

Post by freefaler »

_bramses wrote: post #31

An active reading habit (of books) is one of the most reliable ways to achieve wisdom. Why? - Books require a "Goldilocks" amount of sustained, slow effort given to one topic. Not too costly to pursue that it is a bodily harm risk, but not trivial either in terms of time and attention investment. This slows down the frenetic nature of a mind that latches onto heuristics. - By being exposed to different well-formed id…

My personal hunch is that the more you read, the better your model of reality is. If you have an interest to a particular time/topic and you've read almost all you can find about it you have a better understanding of "something" from a different point of views. Like read all about a particular event in WW2 from all the sides and on different levels (military, economy, social, political). A term coined by Mortimer Adler is "Syntopical Reading", but by deeply exploring a simple concept you can build your knowledge on how the world works.

Several benefits from deeply knowing a limited subject: - when you listen people who are "well known" talking stupid shit about a topic you understand that the info you're getting is not always that high and you need to check multiple sources (if you need to make a decision) - you understand complexity better and "survival" bias - you can even bet for fun on a prediction market when you see a stupid narrative getting puffed up (I've made around 1k after the CrowdStrike bet that it wasn't a "hack")

But the biggest win is to put more knowledge on your "tree" you've grown from a simple subject to related areas. This mental skill is applicable in almost all complex situations and this might be related to "the wisdom" you're talking about.

The downside is the more you know, the more cynical you get with your sources :)

Re: What makes a person seem wise?

#62

Post by readthenotes1 »

extasia wrote: post #38

Wisdom is taking your own advice. Words that I’ve found easier to accept the value of than to extoll. Trying is the first step to failing I guess;)

I know someone of whom it is said "hen never takes anyone's advice but hens own, and it is invariably wrong".

Hen is in hens 60s and would be homeless except for the charity of his aged (and otherwise estranged) parent.

Re: What makes a person seem wise?

#63

Post by wenc »

freefaler wrote: post #61
_bramses wrote: post #31

An active reading habit (of books) is one of the most reliable ways to achieve wisdom. Why? - Books require a "Goldilocks" amount of sustained, slow effort given to one topic. Not too costly to pursue that it is a bodily harm risk, but not trivial either in terms of time and attention investment. This slows down the frenetic nature of a mind that latches onto heuristics. - By being exposed to different well-formed id…

My personal hunch is that the more you read, the better your model of reality is. If you have an interest to a particular time/topic and you've read almost all you can find about it you have a better understanding of "something" from a different point of views. Like read all about a particular event in WW2 from all the sides and on different levels (military, economy, social, political). A term coined by Mortimer Adl…

I think reading is necessary but insufficient for wisdom.

Reading lets you acquire the experiences that you personally cannot live out in your own life. It does provide leverage in that way.

However syntopical reading isn’t sufficient to produce good work. Mortimer Adler himself tried doing it (I believe the Syntopicon was a product of syntopical reading) but those works never did well and were soon forgotten.

Books encode canonical knowledge and this works in established domains but in a domains without much existing knowledge, taking action in perturbing the world actually produces more useful knowledge.

This is why in these spaces it’s important to test ideas in reality and learn from them, rather than only constructing mental models. (We should strive to do both instead of the just latter)

Action often produces more information than reading alone. Having ideas is often the easy part — executing on them is the hard part. If Mortimer Adler actually had some gauge on the market before pursuing the very ambitious multi year effort of producing the Synopticon, he might have produced something noteworthy (which he did with the much smaller experiment “How to read a book.”

To me, wisdom isn’t about thinking rightly (which is what rationalists hold) but about being able to make good decisions with good judgment.

Re: What makes a person seem wise?

#64

Post by glimshe »

_bramses wrote: post #31

An active reading habit (of books) is one of the most reliable ways to achieve wisdom. Why? - Books require a "Goldilocks" amount of sustained, slow effort given to one topic. Not too costly to pursue that it is a bodily harm risk, but not trivial either in terms of time and attention investment. This slows down the frenetic nature of a mind that latches onto heuristics. - By being exposed to different well-formed id…

Reading is very important, but hardly sufficient. One problem with over reliance on books is that your world view will be molded by your reading list. You correctly pointed out the importance of reading material you disagree with, but there are often many contradictory ways to disagree with any specific world view.

Books must be mixed with a close relationship to people and the world. The world itself can be seen as the "ultimate book", thus the importance of the so-called "school of life".

I would never follow someone whose wisdom was built solely or mostly by reading books.

No education is complete, or even half complete, without a thorough and direct exposure to different cultures, countries and their people.

Re: What makes a person seem wise?

#66

Post by whoChumpedwho »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #53
whoChumpedwho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a feature of ignorance compounded by exclusive english/outglish. other languages counter insincerity with high effectiveness.

What is insincere about claiming that Wisdom cannot be described succinctly?

you're going in the wrong direction with this line of questioning. language is couched in culture. the single source of truth can be accepted or ignored, either way... sincerity of purpose and wisdom are paired.

Re: What makes a person seem wise?

#67

Post by taco_emoji »

rqtwteye wrote: post #26
taco_emoji wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBF doesn't strike me as "highly intelligent" in the least.

You may not like it but you need to be pretty smart to pull off what he did. I don't think too many people could do what he did even if they wanted to. I think the same counts for a certain presidential candidate. A lot of people say he is just dumb but personally I think he has to be pretty intelligent to get to where he is.

I think it's a mistake to believe that it requires more than average intelligence to con a great number of people.

The reason the world mostly works is because we all mostly trust each other. A relative handful of assholes and bullies will easily find ways to take advantage of that trust, but that doesn't make them intelligent.

Re: What makes a person seem wise?

#68

Post by DiscourseFan »

whoChumpedwho wrote: post #66
DiscourseFan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is insincere about claiming that Wisdom cannot be described succinctly?

you're going in the wrong direction with this line of questioning. language is couched in culture. the single source of truth can be accepted or ignored, either way... sincerity of purpose and wisdom are paired.

>language is couched in culture

If that were true, then it wouldn’t be possible to translate between all languages.

There are conditions of possibility of language use that are universal, even if they do not appear in any given language. But one also expresses themselves other than in words, like in artworks, and this expression often has the same force as language: in fact, the expression itself precludes language and if words are used it is only as a means. Affective history, upon which words move, is that condition of possibility for expression.

Re: What makes a person seem wise?

#69

Post by anonzzzies »

rqtwteye wrote: post #26
taco_emoji wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBF doesn't strike me as "highly intelligent" in the least.

You may not like it but you need to be pretty smart to pull off what he did. I don't think too many people could do what he did even if they wanted to. I think the same counts for a certain presidential candidate. A lot of people say he is just dumb but personally I think he has to be pretty intelligent to get to where he is.

Conning people, being loud, bullshitting 100% of the time, taking massive risks to the point of getting locked up are not signs of intelligence. They just mean you have no clue about the consequences of your actions and you might get lucky to get away with it.
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