I had a conversation with a friend about the difference between ignorance (or the lack of education as it related to our topic) and pure stupidity. His position was that if a person lacks skills in comprehending math or science (he was refering to me, him being in a calc class, and me in only algebra) made a person stupid, and that success in other subjects did not matter. My position was that being gifted or knowlegble in any field said that you were intellegent. (I, by the way, had an A in algebra, but had the easiest time in history and english.) I also said that sometimes there are smart people who just cannot get a general education or be educated in the specific fields of math and science. What are your thoughts? And no trash talk about my friend, he was a good guy.
Ignorance vs Stupidty WAS a good guy? Did he died? Seriously, though, I would say that ignorance is a lack of knowledge and stupidity is the lack of proper faculties to comprehend knowledge. You're not stupid for not knowing Calculus. It is impossible in this day and age for someone to have knowledge in literally every field that exists.
Ignorance vs Stupidty Grades in no way reflect intelligence, intellect or anything. This is especially true in high school. The way I see it (which obviously should be the standard for the world) is that stupidity is just plain inability to grasp concepts / learn. Ignorance is just not knowing. For instance, I'm a pretty smart guy, I think complexly and can generally articulate myself fairly well, I don't, however know thing one about medicine. That doesn't make me stupid, that just makes me ignorant to the field of medicine.
Ignorance vs Stupidty Being at physics college I think I understand CoExIsTeNcE's friend point. But I also think he forgot to consider a variable in his equations: interest. Just think about it like this: A intelligent person have no reason to suck at any discipline, but this person will obviously follow the path in which he is interested in. So, though I think math and physics are more related to intelligence than other fields, that doesn't actually means people at other fields are not intelligent, and it doesn't mean someone intelligent has to be good at math. ---- edit Oh, and I totally agree with this...
Ignorance vs Stupidty I would disagree completely with this. People in the hard sciences are generally wired in a way that enables them to succeed in the hard sciences, but falter in the humanities. Take your average hard science student and I doubt he'd be able to do the advanced analysis or logic games required of an advanced humanities student. Same can be said of humanities student, I know I sure can't tackle the more advanced math and physics equations, but I haven't taken math seriously in like 5 years. You hint at it with the rest of your statement, but I don't really think knowledge of a particular subject matter correlates with intelligence. You can be smart and know nothing, and you can be dumb and know a bunch of facts and not be able to connect them or do anything with them.
Ignorance vs Stupidty Just thought it would be worth noting: I was writing something VERY similar in my post, but then I changet it =P My post sounded a little off, thinking about all fields of knowledge in an advanced level, it is all about connecting facts and 'doing stuff' with them, but what I actually meant from "I think math and physics are a lot more related to intelligence" is that a person can't know a bunch of facts about math if that person is not good at connecting or do anything with the facts, because math IS about conecting and doing stuff with other stuff even at 'lower levels', so it's not based in facts as is History, for example. And I kind of disagree with this (if I actually understood what you said...). I think logic is 'universal', if someone can think logically about something, he can think logically about everything. So a hard science student is able to do the advanced analysis of humanity facts IF he have the same fact bases as the advanced humanities student. On the same way, the advanced humanities student can do advanced math IF he get the reasoning from the beginning. Of course, getting the fact bases for humanities study or get the math reasoning from the beginning require LOTS of years and dedication, that is why usually the same person can't do both. In other words: the logic is the 'same', but the bases are built in diferent ways, therefore the logic is aplied on a different way.
Ignorance vs Stupidty I generally agree with pedro. I know people who are great in math, but when it comes to analysis required in English and History, they have trouble. I believe it is because that they are good at using set formulas or facts when they work rather then inventing solutions.
Ignorance vs Stupidty Personally I detest most hard science, especially mathematics itself. History isn't just a series of facts to be memorized, history is yesterday's now. Everything that goes into studying history is also going to involve studying today; we need to know how people lived, why they did so, and a billion other factors. I think that history requires a greater ability to analyze and connect information to understand than do any mathematical disciplines. Really all you need for math is a calculator and book of formulas.
Ignorance vs Stupidty You thought I had a bad concept about what history is, yet you presented yourself with an even worse concept about what math is :lol:
Ignorance vs Stupidty Yeah I really just despise math, it fills my head with rage every time I see it . What I meant really was that in math you can be presented with a problem and have the ability to find a definite answer that is indisputable. Accessing that answer is really only difficult if you don't know what operations to perform. In social sciences, there is almost never a single indisputable answer, and finding the "best" one requires that you look at more than what's directly in front of you.
Ignorance vs Stupidty I know what you are saying. But math is just a tool. A hammer is only as it is because there are nails, so if you think at math 'alone' you are already doing the wrong aproach. In most (all?) math aplications, you have the problem, then you need to develop a mathematical model, and then use that model to solve the problem. Developing the mathematical model not only demands 'knowing what operations to perform', but also demands true understanding of the problem itself. The more you advance on the aplications (like physics), the more you are demanded to connect real things to math models in ways is hard even to explain. Some intepretations of the equations results in some advanced physics fields like quantum - relativistic unifying theories can even be intepreted as 'pseudo-science' due to nobody trully knowing what the hell the equations really means and how it is related to the problem in reality I think I got excited a little... And I think we are completely off topic haha (even though I think the topic is already 'closed')
Ignorance vs Stupidty Doing well in school had no bearing on either of them. Unfortunately for you, even with your As, you could possibly be extremely ignorant or stupid.
People have a limit to the amount they can achieve and their ability to learn in different areas, clearly I am never going to improve artistically, by very much anyway, but it's not because I'm ignorant but I'm inept, sort of practically and creatively stupid. Thats why I don't expect and don't take my own opinions on art too seriously, I don't get art, I never will and therefore, my opinion is really void. I'm not stupid at say Java, since I could learn it should I wish to put the time in to learn it I see no reason why I couldn't so I would say the difference is the following. Stupidity is your ability to understand, learn and acquire knowledge within a field. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge in within a field.
Ignorance vs Stupidty In my experience, hard science guys in even the lower level humanity courses struggle. Of the like 5 students that regularly visit me for the 110 class I'm ta-ing, 4 of them are studying either math or physics (smart guys, they just aren't really wired to do the same kind of analysis us humanities guys are). Humanities aren't all about logic, I just happened to have taken an LSAT prep that day and was all hyped up on logic games. And I'm not saying either one is superior. I'm just saying their different, and it's easy to think that the particular one your studying is harder. I can very easily argue that most mathematically inclined people can't do the work I know from first hand experience is required in the humanities, but I can't extrapolate that to mean that humanities is harder. It kind of get's back to those personality tests you may have taken in high school. Like what kind of learner are you (haptic, visual, etc)? Some people are just wired differently.
I think that the problem most people have with humanities classes is that unless you are interested in the subject it becomes hard to do well.
