THE FORUMS

I wish I were enough of a dud to call someone naive based on my own misinterpretation of a common idiom. Especially in the ironic scenario where intelligence is the topic of debate.

... is what I would say if I was coming from your lame and contentious frame.

obviously that's true. in order to be a scholar you have to be open minded and allow everything to come in because even if you have some idea about what to do, there's always situation A, B, or C that you overlooked in making that decision either purposely or without noticing and completely changes everything.

however i'm just going to say he's wrong only because he goes to harvard..harvard sucks

TJ, don't listen to masterson, he's full of shit, I promise you. The folks there really ARE geniuses. Thank you for reminding us all of that fact.

people who achieve high status through intellectual means are looked down upon by streetsmart wanna be douchebags which will never earn the respect money or gratification it comes to be on the top
its a way of compensating

Actually you got the order of difficulty in terms of intellectual challenge wrong. Getting into Princeton, Yale, or Harvard involves a lot of stupid bullshit that does not measure intelligence, unless you consider the SAT to do so even though that is mostly learned knowledge and not intellectual capacity (memorization vs. thought process - which is where genius is founded).

Getting a PhD at MIT would be brutal. Getting in would be extremely tough as you would need an extremely high GRE score and GPA in math and economics courses. Your competitive pool would be huge since MIT economics produces some of the top world economists. And then once you get there, your thesis is held to that same standard as some of those top world economists who came through the doors at MIT.

Now, the most difficult part of all would be the ability to teach at Harvard. I go to UBC which is arguably the top school in Canada and most definitely the top school in Western Canada. We have very well educated faculty who went to such schools as MIT, Berkley, Harvard, and Stanford for their PhDs. Many of these people are innovators in their own right. So if that is the standard for one of the top 50 schools in the world, imagine what it is for one of the top THREE schools in the world. Being hired there and maintaining your job must be brutal.

Clearly you go to Yale and you have seen the idiots in the undergraduate system. Probably some potheads and C students and failures. That is why there is a bell curve and why you will only move on if you get good grades at the undergraduate university. Bear with me and imagine this weeding-out process: being in the top % of the country to get into Princeton undergrad, then being in the top % of Princeton to have the grades to get a PhD at MIT, then being one of the best PhDs in the country to get a job at Harvard, and then being one of the best economists in the world to be the 25th most cited.

We need to get off our high horses here and appreciate the accomplishment this guy made in a cut throat US educational system. Probably at least a little inkling of intelligence there, wouldn't ya think?