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I only went to high school, plus a few college classes, but life took over. I’m interested in a lot of subjects. I belong to a group of women who tend to be college educated and well traveled, and I love hearing about the things they talk about.
I am knowledgeable in a wide variety of things, so I can hold my own with almost anyone. My husband said I could be comfortable next to Queen Elizabeth, or a bunch of hookers on the corner.
I only went to high school, plus a few college classes, but life took over. I’m interested in a lot of subjects. I belong to a group of women who tend to be college educated and well traveled, and I love hearing about the things they talk about.
I am knowledgeable in a wide variety of things, so I can hold my own with almost anyone. My husband said I could be comfortable next to Queen Elizabeth, or a bunch of hookers on the corner.
Many of us have gotten "higher education" related to job needs and requirements. It takes a certain intelligence to get through schooling but it isn't of interest otherwise. I learned very little in my higher education that I can speak to, but learned a lot through my own reading and conversations. I lived in Cambridge (MA) and was surrounded by smart people. Some were snots about their higher ed.
That brings to mind the classic bar scene from Good Will Hunting.
Science is hard. It's also built vertically, meaning that one has to understand what's been done in prior decades and centuries, before one can credibly indulge in innovation on one's own. This generally means formal study, with the frictions and frissons with one's peers. This is why we have universities in the first place! The solitary genius is increasingly rare. Look at the authors' list on a typical paper; then look at the acknowledgements, of technicians and other associated personnel. It truly does take a village! Why then leave the village, even if one gets bored by the village's frumpy mores and rituals?
So all geniuses have this burning wish to write papers, pay for degrees, are solitary and leave the village...
I only went to high school, plus a few college classes, but life took over. I’m interested in a lot of subjects. I belong to a group of women who tend to be college educated and well traveled, and I love hearing about the things they talk about.
I am knowledgeable in a wide variety of things, so I can hold my own with almost anyone. My husband said I could be comfortable next to Queen Elizabeth, or a bunch of hookers on the corner.
Do I enjoy being with and do I seek out people who are highly educated or culturally sophisticated? No.
I do like being with people who have something interesting to talk about other than their pets, grandchildren, trips, TV shows and restaurants, though. These are the only topics that most people talk about. Most of my peers seem to have no hobbies or interests outside of these things.
I'm interested in a wide range of topics. People don't have to be formally educated to talk about such things as renovating old houses, genealogy, the car industry, a running program, personal finances, the job market, nutritional supplements and essential oils, growing perennials, etc. None of these topics are probably in your category of "cultural sophistication" though.
I imagine that this is possibly a regional thing too. Cultural sophistication and education are probably more important to people in NYC or DC where there is a big theater and arts presence, many major universities, think tanks, etc. There isn't much culture in my neck of the woods.
One of the most interesting people I knew was an old gent here in Appalachia that loved to talk about gardening and what he was growing, among other topics. We had a lot of fascinating conversations over the years. It was quite some time before I learned he was some kind of engineering graduate.
Funny how some people can manage to be interesting and intelligent without having to toot their own horns about the level of education they attained.
Ph.D. knows a lot about a very narrow, specific technical discipline but not much about something just so slightly deviate from that narrow range of specialty. A young Ph.D. is harder to train than someone with a Bachelor degree because they've spent years focusing on solving that narrow, specific problem.
Not in my experience, and I've managed departments as large as a hundred senior research scientists and engineers, most with PhDs. Many are polymaths.
Take just one very public polymath: Nathan Mhyrvold.
Mhyrvold's formal education:
Quote:
Myhrvold was born on August 3, 1959 in Seattle, Washington to Norwegian American parents. He was raised in Santa Monica, California, where he attended Mirman School and Santa Monica High School, graduating in 1974, and began college at age 14. Transferring from Santa Monica College, he studied mathematics (B.Sc.), and geophysics and space physics (Master's) at UCLA. He was awarded a Hertz Foundation Fellowship for graduate study and studied at Princeton University, where he earned a master's degree in mathematical economics and completed a Ph.D. in applied mathematics after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Vistas in curved space-time quantum field theory" under the supervision of Malcolm Perry. For one year, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge working under Stephen Hawking.
Effectively, Myhrvold has only had two bosses: Stephen Hawking (Myhrvold designed & built the mechanisms which allowed Hawking to interact with the world) and Bill Gates (Myhrvold was the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft). Now he runs Intellectual Ventures where they produce inventions across all of society and license them out.
Just how broad are his accomplishments? He's the principle author of Modernist Cuisine, an incredible 6-volume tome on the art of cooking and baking:
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