70-549: Stupidity is a lack of intelligence , understanding , reason , or wit , an inability to learn. It may be innate, assumed or reactive. The word stupid comes from the Latin word stupere . Stupid characters are often used for comedy in fictional stories. Walter B. Pitkin called stupidity "evil", but in a more Romantic spirit William Blake and Carl Jung believed stupidity can be the mother of wisdom . The root word stupid , which can serve as an adjective or noun, comes from
140-675: A " hypersurface in a multidimensional space" to compare systems that are good at different intellectual tasks. Some skeptics believe that there is no meaningful way to define intelligence, aside from "just pointing to ourselves". Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing CH OMG ( née Tayler ; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran , where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ), where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950),
210-430: A "bandit" whose action at least has a rational goal, namely his benefit. The fool or buffoon has been a central character in much comedy . Alford and Alford found that humor based on stupidity was prevalent in "more complex" societies as compared to some other forms of humor. Some analysis of William Shakespeare 's comedy has found that his characters tend to hold mutually contradictory positions; because this implies
280-593: A barrier against learning anything new, and thus its own form of pseudo-stupidity. Otto Fenichel maintained that "quite a percentage of so-called feeble-mindedness turns out to be pseudo-debility, conditioned by inhibition ... Every intellect begins to show weakness when affective motives are working against it". He suggests that "people become stupid ad hoc , that is, when they do not want to understand, where understanding would cause anxiety or guilt feeling, or would endanger an existing neurotic equilibrium." In rather different fashion, Doris Lessing argued that "there
350-461: A broad range of application, from being slow of mind (indicating a lack of intelligence, care or reason), dullness of feeling or sensation (torpidity, senselessness, insensitivity), or lacking interest or point (vexing, exasperating). It can either imply a congenital lack of capacity for reasoning, or a temporary state of daze, or slow-mindedness. In Understanding Stupidity , James F. Welles defines stupidity this way: "The term may be used to designate
420-889: A divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, at age 87. In 2001 Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature . In 2008 The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah , Iran , on 22 October 1919, to Captain Alfred Tayler and Emily Maude Tayler (née McVeagh), both British subjects. Her father, who had lost
490-452: A fairly high degree of intellect that varies according to each species. The same is true with arthropods . Evidence of a general factor of intelligence has been observed in non-human animals. First described in humans , the g factor has since been identified in a number of non-human species. Cognitive ability and intelligence cannot be measured using the same, largely verbally dependent, scales developed for humans. Instead, intelligence
560-434: A fundamental quality possessed by every person is the theory of General Intelligence, or g factor . The g factor is a construct that summarizes the correlations observed between an individual's scores on a range of cognitive tests. Today, most psychologists agree that IQ measures at least some aspects of human intelligence, particularly the ability to thrive in an academic context. However, many psychologists question
630-638: A given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions, and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen, somewhat different, definitions. Psychologists and learning researchers also have suggested definitions of intelligence such as
700-498: A great writer." She attended the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention as its Writer Guest of Honor. Here she made a speech in which she described her dystopian novel Memoirs of a Survivor as "an attempt at an autobiography". The Canopus in Argos novels present an advanced interstellar society's efforts to accelerate the evolution of other worlds, including Earth. Using Sufi concepts, to which Lessing had been introduced in
770-410: A lack of careful analysis it indicates stupidity on their part. Today there is a wide array of television shows that showcase stupidity such as The Simpsons . Goofball comedy is a class of naive, zany humour typified by actor Leslie Nielsen . Stupidity is a 2003 movie directed by Albert Nerenberg . It depicts examples and analyses of stupidity in modern society and media, and seeks "to explore
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#1732798406563840-738: A leg during his service in World War I , met his future wife, a nurse, at the Royal Free Hospital in London where he was recovering from his amputation . The couple moved to Iran, for Alfred to take a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia . In 1925 the family moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to farm maize and other crops on about 1,000 acres (400 ha) of bush that Alfred bought. In
