One is an intellectual if one produces ideas for public consumption for a living

One is an intellectual if one produces ideas for public consumption for a living sufficiently to attract attention to those ideas whether they are influential in the end or not.

There are good public intellectuals and bad.

But mostly, the problem, is that expertise in a field is not commutable to other fields. In fact, as we have learned in economics, there is a negative correlation between expertise in one field and opinions in another.

I mean, Sir Roger, brilliant physicist as he is, nobel prize winner, has said some rather intellectually embarrassing things about consciousness for example. But because he has a nobel prize, we hear about these silly ideas despite that had anyone else uttered them, they’d be laughed at.

😉

Reply addressees: @George23914309 @RichardDawkins