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It did cross my mind that some of them might have got in to these places due to donations from rich family but looking at Raab's family history, I suspect he must have done it on merit alone.
I wonder if this is evidence of one of the things I have read that troubles me most - the cleverer people are, the more they can be biased on things as they have the intelligence to find arguments to support their position. Hence these (academically intelligent) people being zealots….
I think there might be some truth to this but in reality I just think that intelligence is a really complicated thing. There are loads of different types of intelligence and its rare for somebody to be well endowed with all of the different types. In Raab's case, i suspect we think he's dim because he's light on one or two of these.
Stonehedge-
There are loads of different types of intelligence
I think that's both a simplistic description of things and difficult to prove, without some means of being able to read people's minds. We can observe and measure the ways people behave but we aren't currently capable of directly observing how they think. Safer to say that there are different areas in which people could potentially apply their intelligence and most people (for whatever reasons) only do so in a subset - some a broader or narrower range than others.
The other thing about intelligence is that how you apply it is shaped by your life experiences.
Yes. Also by your personality. One member of my immediate family has a reasonably high mental potential but has been (both by nature and by choice) thumpingly anti-intellectual all their life. Quite competent in a narrow range , functionally a moron in most other respects.
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Sure but which of those do you think he lacks which result in "didn't realise Dover matters" combined with relative high achievement legally?
I think the argument is a reasonable one - it takes a degree of mental flexibility to be able to see an argument that supports your view (something which is human nature to want to do); that skill is one which lawyers in particular train / are good at (or at least should be good at)
Edit: maybe we're saying the same thing and I'm just adopting a relatively narrow definition of intelligence - just not entirely sure if that explains the types of things he has seemed dim at - which seem to be mostly surprise when something doesn't align with his ideological view of the world.
itsbruce
andyfallsoff
The same is true of most of these politicians - very few went to average unis (or no uni at all). Truss was Oxbridge as well, wasn’t she, as was Braverman?
I wonder if this is evidence of one of the things I have read that troubles me most - the cleverer people are, the more they can be biased on things as they have the intelligence to find arguments to support their position. Hence these (academically intelligent) people being zealots….