910-475: A long time I felt I had done a very brave thing. There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. I felt I wasn't the best person to bring them up. I would have ended up an alcoholic or a frustrated intellectual like my mother." As well as campaigning against nuclear arms , she was an active opponent of apartheid , which led her to being banned from South Africa and Rhodesia in 1956 for many years. In
980-491: A love affair with RAF serviceman John Whitehorn (brother of journalist Katharine Whitehorn ), who was stationed in Southern Rhodesia, and wrote him ninety letters between 1943 and 1949. Lessing moved to London in 1949 with her younger son, Peter, to pursue her writing career and socialist beliefs, but left the two older children with their father Frank Wisdom. She later said that at the time she saw no choice: "For
1050-565: A mentality which is considered to be informed, deliberate and maladaptive." Welles distinguishes stupidity from ignorance ; where stupidity means one must know they are acting in their own worst interest in that it must be a choice, not a forced act or accident. Lastly, it requires the activity to be maladaptive, in that it is in the worst interest of the actor, and specifically done to prevent adaption to new data or existing circumstances." There are various tests to measure intelligence quotient (IQ), as well as tests that measure aptitude , such as
1120-571: A new book. She died on 17 November 2013, aged 94, at her home in West Hampstead , London, of kidney failure, sepsis and a chest infection, predeceased by her two sons, but was survived by her daughter, Jean, who lives in South Africa. She was remembered with a humanist funeral service . Lessing's fiction is commonly divided into three distinct phases. During her Communist phase (1944–56) she wrote radically about social issues,
1190-477: A pejorative for misdeeds, whether purposeful or accidental, due to absence of mental capacity. Stupidity is a quality or state of being stupid, or an act or idea that exhibits properties of being stupid. In a character study of "The Stupid Man" attributed to the Greek philosopher Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC), stupidity was defined as "mental slowness in speech or action". The modern English word "stupid" has
1260-677: A theme to which she returned in The Good Terrorist (1985). Doris Lessing's first novel, The Grass Is Singing , as well as the short stories later collected in African Stories , are set in Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe ) where she was then living. This was followed by a psychological phase from 1956 to 1969, including the Golden Notebook and the "Children of Violence" quintet. Third came
1330-550: A year at Girls High School in Salisbury. She left school at age 13 and was self-educated from then on. She left home at 15 and worked as a nursemaid . She started reading material that her employer gave her on politics and sociology and began writing around this time. In 1937 Doris moved to Salisbury to work as a telephone operator , and she soon married her first husband, civil servant Frank Wisdom, with whom she had two children (John, 1940–1992, and Jean, born in 1941), before
1400-470: Is called artificial intelligence . The word intelligence derives from the Latin nouns intelligentia or intellēctus , which in turn stem from the verb intelligere , to comprehend or perceive. In the Middle Ages , the word intellectus became the scholarly technical term for understanding and a translation for the Greek philosophical term nous . This term, however, was strongly linked to
1470-450: Is different from learning . Learning refers to the act of retaining facts and information or abilities and being able to recall them for future use. Intelligence, on the other hand, is the cognitive ability of someone to perform these and other processes. There have been various attempts to quantify intelligence via psychometric testing. Prominent among these are the various Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests, which were first developed in
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#17327984065631540-409: Is important to our mental health and has ties to social intelligence. Social intelligence is the ability to understand the social cues and motivations of others and oneself in social situations. It is thought to be distinct to other types of intelligence, but has relations to emotional intelligence. Social intelligence has coincided with other studies that focus on how we make judgements of others,
1610-785: Is measured using a variety of interactive and observational tools focusing on innovation , habit reversal, social learning , and responses to novelty . Studies have shown that g is responsible for 47% of the individual variance in cognitive ability measures in primates and between 55% and 60% of the variance in mice (Locurto, Locurto). These values are similar to the accepted variance in IQ explained by g in humans (40–50%). It has been argued that plants should also be classified as intelligent based on their ability to sense and model external and internal environments and adjust their morphology , physiology and phenotype accordingly to ensure self-preservation and reproduction. A counter argument
