From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Tue Jul 16 2002 - 15:36:45 MDT
On Tuesday, July 16, 2002, at 03:49 PM, James Higgins wrote:
> For "soft" (interpersonal) skills a child who has highly social (and
> afluent would help) parents who expose him/her to many cultures and
> individuals would greatly decrease the time it takes to gather such
> knowledge. Likewise, a child who is given extensive access to
> scientists, researchers and related materials/equipment would gather
> knowledge in those regions faster. But *most* people don't have access
> to vast quantities of knowledge in such ways. Therefor my belief that,
> in most cases, it takes significant time.
Just because you have the knowledge doesn't mean you'll find the
wisdom. Plenty of wealthy Englishmen in the 19th Century traveled
around the world to exotic places and met lots of different people.
And, by my recounting of history, they didn't learn much of anything
other than that they really were more advanced than everyone else and
then reckoned that they had all the more right to be snobs.
I agree, though, that you need the knowledge to start getting wiser
(though the more intelligent you are, the less knowledge you need).
Also, some knowledge is worth more than other knowledge. For example,
knowledge of evolutionary psychology is worth a lot more than experience
interacting with people when your trying to model how a normative human
would act so that you can make wise decisions in your interactions with
people, though to be fair you need to have some experience with people
if you even hope to have the skills to use your wisdom.
I am of the opinion that you can only gain wisdom by accident until you
are a rational thinker, at which point you have the potential to see
around your brain and find the right answers.
-- Gordon Worley `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty http://www.rbisland.cx/ said, `it means just what I choose redbird@rbisland.cx it to mean--neither more nor less.' PGP: 0xBBD3B003 --Lewis Carroll
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