Who are the overrated intellectuals of the past century?

2q63h3 wrote:

not a runner... wrote:

Foucault, Derrida

+1

But also Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz

I actually liked reading some Foucault, but all the disciples make me agree that he is overrated.

Junk Master wrote:

Carl Jung.

+1

More of an idiot than an intellectual.

Concerned Citizen wrote:

Sigmund Freud

+1

Mack Attack wrote:

I used to be very impressed with Hawking - the more of his stuff I read, the more it appeared he was spouting fiction and opinion.

As humans, our knowledge is still in its infantile stage - so I guess anybody who is considered an "intellectual" is over-rated. It's like, who's the smartest dog?

That is the nature of a theoretical physicist. Hawking's ideas have sparked debate and probably have led to some better thinking about our universe. HOWEVER, his conclusions were wrong and he himself has admitted it. The problem is his latest theories are even much more fanciful and irrelevant...so sad. That all being what it is, I think he has been shown in his own lifetime to be overrated as an intellectual. He is an intellectual however, just not as relevant as once thought.

Yep, it's my opinion that he's overrated as a scientist. Or at least that many other scientists are quite UNDERRATED in comparison.

Hawking's only big scientific contribution is being the first to propose Hawking Radiation (which one can think of as caused by splitting of virtual particle/anti-particle pairs at the event horizon of a black hole). This is theoretically interesting insofar as candidates for a quantum theory of gravity may differ in their predictions about it. However, it has yet to be observed, and we have yet to come up with any such candidate theories!

I'm not arguing that he's not a great scientist, just that his preeminence is somewhat disproportional to his work. He's by far the most famous living physicist, but not in the top 100 scientifically. I'd argue that Ed Witten is today's greatest physicist, and when do you ever hear his name? What about Drexler, Guth, Hagen, t'Hooft?

Bertrand Russell

sdfadfadfaf wrote:

Junk Master wrote:

Carl Jung.

+1

More of an idiot than an intellectual.

+1

Aw, I love Bertrand Russell! I agree a lot of his ideas sound a little naive now, but that's what happens when your ideas influence future thinkers.

true dat. as to Ed Witten, that guy is a mammoth of a brain, and he'll be one of the greats if string theory pans out any any measurable sort of way. It is a bit of a shame that anyone who isn't working on string theory (eg. Hawking) doesn't really have a shot at being influential in the field right now anyway.

Bertrand Russell is possibly the most evil of all modern philosophers.

yes, my professors have dismissed chomsky's work on politics because its pure motivated reasoning and has very unbalanced themes. But many do consider his work in linguistics to be influential and important.

Another vote for chomsky

Coffee Drinker wrote:

Bertrand Russell is possibly the most evil of all modern philosophers.

Just a knee-jerk reaction to Ayn Rand getting rightfully called out in the beginning of the thread. Russell was a titan.

Since this is all getting pretty obviously political, I will throw Milton Friedman out there. He and his hack Chicago Boys caused more economic and political misery in the world than any other non-communist, non-fascist Western figure. The idea that a great collective rationality would lead to perfect market efficiency was so plainly idiotic that it took a team of intellectuals to come up with a bunch of phony pseudo-science to actually get people to buy it.

Rachel Carson fabricated a lot of evidence and caused the resurgence of malaria as a major killer in tropical countries.

Pretty overrated.

Overrated shouldn't just mean "person you disagree with and therefore you don't think should be respected." I think a fair criteria would be who demonstrates the biggest gap, relatively speaking, between the general public perception of their intellectual prowess and what on further inquiry reasonably appears to actually be the case.

Here's an example. Whatever your political stripe, you can admit George Bush was not the possessor of an overrated intellect. Everybody was convinced the guy was a bumbling idiot (and he did himself no favors). In fact, he might even have had an underrated intellect; he was caricatured so severely by the media you have got to suspect he was probably at least a little smarter than we all joked about.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is a prime example of somebody with an overrated intellect. Yes, I'm aware of his academic record. Yes, I know other people with a similar record. No, that record does not necessarily guarantee that a man is an intellectual powerhouse, but we sure like to pretend it does. All of the "oh, he was a law professor," or "oh, we was EIC of Harvard Law Review" talk plays up the current president's intellect into something that any astute observer of his actual speech patterns and behaviors can see it is not. Bright guy, yes, and probably a little carried away by his own perception of his brightness, but not a mental superstar by any means.

Here's the thing, though. He's still smarter than Bush. Being overrated doesn't necessarily mean you don't deserve ANY kudos, just not as much kudos as you have gotten.

My pick?

Richard Dawkins. Saying "no" is easy, bro. Congratulations on making a career out of writing down what common sense tells many people by the time they hit their late teens.

Couldn't agree more. Ayn Rand... what a joke

the 430 miler and the concrete runner.

are those guys dead, or did they wise up and abandon letsrun? if the latter, perhaps they weren't overrated after all.

anyone that thinks betrand russell wasn't brilliant is an idiot. he was a brilliant mathematician and philosopher.

I have to admit to struggling more with Hegel than Heidegger although that may say more about me than them...

rastakibet wrote:

-Marilyn von whoever, the lady who writes "Ask Marilyn" in the parade, like she never says anything smart in that column

I'll second this. What the hell happened to her "column"? About 2 years ago she seemed to start writing for the average HS freshman.