1680-643: Is no defense: "Neither protest nor force can touch it. Reasoning is of no use. Facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved." The great danger of stupidity manifests itself when it affects larger groups. In a larger group, "the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil". According to Carlo Cipolla the efforts of stupid people are counterproductive to their own and other's interest. He maintains that reasonable people cannot imagine or understand unreasonable behavior making stupid people dangerous and damaging, even potentially more dangerous than
1750-541: Is no fool like an intellectual ... a kind of clever stupidity, bred out of a line of logic in the head, nothing to do with experience." In the Romantic reaction to Enlightenment wisdom, a valorisation of the irrational , the foolish, and the stupid emerged, as in William Blake 's dictum that "if the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise"; or Jung 's belief that "it requires no art to become stupid;
1820-457: Is sometimes defined as the "capacity to learn how to carry out a huge range of tasks". Mathematician Olle Häggström defines intelligence in terms of "optimization power", an agent's capacity for efficient cross-domain optimization of the world according to the agent's preferences, or more simply the ability to "steer the future into regions of possibility ranked high in a preference ordering". In this optimization framework, Deep Blue has
1890-788: Is that intelligence is commonly understood to involve the creation and use of persistent memories as opposed to computation that does not involve learning. If this is accepted as definitive of intelligence, then it includes the artificial intelligence of robots capable of "machine learning", but excludes those purely autonomic sense-reaction responses that can be observed in many plants. Plants are not limited to automated sensory-motor responses, however, they are capable of discriminating positive and negative experiences and of "learning" (registering memories) from their past experiences. They are also capable of communication, accurately computing their circumstances, using sophisticated cost–benefit analysis and taking tightly controlled actions to mitigate and control
1960-450: Is thought to be the ability to convey emotion to others in an understandable way as well as to read the emotions of others accurately. Some theories imply that a heightened emotional intelligence could also lead to faster generating and processing of emotions in addition to the accuracy. In addition, higher emotional intelligence is thought to help us manage emotions, which is beneficial for our problem-solving skills. Emotional intelligence
2030-618: The Sufi phase, explored in her 70s work, and in the Canopus in Argos sequence of science fiction (or as she preferred to put it "space fiction") novels and novellas. Lessing's Canopus sequence received a mixed reception from mainstream literary critics . John Leonard praised her 1980 novel The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five in The New York Times , but in 1982 John Leonard wrote in reference to The Making of
2100-436: The Sufi tradition. At the age of fifteen, Lessing began to sell her stories to magazines. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing , was published in 1950. The work that gained her international attention, The Golden Notebook , was published in 1962. By the time of her death, she had published more than 50 novels, some under a pseudonym. In 1982 Lessing wrote two novels under the literary pseudonym Jane Somers to show
2170-792: The United States Marine Corps ' required General Classification Test (GCT), and the Army General Classification Test . Researchers Michael Klein and Matthew Cancian have reported a declining aptitude among college educated applicants to the Marine Corps over the past 34 years, although this effect was not observed in the general enlisted population. Researchers Michael J. McFarland, Matt E. Hauer, and Aaron Reuben report those born between 1951 and 1980 may have lost an average of 2.6 IQ points from exposure to leaded gasoline. Eric Berne described
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2240-399: The game of "Stupid" as having "the thesis...'I laugh with you at my own clumsiness and stupidity.'" He points out that the player has the advantage of lowering other people's expectations, and so evading responsibility and work; but that he or she may still come through under pressure, like the proverbially stupid younger son. Wilfred Bion considered that psychological projection created
2310-659: The metaphysical and cosmological theories of teleological scholasticism , including theories of the immortality of the soul, and the concept of the active intellect (also known as the active intelligence). This approach to the study of nature was strongly rejected by early modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon , Thomas Hobbes , John Locke , and David Hume , all of whom preferred "understanding" (in place of " intellectus " or "intelligence") in their English philosophical works. Hobbes for example, in his Latin De Corpore , used " intellectus intelligit ", translated in
2380-462: The validity of IQ tests as a measure of intelligence as a whole. There is debate about the heritability of IQ , that is, what proportion of differences in IQ test performance between individuals are explained by genetic or environmental factors. The scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain average differences in IQ test performance between racial groups. Emotional intelligence
