""Because giftedness is not to be talked about, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift. That they are not superior human beings, but lucky ones. That the gift brings with it obligations to be worthy of it."
Oh, no, not that old canard. Took me many years to get that off my psyche.
Translate to, say, physical beauty.
...that the gift brings with it obligations to be worthy of it.
Right. So every beautiful person should be forced, for the good of mankind, to share that beauty as much as possible, freely distributing naked pictures of themselves that all may bask in it.
Doesn't make sense. Neither does pressuring smart, sorry, 'gifted', people to 'share' their intelligence out of some sort of misguided sense of obligation.
"Who thinks they're not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss from the suburbs thinks she's open-minded. Hasn't she been taught to be? Ask anyone, and they'll say the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong."
-- Paul Graham
"In the same way that we need statesmen to spare us the abjection of exercising power, we need scholars to spare us the abjection of learning."
-- Jean Baudrillard
"Because giftedness is not to be talked about, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift. That they are not superior human beings, but lucky ones. That the gift brings with it obligations to be worthy of it."
-- Charles Murray
"The popular media can only handle ideas expressible in proto-language, not ideas requiring nested phrase-structure syntax for their exposition."
-- Ben Goertzel
"The best part about math is that, if you have the right answer and someone disagrees with you, it really is because they're stupid."
-- Quotes from Honors Linear Algebra
"Long-Term Capital Management had faith in diversification. Its history serves as ample notification that eggs in different baskets can and do all break at the same time."
-- Craig L. Howe
"Accountability is about one person taking responsibility. If two people are accountable for the same decision, no one is really accountable."
-- Glyn Holton