Finally, why would a mathematician know more about Iraq than someone else? [etc.]
He wouldn’t. But why were scientists and engineers *more wrong* than, for instance, construction workers, or other academics (including, presumably, philosophers)? Everybody is busy doing other things than following the news. It is not as if a mathematician spending 12 hours a day goofing on proofing is any less informed than someone working 8 hours in manual labor and then coming home to have a pint and watch football. How, then, can the hyperintelligent not just be wrong about such issues, but be more wrong than people who have a terminal case of Lack of Rigorous Mind(tm)?
(please, no semantic games that a mathematician is not a scientist or engineer. There is a place for precision, and in this case I think we both know it is a distinction without a difference.)
Why is this relevant? Remember that in Berlinski’s original article his basic premise was that the deceit of believing oneself the ultimate arbiter of the truth leads to some really nasty social outcomes. While I don’t have any particular attachment to this formulation, I do agree that belief in one’s own intellectual infallibility is as surefire a way as any to ensure a kind of free-floating amoral arrogance that can lead to some rather vicious developments when given the reigns of power. In more everyday terms, those who think they are too smart to be wrong inevitably overestimate their true powers of cognition, and thereby give short shrift to all that is not immediately relevant to their narrow concerns. In short, such individuals lack the self-corrective mechanisms most people have in regards to evaluating human affairs, predicting human system outcomes, and identifying political processes, procedures, and behaviors needed to alleviate various and sundry problems, big and small. (And they HATE people who don’t recognize their self-evident brilliance.) That is a nasty brew, and one I don’t think should be difficult to understand.