2450-489: The English version as "the understanding understandeth", as a typical example of a logical absurdity . "Intelligence" has therefore become less common in English language philosophy, but it has later been taken up (with the scholastic theories that it now implies) in more contemporary psychology . There is controversy over how to define intelligence. Scholars describe its constituent abilities in various ways, and differ in
2520-419: The Latin verb stupere , for being numb or astonished, and is related to stupor . In Roman culture, the stupidus was the professional fall guy in the theatrical mimes . According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, the words "stupid" and "stupidity" entered the English language in 1541. Since then, stupidity has taken place along with " fool ", " idiot ", " dumb ", " moron ", and related concepts as
2590-574: The Nobel Prize for Literature by the Swedish Academy in its 106-year history. In 2017, just 10 years later, her Nobel medal was put up for auction. Previously only one Nobel medal for literature had been sold at auction, for André Gide in 2016. During the late-1990s Lessing had a stroke, which stopped her from travelling during her later years. She was still able to attend the theatre and opera. She began to focus her mind on death, for example asking herself if she would have time to finish
2660-580: The Ransom Center contain nearly all of her extant manuscripts and typescripts up to 1999. Original material for Lessing's early books is assumed not to exist because she kept none of her early manuscripts. The McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa holds a smaller collection. The University of East Anglia 's British Archive for Contemporary Writing holds Doris Lessing's personal archive:
2730-527: The Representative for Planet 8 that "[o]ne of the many sins for which the 20th century will be held accountable is that it has discouraged Mrs. Lessing... She now propagandises on behalf of our insignificance in the cosmic razzmatazz", to which Lessing replied: "What they didn't realise was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time. I also admire the classic sort of science fiction, like Blood Music , by Greg Bear . He's
2800-665: The US), this time under one cover, with the title The Diaries of Jane Somers: The Diary of a Good Neighbour and If the Old Could , listing Doris Lessing as author. Lessing declined a damehood (DBE) in 1992 as an honour linked to a non-existent Empire; she had previously declined an OBE in 1977. Later she accepted appointment as a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour at the end of 1999 for "conspicuous national service". She
2870-429: The accuracy with which we do so, and why people would be viewed as having positive or negative social character . There is debate as to whether or not these studies and social intelligence come from the same theories or if there is a distinction between them, and they are generally thought to be of two different schools of thought . Moral intelligence is the capacity to understand right from wrong and to behave based on
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2940-404: The capacity for abstraction , logic , understanding , self-awareness , learning , emotional knowledge , reasoning , planning , creativity , critical thinking , and problem-solving . It can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information ; and to retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. The term rose to prominence during
3010-533: The cognitive abilities to learn , form concepts , understand , and reason , including the capacities to recognize patterns , innovate, plan , solve problems , and employ language to communicate . These cognitive abilities can be organized into frameworks like fluid vs. crystallized and the Unified Cattell-Horn-Carroll model, which contains abilities like fluid reasoning, perceptual speed, verbal abilities, and others. Intelligence
3080-709: The degree to which they conceive of intelligence as quantifiable. A consensus report called Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns , published in 1995 by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association , states: Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent:
3150-570: The difficulty new authors face in trying to get their work printed. The novels were rejected by Lessing's UK publisher but later accepted by another English publisher, Michael Joseph , and in the US by Alfred A. Knopf . The Diary of a Good Neighbour was published in Britain and the US in 1983 and If the Old Could in both countries in 1984, both as written by Jane Somers. In 1984 both novels were republished in both countries ( Viking Books publishing in
3220-870: The diverse environmental stressors. Scholars studying artificial intelligence have proposed definitions of intelligence that include the intelligence demonstrated by machines. Some of these definitions are meant to be general enough to encompass human and other animal intelligence as well. An intelligent agent can be defined as a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success. Kaplan and Haenlein define artificial intelligence as "a system's ability to correctly interpret external data, to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to achieve specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation". Progress in artificial intelligence can be demonstrated in benchmarks ranging from games to practical tasks such as protein folding . Existing AI lags humans in terms of general intelligence, which
