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The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth | StarTalk


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

My kids knew him way more at a given age than I ever even imagined. I have noticed it; also, my kid is smarter than me, and it really pisses me off. I thought I mentioned that, but it's just something you have to live with. Uh, and I think it has to do with that. I think it has a great deal to do with them having the ability to find out anything.

So let me—if you were sort of a short, dumpy kid and then you find science fiction, this doesn't necessarily play into your social life any more than you had before you started that, correct? So, so yeah, so, but that was okay. The social—I hadn't really discovered the other half of the human race yet. The reason why I bring that up is today, via the Internet, geeks can find one another. This is true.

So an entire social universe has risen up. They can meet. They can meet and have little baby geeks. This is a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful—it was much more difficult before, that's true. But it is true now that we can breed more geeks. Yes, no, know— I guess you're right, it was difficult because non-geeks would never breed with geeks, and geeks didn't know. You were like the lone geek in a class and you couldn't gather, and you know, maybe there was like the chess club or something. But, um, yeah—the rise of the geek.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I joke was that line in the Bible—I think it was mistranslated—it's "and the geek shall inherit the earth." It was mistranslated because, in the long run, intelligence is a survival factor. And in the long run, intelligence is how we evolve the race further, and it is much to be treasured.

With the current crop of, you know, people who for whom science is inconvenient, you know, to their quarterly report or their philosophies, yeah, yeah, there's a good word, nice euphemism—uh, their philosophies contradict that. You know, uh, no really, it was made 6,000 years ago! Really? No, he wrote dinosaurs!

Really, you know, it's really crucial that we do encourage it more. And it is great that they can communicate—that people with intelligence and education can communicate with each other and that they feel they have a sphere to exist in and that they have value. That they feel, you know, that there is a life for them and that they get recognized for achievement in that arena.

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