[izend]

"He then received a Master of Science in 1988, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1990, both in computer science from Harvard University."

Anyone with a PhD Comp Sci from Harvard is automatically very smart in my mind, unless by "smart" you mean something else...

[gilleain]

So I've been thinking about this recently and come to the conclusion that 'smart' and 'stupid' are just extremes of behaviour and capability.

That is, people have clever _moments_ - some more than others perhaps - but can equally have stupid ones. We convenientally flatten the statistics into a boolean.

For example, recently someone considered to have made a lot of smart decisions in his life has been found to have payed others to rank his character up in a video game so he can brag about it. Everyone has stupid moments.

[gedpeck]

He’s smart in Computer Science. I studied mathematics in graduate school. Lots of smart people in my class…in mathematics. What I’ve experienced since graduate school is people being smart in their area of expertise thinking that smartness automatically extends to other areas. Arrogance and stupidity shine brightest when such people write authoritatively on areas they haven’t actually studied in any real depth.

[nancyminusone]

You have fallen for the classic blunder. Just because someone is smart in area X does not mean they have the same proficiency in Y.

[izend]

Then explicitly say "PG should stick to topics in his domain", don't use a generic term that indicates low IQ...

[lincon127]

So this is completely out of his ballpark, and he's commenting on it publicly? Seems pretty stupid to me

[bugglebeetle]

If pg spent any of his time talking about actual computer science topics instead of the dull pablum and oligarch apologia he outputs today, we’d all be better served.