Quote Of The Day.

It’s important to agree with people if you want them to think you are a genius. For most people, the definition of smart is “Thinks exactly like me but even more so.” If you think that disagreeing and offering excellent reasons for your thinking will change anyone’s mind, you might be new on this planet.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame).

He's right isn't he? An example of the way people define intelligence as agreeing with them is the tendancy for politicians who repeat the cliches of the media class to be hailed as intellectual demi gods by the media. Two prominent iq hoaxes in the US bear out this point, first was where an entirely fictious institution published a list of estimated Presidential IQs which gave a ludicrously low figure of 91 for Bush and a ludicrously high figure of 182 for Bill Clinton. The other hoax was the IQ by states hoax supposedly proving that the states that voted for Bush in 2004 were inhabited by morons wheras Kerry voting states were inhabited by philosopher kings. The fact that the left wing blogosphere and newspapers fell for these so easily bears out Adam's claim. It is ironic then that when someone did an actual estimate of the relative IQ's of Bush and Kerry, using test scores, the Senator was behind the President.