3290-431: The early 1900s. Most psychologists believe that intelligence can be divided into various domains or competencies. Intelligence has been long-studied in humans , and across numerous disciplines. It has also been observed in the cognition of non-human animals . Some researchers have suggested that plants exhibit forms of intelligence, though this remains controversial. Intelligence in computers or other machines
3360-400: The early 20th century to screen children for intellectual disability . Over time, IQ tests became more pervasive, being used to screen immigrants, military recruits, and job applicants. As the tests became more popular, belief that IQ tests measure a fundamental and unchanging attribute that all humans possess became widespread. An influential theory that promoted the idea that IQ measures
3430-650: The exceptional structure of the novel. She explained in Walking in the Shade that she modelled Molly partly on her good friend Joan Rodker , the daughter of the modernist poet and publisher John Rodker . Lessing did not like being pigeonholed as a feminist author. When asked why, she explained: What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, 'Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward
3500-617: The following: "Intelligence is a force, F, that acts so as to maximize future freedom of action. It acts to maximize future freedom of action, or keep options open, with some strength T, with the diversity of possible accessible futures, S, up to some future time horizon, τ. In short, intelligence doesn't like to get trapped". Human intelligence is the intellectual power of humans, which is marked by complex cognitive feats and high levels of motivation and self-awareness . Intelligence enables humans to remember descriptions of things and use those descriptions in future behaviors. It gives humans
3570-544: The golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.' Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion. The Doris Lessing Society is dedicated to supporting the scholarly study of Lessing's work. The formal structure of the Society dates from January 1977, when the first issue of the Doris Lessing Newsletter
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#17327984065633640-423: The importance of learning through text in our own personal lives and in our culture, it is perhaps surprising how utterly dismissive we tend to be of it. It is sometimes derided as being merely "book knowledge", and having it is being "book smart". In contrast, knowledge acquired through direct experience and apprenticeship is called "street knowledge", and having it is being "street smart". Although humans have been
3710-424: The language-using Kanzi ) and other great apes , dolphins , elephants and to some extent parrots , rats and ravens . Cephalopod intelligence provides an important comparative study. Cephalopods appear to exhibit characteristics of significant intelligence, yet their nervous systems differ radically from those of backboned animals. Vertebrates such as mammals , birds , reptiles and fish have shown
3780-558: The marriage ended in 1943. Lessing left the family home in 1943, leaving the two children with their father. After the divorce, Doris's interest was drawn to the community around the Left Book Club , an organisation she had joined the year before. It was here that she met her future second husband, Gottfried Lessing . They married shortly after she joined the group, and had a child together (Peter, 1946–2013), before they divorced in 1949. She did not marry again. Lessing also had
3850-426: The mid-1960s by her "good friend and teacher" Idries Shah , the series of novels also uses an approach similar to that employed by the early 20th-century mystic G. I. Gurdjieff in his work All and Everything . Earlier works of "inner space" fiction like Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971) and Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) also connect to this theme. Lessing's interest had turned to Sufism after coming to
3920-431: The power to "steer a chessboard's future into a subspace of possibility which it labels as 'winning', despite attempts by Garry Kasparov to steer the future elsewhere." Hutter and Legg , after surveying the literature, define intelligence as "an agent's ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments". While cognitive ability is sometimes measured as a one-dimensional parameter, it could also be represented as
3990-438: The primary focus of intelligence researchers, scientists have also attempted to investigate animal intelligence, or more broadly, animal cognition. These researchers are interested in studying both mental ability in a particular species , and comparing abilities between species. They study various measures of problem solving, as well as numerical and verbal reasoning abilities. Some challenges include defining intelligence so it has
4060-470: The prospect that willful ignorance has increasingly become a strategy for success in the realms of politics and entertainment." Idiocracy , a Mike Judge film from 2006, explores a dystopian future America where a person of average IQ is cryogenically frozen and wakes up 500 years later to find that mankind, increasingly dependent on technology built by previous generations that it does not properly maintain or understand, has regressed in intelligence to
