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I don’t think anything could be further from the truth.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf[/url]”>http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf</a></p>
<p>@cellist - interesting article, thank you for enlightening me.</p>
<p>I love this thread, as well as that article which you shared cellist. Thanks.</p>
<p>I actually first saw that essay on CC about a year ago. I love passing it along!</p>
<p>Yeah, cellist, it’s really cool! Taught me some things I never even thought about. Now I have a new perspective on mathematics 
thanks</p>
<p>There are many different kinds of intelligence. People can be smart in different ways. You can’t just say, “Einstein was smarter than Fitzgerald.” You can compare writers to each other (to an extent) and mathematicians/scientists to each other, but to compare humanities geniuses to scientific geniuses is like comparing apples to oranges.</p>
<p>I agree that our society undervalues good writing and the humanities (how do so many people like the Twilight series?), and also that there is more to science and mathematics than memorizing facts.</p>
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I completely agree. No academic field has a monopoly on being misunderstood.</p>
<p>These days at school I can even feel the education degrading because I can’t find someone to hold a decent, casual intellectual conversation about something other than a video game or the iphone (everyone talks about that these days, I just watch.)</p>
<p>I believe that intelligence is a profound understanding of our world and universe that one is gifted with. That understanding can be developed; however some are already better-equipped than others. Mathematicians/scientists have an advantage when it comes to the natural, earthly matters of the world. Writers/philospohers and the like have an advantage when it comes to the less black-and-white side that equals humanity.</p>
<p>The representatives of the left hemisphere of the brain often get more recognition due to the fact that evaluation of their success is very clear. Those with right-brain intelligence get less due to the extreme subjectivity of human nature.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t necessarily think that the quality of writing is declining. There are infinite stories to be told and a fresh crop of Bronte’s will always be in supply. However, I do think that with the advances in communication the novelty of good writing is less recognizable. More degradation is heard. More subjectivity is surfaced. Writing isn’t as difficult to find, and diamonds in the rough are less likely to be rewarded or separated from the pack.</p>
<p>The only way I measure intelligence is to learn what your idea is and how well you implement it. You can have all the book knowledge in the world, if you can’t pull it off, you suck. Go study some more.</p>
<p>I’m going to quote the Dead Poet’s Society here:</p>
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