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He's too intelligent
So many people think that this is a reasonable measure of intelligence. "He's so smart that they don't need to try, and are able to just get stuff straight away".
That's not close to my definition of intelligence, it's closer to laziness or inattentiveness. Most intelligent achievers I've ever met wouldn't accept that definition at all.
christianSpaceman-
Absolutely agree. Moreover, it shows our innate bias toward verbal intelligence. But I thought it was an interesting insight / anecdote. A bit like the one from fox (iirc) of him ruffling his hair and getting into character before the cameras started rolling again on HIGNFY.
@marxist_vulcan - need to go away and double check this, but I'm very sure I remember reading statements from Churchill in the HoC on "the Jewish Question", which wouldn't have got an Owen Jones retweet.
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That's not close to my definition of intelligence, it's closer to laziness or inattentiveness. Most intelligent achievers I've ever met wouldn't accept that definition at all.
If you need to make the qualification "intelligent achievers", you're acknowledging there are intelligent non-achievers. I don't see how it's useful to conflate the native ability to do something with the resolution to do it.
If any of these public school idler's native wit is enough for him to get by at a level that other people have to work much harder to reach, then some would say he's clearly much smarter than them because he's saved himself effort. The fact that this is ethically or morally repellent and unwise is a different thing.
Logically, I don't see use in conflating intelligence with resolve or ethical/moral principle. It's useful to be able to talk about them separately. Happy to judge Boris, for example, negatively for his lack of the latter characteristics - in fact, I judge him more harshly because he's smart enough to know just how pernicious his behaviour is and still does it. He's in a whole different category from, say, Mark Francois, who is clearly too stupid to understand a lot of things.
hugo7
itsbruce
I was speaking to someone who's met him a fair few times and knows people who know him well and his summation was basically - "He's too intelligent. He has an incredibly ability to successfully wing it in pretty much any situation - and has essentially done just that."
Which is an interesting perspective to take... and doesn't bode well for having a fulltime job as PM.