Oromis asked, “Can you tell me, what is the most important mental tool a person can possess?”
[Eragon makes a few wrong guesses, like determination and wisdom.]
“A fair guess, but, again, no. The answer is logic. Or, to put it another way, the ability to reason analytically. Applied properly, it can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience.”
Eragon frowned. “Yes, but isn’t having a good heart more important than logic? Pure logic can lead you to conclusions that are ethically wrong, whereas if you are moral and righteous, that will ensure that you don’t act shamefully.”
A razor-thin smile curled Oromis’s lips. “You confuse the issue. All I wanted to know was the most useful tool a person can have, regardless of whether that person is good or evil. I agree that it’s important to be of a virtuous nature, but I would also contend that if you had to choose between giving a man a noble disposition or teaching him to think clearly, you’d do better to teach him to think clearly. Too many problems in this world are caused by men with noble dispositions and clouded minds.”
-- Eldest, by Christopher Paolini
(This is not a recommendation for the book series. The book has Science Elves, but they are not thought of rationally or worldbuilt to any logical conclusion whatsoever. The context of this quote is apparently a “science is good” professing/cheering without any actual understanding of how science or rationality works.)
(I would love a rational version of Eragon by way of steelmanning the Science Elves. But then you’d probably need to explain why they haven’t taken over the world.)
Someone who says something like the first sentence generally means something like “questions that are significant and in an area I am concerned with”. They don’t mean “I don’t know exactly how many atoms are in the moon, and I find that painful” (unless they have severe OCD based around the moon), and to interpret it that way is to deliberately misinterpret what the speaker is saying so that you can sound profound.
But then, I’ve been on the Internet. This sort of thing is an endemic problem on the Internet, except that it’s not always clear how much is deliberate misinterpretation and how much is people who just don’t comprehend context and implication.
(Notice how I’ve had to add qualifiers like ‘generally’ and “except for (unlikely case)” just for preemptive defense against that sort of thing.)
Someone who says something like the first sentence generally means something like “questions that are significant and in an area I am concerned with”
If you don’t have any open questions in that category, then you aren’t really living as an intellectual.
In science questions are like a hydra. After solving a scientific problem you often have more questions than you had when you started.
Schwartz’s article on the issue is quite illustrative. If you can’t deal with the emotional effects that come with looking at an open question and having it open for months and years you can’t do science.
You won’t contribute anything to the scientific world of ideas if you can only manage to concerned with an open question for an hour and not for months and years.
Of course there are plenty person in the real world who don’t face questions with curiosity but who in pain when dealing with them. To me that seems like a dull life to live. because the question doesn’t concern themselves with living an intellectual life.
It’s not sufficient to be an intellectual but if you don’t care about questions that aren’t solved in short amounts of time because that’s very uncomfortable for you, you won’t have a deep understanding of anything. You might memorise the teacher password in many domains but that’s not what being an intellectual is about.
“You must spend every waking hour in mortal agony, for life is full of unanswerable questions.” carries the connotation that someone cannot answer large numbers of every day questions, not that they can’t answer a few questions in specialized areas.
But the original statement about unanswered questions being painful, in context, does connote that they are referring to a few questions in specialized areas.
“You must spend every waking hour in mortal agony, for life is full of unanswerable questions.” carries the connotation that someone cannot answer large numbers of every day questions, not that they can’t answer a few questions in specialized areas.
In this case it illustrates how the character in question couldn’t really imagine living a life without unanswered questions. Given that it’s a Science Elf that fits.
“Unanswered questions” connotes different things in the two different places, though. In one place it connotes “all unanswered questions of whatever kind” and in another it connotes “important unanswered questions”. The “cleverness” of the quote relies on confusing the two.
Important depends on whether you care about something. If you have a scientific mindset than you care about a lot of questions and want answers for them.
“A fair guess, but, again, no. The answer is logic. Or, to put it another way, the ability to reason analytically. Applied properly, it can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience.”
That’s not true. Logic doesn’t protect you from GIGO (garbage-in-garbage-out). Actually knowing something about the subject one is interacting with is very important.
-- Eldest, by Christopher Paolini
(This is not a recommendation for the book series. The book has Science Elves, but they are not thought of rationally or worldbuilt to any logical conclusion whatsoever. The context of this quote is apparently a “science is good” professing/cheering without any actual understanding of how science or rationality works.)
(I would love a rational version of Eragon by way of steelmanning the Science Elves. But then you’d probably need to explain why they haven’t taken over the world.)
-- Eragon and Angela, Brisingr, by the same author
Someone who says something like the first sentence generally means something like “questions that are significant and in an area I am concerned with”. They don’t mean “I don’t know exactly how many atoms are in the moon, and I find that painful” (unless they have severe OCD based around the moon), and to interpret it that way is to deliberately misinterpret what the speaker is saying so that you can sound profound.
But then, I’ve been on the Internet. This sort of thing is an endemic problem on the Internet, except that it’s not always clear how much is deliberate misinterpretation and how much is people who just don’t comprehend context and implication.
(Notice how I’ve had to add qualifiers like ‘generally’ and “except for (unlikely case)” just for preemptive defense against that sort of thing.)
If you don’t have any open questions in that category, then you aren’t really living as an intellectual.
In science questions are like a hydra. After solving a scientific problem you often have more questions than you had when you started.
Schwartz’s article on the issue is quite illustrative. If you can’t deal with the emotional effects that come with looking at an open question and having it open for months and years you can’t do science.
You won’t contribute anything to the scientific world of ideas if you can only manage to concerned with an open question for an hour and not for months and years. Of course there are plenty person in the real world who don’t face questions with curiosity but who in pain when dealing with them. To me that seems like a dull life to live. because the question doesn’t concern themselves with living an intellectual life.
I’m not sure that’s a critical part of any definition of the word “intellectual”.
It’s not sufficient to be an intellectual but if you don’t care about questions that aren’t solved in short amounts of time because that’s very uncomfortable for you, you won’t have a deep understanding of anything. You might memorise the teacher password in many domains but that’s not what being an intellectual is about.
“You must spend every waking hour in mortal agony, for life is full of unanswerable questions.” carries the connotation that someone cannot answer large numbers of every day questions, not that they can’t answer a few questions in specialized areas.
But the original statement about unanswered questions being painful, in context, does connote that they are referring to a few questions in specialized areas.
In this case it illustrates how the character in question couldn’t really imagine living a life without unanswered questions. Given that it’s a Science Elf that fits.
For him daily life is about deep questions.
“Unanswered questions” connotes different things in the two different places, though. In one place it connotes “all unanswered questions of whatever kind” and in another it connotes “important unanswered questions”. The “cleverness” of the quote relies on confusing the two.
Important depends on whether you care about something. If you have a scientific mindset than you care about a lot of questions and want answers for them.
But you don’t care about the huge number of questions needed to make the response on target.
I just liked seeing the usually-untouchable hero called out on his completely empty boast of how tirelessly curious and inquiring he was.
That’s not true. Logic doesn’t protect you from GIGO (garbage-in-garbage-out). Actually knowing something about the subject one is interacting with is very important.