Clever sillies, por Bruce Charlton.

Publicado na revista Medical Hypotheses, o artigo “Clever sillies: Why high IQ people tend to be deficient in common sense”, de Bruce G. Charlton, é mais um texto de assinalável interesse (texto completo).

 Para o autor, “…a high level of general intelligence is mainly useful in dealing with life problems which are an evolutionary novelty”.

 Acrescenta também o autor que “…the most intelligent people tend to use IQ to over-ride common sense…”, alegando ainda que certas pessoas poderão “…over-use abstract intelligence and use it in inappropriate situations.”

 Para B.G. Charlton, “Large modern countries are therefore ruled by concentrations of highly intelligent people in the major social systems such as politics, civil administration, law, science and technology, the mass media and education. Communication in these elites is almost-exclusively among the highly intelligent.”

 Surgiria assim a situação de “…the most intelligent people in modern societies having ideas about social phenomena that are not just randomly incorrect (due to inappropriately misapplying abstract analysis) but are systematically wrong.”

 Nota ainda o autor que “Over the past four decades the dishonest fantasy-world discourse of non-biological political correctness has evolved to dominate the intellectual arena of whole nations – perhaps the whole developed world – such that wrong and ridiculous ideas have become not just mainstream, but compulsory”.

 Em suma, mais um artigo altamente interessante e que não foge à polémica publicado pelo editor da revista médica que se dedica ao campo das hipóteses, seguindo em larga medida o pensamento de K. Popper – ele próprio, um antigo membro do editorial advisory board da revista.

 José Pedro Lopes Nunes