4130-413: The realisation that Marxism ignored spiritual matters, leaving her disillusioned. Lessing's novel The Golden Notebook is considered a feminist classic by some scholars, but notably not by the author herself, who later wrote that its theme of mental breakdowns as a means of healing and freeing one's self from illusions had been overlooked by critics. She also regretted that critics failed to appreciate
4200-570: The rough environment, his wife Emily aspired to lead an Edwardian lifestyle. It might have been possible had the family been wealthy; in reality, they were short of money and the farm delivered very little income. As a girl Doris was educated first at the Dominican Convent High School , a Roman Catholic convent all-girls school in the Southern Rhodesian capital of Salisbury (now Harare ). Then followed
4270-407: The same meaning across species, and operationalizing a measure that accurately compares mental ability across species and contexts. Wolfgang Köhler 's research on the intelligence of apes is an example of research in this area, as is Stanley Coren's book, The Intelligence of Dogs . Non-human animals particularly noted and studied for their intelligence include chimpanzees , bonobos (notably
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#17327984065634340-775: The same year, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary , she left the Communist Party of Great Britain . In the 1980s, when Lessing was vocal in her opposition to Soviet actions in Afghanistan, she gave her views on feminism, communism and science fiction in an interview with The New York Times . On 21 August 2015, a five-volume secret file on Lessing built up both MI5 and MI6 was made public and placed in The National Archives . The file, which contains documents that are redacted in parts, shows Lessing
4410-517: The sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983). Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature . In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected
4480-452: The standards of current-era mental retardation , and that he has become the de facto smartest person on Earth. Americans have become so stupid that society faces famine and collapse, and according to Pete Vonder Haar of Film Threat , "...each laugh is tempered with the unsettling realization that [Judge's] vision of mankind's future might not be too far off the mark." Intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways:
4550-430: The supreme Social Evil. Three factors combine to establish it as such. First and foremost, the number of stupid people is legion. Secondly, most of the power in business, finance, diplomacy and politics is in the hands of more or less stupid individuals. Finally, high abilities are often linked with serious stupidity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer indicated stupidity to be "a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil" because there
4620-617: The value that is believed to be right. It is considered a distinct form of intelligence, independent to both emotional and cognitive intelligence. Concepts of "book smarts" and "street smart" are contrasting views based on the premise that some people have knowledge gained through academic study, but may lack the experience to sensibly apply that knowledge, while others have knowledge gained through practical experience, but may lack accurate information usually gained through study by which to effectively apply that knowledge. Artificial intelligence researcher Hector Levesque has noted that: Given
4690-509: The whole art lies in extracting wisdom from stupidity. Stupidity is the mother of the wise, but cleverness never." Similarly, Michel Foucault argued for the necessity of stupidity to re-connect with what our articulate categories exclude, to recapture the alterity of difference . In his book A Short Introduction to the History of Stupidity (1932), Walter B. Pitkin warns about the impact of stupid people: Stupidity can easily be proved
4760-551: Was also made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature . In 2007 Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature . She received the prize at the age of 88 years 52 days, making her the oldest winner of the literature prize at the time of the award and the third-oldest Nobel laureate in any category (after Leonid Hurwicz and Raymond Davis Jr. ). She was also only the eleventh woman to be awarded
4830-748: Was published. In 2002 the Newsletter became the academic journal Doris Lessing Studies . The Society also organises panels at the Modern Languages Association (MLA) annual Conventions and has held two international conferences in New Orleans in 2004 and Leeds in 2007. Lessing's literary archive is held by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center , at the University of Texas at Austin . The 45 archival boxes of Lessing's materials at
4900-399: Was under surveillance by MI5 and MI6 for around twenty years, from the early-1940s onwards. Her associations with communist organisations and political activism were reported to be the reasons for the surveillance of Lessing. Disaffected, and turning away from Marxist political philosophy, Lessing became increasingly absorbed with mystical and spiritual matters, devoting herself especially to
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