I think that you might be missing that I keep saying "required."

I've not said that all academic folk are social inept, just that high (or even average) social/emotional intelligence is not required for success or assigning authorship or even eating in the cafeteria. I haven't even said that social/emotional intelligence is unhelpful. Of course it is. So is having the physical dexterity to able to type well.

The bold bit is a bit odd of a thing to say.

Well, I think its pretty clear you're wrong. Assigning credit was just an example, but the stuff that's required to just get tenure much less reach somewhere near the top of the field (being a good grad student researcher, supervisor, coauthor, speaker, writer, grant obtainer, peer reviewer, conference organizer) require way higher emotional intelligence than an average person has. Its obvious to anybody who's spent any time watching what science professors actually do and plenty of people good enough at math don't make it because they lack emotional intelligence.

You gave a list of things that do not require emotional intelligence.

Making well-reasoned arguments fluently (author,* speaker, lecturer, peer reviewer) is not in the realm of emotional intelligence. Not even a little bit.

I'm not sure where "being a good grad student researcher" fits in your thinking (it is a bit broad and I don't want to put words into your mouth), but none of the things that come to mind (running experiments, doing statistical analysis, following directions, being imaginative enough to think of what research projects to work on, being motivated enough to do the work, writing, etc.) are related to emotional intelligence.

It is helpful to have emotional intelligence when in a supervisory role, but (to give an example outside of academia) Bill Gates managed to build an entire corporate empire** despite having almost nothing approaching a social skill or emotional intelligence.

*coauthor, writer, grant obtainer

**clearly a more daunting task than chairing a department

I wish you had said you think Bill Gates has below average emotional intelligence sooner....could have saved me some time.

Perhaps you should look up what "emotional intelligence" means.

It means the ability to go into a strip club and walk out with one of the girls without spending any money. And those good at math are worse than average. Where you err is not realizing that even without that natural talent, most math experts could learn to get into the 95th percentile while the average person couldn't.

It is my conception of a high-level physicist that they act exactly as Sheldon Cooper off The Big Bang Theory does. Based on this, JP Sartre was more intellectually well-rounded.

I also wonder if perhaps IQ is a fair measurement of intelligence. Of course it also ignores "street smarts" and plenty of other criteria within today's intelligence rubric.

It's a challenge estimating the quality of a person's emotional intelligence.

Exactly. Not that I know anything about Derrida and Foucault.

You can usually distinguish someone who truly understands their field to someone who does not to their ability to explain it clearly to an educated layman.

Someone who is confused will either pass that confusion on or else end up explaining something else.

And IQ(top mathematician/physicist) > IQ(philosopher). To be a top physicist needs a really clear understanding of the philosophy of science, the only significant branch of philosophy IMHO.

Still, the meaning of Intelligence is fairly vague, so with some imaginative defining who knows what's possible.

Lol?

That is like saying that those with math talent can learn to not be colorblind. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. They may learn to not dress themselves in a ridiculous manner (5th percentile), but they won't get into the top 5%.

On the other hand, most talented people are talented across both academic and social domains. Brain health doesn't, in general, lead to specific deficits.

These topics are sort of unclear to me, but i can comment on a few things.

Well brian is right that "it doesnt work that way". Im not sure if DS is serious though. Because it just doesnt work that way.

Also, general intelligence and eq/social/emotional intelligence (or whatever you call it) is correlated, like brian implies.

However, his claim that "brain health" doesnt lead to deficits is not correct because the very intelligent are disproportionate represented having heavy mental illnesses. The ability to see patterns, remember, learn, be creative etc is not a measure of health, just a measure of ability.

So its not just roses.

Almost all endeavors can be reformulated in such a way that a highly mathematically talented person can get into the top 5% without having talent in that endeavor. Pole vaulting, writing a symphony, designing a bridal dress, delivering stand up comedy or picking up strippers. They would approach the subject differently and its usually not worth the effort when 5 out of 100 are still better than you, so a lot of people don't realize it.

I definitely disagree with you there DS. intelligence is just one of many factors, its a solid factor, but in many things its quite irrelevant.

To argue further would require getting into the weeds with specific examples which I don't feel like doing. Keep in mind though that the top 5% among all people is usually no big deal.

Its not easy to be better than 19 out of 20 in anything. Life is not a cake walk, or maybe for DS life is a cake walk. Are you killing it in life DS?

A very easy example is the example you just brought up, picking up strippers. I assume you just mean women in general. You can be as intelligent as you want, but if you lack the looks you are not going to pick up (hot) women. Thats just a simple fact, and yeah maybe if you are super rich and famous you can make something happen, but if you just have the intellect and dont have the looks you are not going to be able to "read/learn" anything to make it happen. It doesnt work that way.

Same thing with e.g Soccer. Edward witten will never be like a top 5% in the world. You cant read or think your way there, its a feeling thing.

(i meant better than nineteen out of twenty)

DS please tell me you've tested you stripper theory, cause I wanna call BS here, but I also would love to be proven wrong.

Does anyone know if Turing was anything like he was portrayed in The Imitation Game? They had him as practically an idiot savant.

I would be no

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2096

Philosophy major who has picked up a stripper in the past checking in.

I watched a review that said the social dynamics were nothing like it was portrayed in the movie after watching the movie. I can't seem to find it though.

Turing was both. There are plenty of examples of geniuses in history who were both a philosopher, and a mathematician. Pascal for example. It's hard to imagine a highly intelligent person who's only good at math and not philosophy, or visa-versa. So a highly intelligent person will go farther than a less intelligent in a particular field, but I don't think it dictates one or the other.

IQ tests indicate how much raw potential you have. So, I don't think IQ favors one over the other. The questions you answer in philosophy are entirely different than the questions you answer in mathematics, or visa-vera. And, how do you place a value on those questions?

Turing is a perfect example. He was basically the first person, correct me if I'm wrong to say, "A computer can solve that faster." And, for the life of me, I wonder if there is a question where that isn't true in the distant future. But, was that more important than cracking Enigma itself? Probably, I mean, it gave birth to computer science.

*bet

To answer a similar question which illustrates my point, I have counseled a few forty something colleagues who were interested in a twenty something to implement advice from my book DUCY. They weren't sure whether to bring up the age difference and ask whether it was OK with her, or to not talk about it. I gave them the better third alternative. Tell her he thinks she might be too young for him. They all reported back positively. In other words algorithms work.

If you are somehow pretending or insinuating that you have "disproved" anything that i have said then please be clear about it, because you havent.