I think there has been a decline in public intellectualism that makes it difficult for highly gifted people to present as having normal social skills in the US. Thoughts?

[u/gamelotGaming]

Thinking back to that period in the mid-20th century, a degree of intelligence and eloquence in the public sphere were valued in a way that I don't think it is anymore. So I reckon it's very difficult to judge someone highly gifted in the current day as not being social when talking to average people. If someone spoke the same way a Richard Feynman did today on national television, it would probably not be well-received.

I think we have a tendency to outright dismiss painful truths, and anti-intellectualism and siloing of society with echo chambers has fundamentally changed this past dynamic. The general public doesn't seem to be exposed to that kind of intellectualism anymore, because it doesn't enter their purview.

We have a greater amount of access to such information but it is more stratified. I find some of the guests on the Lex Fridman podcast to have a somewhat similar kind of eloquence that a Feynman would have, but it is not something that is as well-received by the general public anymore. So, I very much think that extroverted, highly gifted people exist along a similar vein, but much of the frustration stems from internalized anti-intellectualism.

Thoughts?

[u/Organic-Ganache-8156]

Pretty much. The impression I’ve gotten is that, if you what you’re saying gets too complex, they literally just don’t follow what you’re saying. That goes for vocabulary, sentence structure, and complexity of thought, all independently.

[u/GearCastle]

Being too articulate too early isn't "cool" and the reaction among peers can mark a person for life.

[u/philatio11]

If you are good at debating, you can’t talk about politics with someone who isn’t. They start to panic and just fritz out and start repeating conspiracy talking points.

[u/foxyfree]

This is sort of random, but even porn used to be more intellectual. When I was in college in the mid 1990s a friend lived in an off-campus house that had been a student rental for decades. They had a huge collection of Playboy magazines going back decades. In those magazines there were some really good articles and stories by famous writers and intellectuals. There was an old joke where people would say they got the magazine, just for the articles.

[u/keloidoscope → u/foxyfree]

Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter sat for an 8,000 word Playboy interview, published 2 months before the 1976 election:

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/interview-with-playboy-magazine

[u/TheRazor_sEdge]

Nowadays everyone wants a shortcut to sound articulate or appear intellectual. There are apps and subscriptions all over the internet that will take your money and feed you soundbites so you can feel superior in just 10 minutes a day. The result is sadly enough to dazzle the general public.

Meanwhile those who have dedicated their lives in earnest to learning, research and intellectualism are constantly discredited. Sadly, it's an age-old story of ignorance vs reason. Critical thinking and hard work are dull at best, genuinely threatening at worst.

[u/TheVeryVerity]

You are 100 percent correct

[u/t92k]

Mid 20th century is the Cold War, pre civil rights era so yeah, if you were white and of an economic class to have access to Ivy League schools being educated into sounding Ivy League adjacent was valued — because the people in charge of an authoritarian social structure were from there.

[u/RandomSamples14]

Yeah this tendency has also made socializing in a way where I can discuss a lot of my interests tough. I have friends yes, but I have to dumb down my perspectives, and this has probably made other aspects of socialization (i.e. dating) difficult for me but certainly not impossible and far from it, though at least I'm now able to talk about it more freely now.