How do you distinguish yourself intellectually in an age where

By having a high IQ and doing something useful with it, i.e. go into STEM.

>>8633067
No, I meant intellectually. Engineers and the like are generally absorbed by technical matters, and don't do much that does not involve technology.

I suppose there have been a few doctors with literary presence - Thomas Browne, Mori Ogai - but I'm drawing a blank on the technological crowd.

>>8633067
Kek good one, genuine advice only please.

easy, I am getting a master's in mathematics

>>8633089
enjoy your call center job, friend.

Real recognize real, niqqa. That's the whole basis of this website. Real intellectuals can distinguish between pseuds and the genuine article

>>8633067
have fun with that

>>8633103
>pseud convinced himself that he's actually an intellectual
You're right though. Some people can distinguish between pseuds and actual intellectuals. You are not one of those people.

>>8633067
He wishes to be of use. And all the girls in the world are all giggling at him at once, while the minister pats his head and says "that's a good boy then, and don't worry, we'll see you're taken care of, yes. how does $100,000.00 dollars a year! sound, eh?" Blushing and stunned he manages to nod his head appreciatively . He was going to be made good use of. He was going to be a contributor. He was going to be worthy--to someone he would have value, and at long last he would finally know, without a doubt, that he had value, no less than the highest authority was willing to grant him that. No less than the highest authority...

>>8633117
I never said I was one. I just know enough to know someone smarter would know

>>8633123
Then you'd be smart enough to know that everyone tends to think that they are one of the smart ones.

>>8633085
>The people that actually shape the world of tomorrow not having intellect.

Modern science have shaped how we perceive the world around us and ourselves. And have thus to an extent taken the place that philosophy had during the ancient era.

As for writers with a technical background Solzhenitsyn is a good example.

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42KB, 570x375px

>>8633148
Haha I ain't that smart! I just try not to assume because when you *assume,* you... you... Wait. There's a trick here. I used to know it...

>>8633203
Are you okay anon?

Graduate school op

What I'm getting at is that not only have liberal arts degrees been greatly devalued by the institutions themselves, technology has taken higher education's monopoly on knowledge away. And with it took the tests and grades and exams that distinguished shallow students from diligent ones.

Culturally speaking, it's like a game of whack a mole. Where are the cultural authorities? Where are the cultural experts? Where is can the kind of discipline that forced the child Mozart to practice instead of skipping around meadows? Where is the legitimacy that real scholars had? The discipline is gone, and legitimacy is created and destroyed by ad campaigns at the whims of commerce.

>>8633215
Sorry, anon, I've been drinking again

First Poster here,

I don't think some people here understand - when it comes to literature or music or art or anything of the sort, any "advancements" are strictly the work of one person making some references and readings here and there throughout the canon, and then spending a few years to churn out their vision: a book, a composition, a painting, a sculpture, etc.

But when it comes to STEM, modern STEM especially, any advancements are the results of one person making some references and readings here and there throughout the canon - AND THEN - finding a team of similarly, but differently educated individuals and working together (for several years or for decades at a time) to combine their knowledge and insights toward some proportionally complex end.

The complexity involved is exponentially greater - because instead of one mind at work, you have ten or a hundred or a thousand or more, and they all have to be on the same page. Have a look at graph theory if you haven't already - it'll help you to grasp the difference. Even the most allusive works of literature are not competitive in this regard.

Additionally, you might treat productions of games and movies in a similar manner. For one really good game, you need top of the line directors, visual artists, sound artists, level designers, interaction designers, UI/UX, etc. But ultimately, the stresses and reactions in the game industry are strictly profit-related in any sizable endeavor, whereas a sizable endeavor in STEM is a reaction to, say, the need for humanity to become an interplanetary species, the reversal of global warming, etc. - so you will never see the sort of requisite genius in the game industry that you find ubiquitously in STEM.

And being able to navigate and make something meaningful out of that degree of complexity necessitates a stupidly high IQ.

Further, the profundities of good literature rests upon the creator's grasp of facsimiles - of likenesses, but not the thing-in-itself. The worship of Shakespeare is reflective of this sentiment - we worship not his plots, not his characters, not his insights, but his ability to eloquently take two somewhat loose concepts and relate them, and in the process, come to the realization of a third or fourth. But more than that, consider what literature itself is - a series of sentences that grasp loosely at the facsimile of the thing-in-itself. There was a thread not too long ago where a poster asked whether Dante in his life had ever been in the woods - I think it perfectly illustrates my point here.

Anyway, this ability in dealing with metaphors or analogies is elementary to any STEM endeavor - there is simply not enough time for people to learn things from scratch; so to bring everyone up to speed, it is necessary for everyone to have a Shakespearean grasp of metaphors and analogies (and privately apply them to the multitudinous STEM concepts required at a minimum) in order to come to grasp JUST the facsimile, the likeness - and then, from this somewhat shaky foundation, they must work towards grasping the thing-in-itself.

Now it may be said that you do not grasp the thing-in-itself in STEM, but at the manifestations of the thing-in-itself - but the same applies to literature; the difference here being that whereas literature is satisfied and stops at grasping the facsimile of the manifestations-in-itself - endeavors in STEM by their nature strive to go deeper, to grasp the manifestations-in-itself, and are reinforced in these aims by very real, stringent pressures.