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When you say "we", you don't mean me right? 😂

Apologies if you're an Oxbridge graduate and I have offended you.

Intelligence comes in all forms and academic intelligence is very well respected, but perhaps to the exclusion of most other forms.

For me, I assumed I wasn't intelligent because I essentially failed at school. I got to A level, then did an HNC at college.

It turns out, I just lost interest when somebody tried to explain things by script without explaining why.

As soon as I was able to think for myself and started asking why, it turned out my highly intelligent academic friends didn't know.

To use the YouTube influencer parlance. I was shocked 😂

It turns out that most forms of intelligence that I have been able to identify during my professional life remained undetected by traditional institutions and so we became very successful finding intelligence in the wilderness.

I have a neighbour who is a former Oxford Mathematics professor who I am teaching Bitcoin to.

I have an Oxbridge friend who is a genius in traditional financial systems, who I keep on explaining how those systems work

and

I have another neighbour who was one of the worlds top bankers, I spent 13.5 hours explaining how the banking system works.

I taught my retired GP father in law about viruses during the pandemic and I have disrupted two industries because I don't accept anything just "because".

Being stupid is the most clever thing you can possibly be, it prevents you from not taking anything for granted.

On the other side, academics do know a lot of stuff I don't, I just wish they knew enough to be able to explain it to me 😂

Melvin Carvalho 1y ago

Totally agree most oxbridge grads are utterly useless. Taleb summed it up quite well in one of his better articles, The Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI). See below.

Just saying actually alot of good tech did come from oxbridge grads, well, mainly actually cambridge. Some good work can happen when there is some focus. I spent quite a bit of time trying to explain bitcoin to john conway, but he was only interested in string thoery. 😂

Of course, almost no one is able to focus these days. Likely, by design.

https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577

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Discussion

mike 1y ago

My impression is Cambridge is more silicon technology, Oxford is more carbon technology.

i.e. Cambridge computing, Oxford biotech.

At least that's the impression I get.

Yes, my two PHD friends are making a decent living, but never amounted to anything, yet little ol me, with his HNC built much of the early Internet.

But to be fair, the old adage is, "How do you become a millionaire", you start with a billion and buy a football club.

So my Dad's global public company might have given me an unfair advantage.

His Dad was a gunner in the royal navy at the turn of the last century and was very poor, so my Dad probably kick started me.