If he's so damn smart, why is he "largely incorrect?"

Bright people make mistakes all the time, either by the limits of their context or by the nature of engaging in the pursuit of knowledge. This world would still be huddled in caves and rubbing sticks together for fire if it was not for the fantastic mistakes of bright people.

Name one thinker, from Arstotle and Xeno to Einstein and Wheeler who, in the end, did not get proved incorrect by the progression of science.(at least in a broader context... Its dubious to say that Newton was incorrect, just bound to a context that turned out to be just a sliver of the bigger picture...)

The point I am trying to make is that the Mind is a limited thing, and the process of cognition is innately error-prone. That we are ALL likely incorrect in our surmise of reality. Just some of us, the really bright ones, are able to be very productive despite this.

You don't have to be smarter than someone else to know they are wrong ;-)

Maybe you. ;)

Um, yeah, Tom... Do you have any idea about who Noam Chomsky is in his 'other' life? before he left for politics and activism? Most of Linguistcs and a LOT of cognitive Science/Psychology hinges on reacting to his work, one way or the other. He also contributed no trivial amount to Computation/Computability Theory, and even Epistemology.

What deep fields of human study and science have YOU (or I for that matter) re-factored in the last few decades? Eh?

Generally, if your ideas are so powerful that they can endanger the careers of a bazillion folks, and cause every grad student in the field to crash-course on your material, well I generally grant that as bright. At least brighter than me.

Davin L.