P.J. O'Rourke's Rutger's Commencement Speech
Thomas Sowell, author of Conflict of Visions, coined the phrase articulated rationality, partially, to describe liberal thinkers who thought their description and solutions to the problems of the world only had to be implemented or put to law in order fix things.
I want you to read the following articulated rationality penned by P.J. O'Rourke in his acerbic fake commencement speech to graduates of Rutger's University. While I agree with O'Rourke that university grads these days are way weaker than kiddos who graduatec in the 70s and 80s, I wanted to point out a substantive flaw contained in the following paragraph of his pseudo commencement speech. He did not actually give the commencement speech, but I would have paid big bucks to be there if he had!
What intrigues me is that there are 31.1 million Americans between 18 and 24, and 21.8 million of you—70 percent—are going to college. It is not possible that 70 percent of you are among the 50 percent of you who are above-average in intelligence.
O'Rourke's error is related to assuming 70% is greater than 50% which is incontrovertibly true.. His assumption is that one has to be above average intelligence to graduate from college. Any college professor will tell you that given a hard working kid of average intelligence compared to a lazy genius, take the hard worker hands down.
The notion of intelligence is slippery, difficult to define, and impossible to quantify. Not withstanding the learning disorder, learning impaired types, a hard worker can go to college and get a degree that will improve their chances of landing a decent job which will improve the quality of their life.
I want you to read the following articulated rationality penned by P.J. O'Rourke in his acerbic fake commencement speech to graduates of Rutger's University. While I agree with O'Rourke that university grads these days are way weaker than kiddos who graduatec in the 70s and 80s, I wanted to point out a substantive flaw contained in the following paragraph of his pseudo commencement speech. He did not actually give the commencement speech, but I would have paid big bucks to be there if he had!
What intrigues me is that there are 31.1 million Americans between 18 and 24, and 21.8 million of you—70 percent—are going to college. It is not possible that 70 percent of you are among the 50 percent of you who are above-average in intelligence.
O'Rourke's error is related to assuming 70% is greater than 50% which is incontrovertibly true.. His assumption is that one has to be above average intelligence to graduate from college. Any college professor will tell you that given a hard working kid of average intelligence compared to a lazy genius, take the hard worker hands down.
The notion of intelligence is slippery, difficult to define, and impossible to quantify. Not withstanding the learning disorder, learning impaired types, a hard worker can go to college and get a degree that will improve their chances of landing a decent job which will improve the quality of their life.
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