Asimov v. Adams

Now here's a real Great Debate: who knew/knows more: Isaac Asimov (bless his soul), or Cecil Adams?

I think CA's knowledge may be a bit broader than IA's. I can't see Asimov delving into the mystery of sperm trees or the prevailence of shoes hanging from phone lines.

If I had to repair my nuclear reactor I'd probably go to Asimov. If I wanted to know where I could steal one, I'd ask Cecil.

As usual, Papabear, you summarise the point in contention so well.

While I can't say that Asimov ever reached into those subjects, he certainly did span an awful lot of them. Of course, no one can doubt Cecil as the world's smartest human, but if Asimov were still alive, he'd be a very close second.

I'm sure I will suddenly find my password not working anymore, but I must say that Asimov had more knowledge than Cecil. I offer as evidence that Issac Asimov is the only person to have a title (at least) under every category of the Dewey Decimal System (or so I was told - though it would be ironic for Cecil to tell me this was incorrect)...

It is one thing to write a 600 word colum about everything... Quite another to write a book on everything!

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Brian O'Neill
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This seemed appropriate to mention in the GD forum: Asimov wrote an excellent two volume commentary on the bible. It's fascinating reading, unless you don't like to have your beliefs challenged.

Now here's a real Great Debate: who knew/knows more: Isaac Asimov (bless his soul), or Cecil Adams?

Not sure how the good doctor Asimov would have responded to "bless his soul" being that he was an atheist. He probably would have thanked you for your kind thoughts. As for who knew/knows more, I'd give the nod to the good doctor. I know that he had an incredible memory, and I know that he wrote on a great variety of subjects. I've read (and have) at least 85 of his non-fiction books, and I've found them to be excellent.

By the way, Asimov said at least once (kindly) that he knew of only two people smarter than he was: Carl Sagan and Marvin Minsky.

Asimov's dead. Advantage: Cecil.

Y'know, when I first saw the title of this thread I thought it referred to *Douglas* Adams ...

I think Asimov could take on either of them alone. But could he hold his own against an Adams-Adams tag team? I wonder.

On Jeopardy's "Tournament of Geniuses" I would bet on Cecil - he would sweep the pop culture categories and score enough on the academic ones (although Asimov would take most of them) to come out on top. But what's the Final Jeopardy category?

Re SC's mention of Carl Sagan. When the first craft landed on Mars, the first pictures recieved on Earth, showed Mars to be BLUE & quite Earth-like. Our TV commentator, Mr. Sagan, went into a very lengthy explaination of a blue Mars. Shortly, it was discovered that the camera had the wrong light filter in place. When corrected, Mars was RED! Carl cntinued his commentary, red as Mars. Again Mr. Sagan was on the tube during the Gulf War predicting a year-round winter due to the burning oil wells...........I vote Cecil!

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Zymurgist

How the hell did that happen? I don't know how to generate a "smiley face" & wouldn't if I could! Is Y2K starting early?

Asimov wrote an excellent commentary on just about everything. Not trivia like Cecil writes about, but the real stuff. He wasn't out to answer a reader's question, he was out to answer everybody's questions about everything. Often times I come across columns of Cecil's and I think: If only he had read more Asimov he wouldn't have had all the trouble he had getting the answer. I wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation to read Asimov's Guide to the Bible. It is excellent. I would also recommend any high school students should read The History of Physics. It is much better than any physics book or teacher you will get. Two months of reading it off and on kept me well ahead of my class, and often my teacher. I work in the children's room at my public library and Asimov books are to be found everywhere within the nonfiction. A journey upstairs to the adult section handily fills in any gaps in his Dewey Decimal coverage.
While I must say that Asimov has Cecil faroutmatched in pure intellectual superiority, Cecil is not without a place in the grand scheme. He is there to fill in all the gaps that Asimov has left; pop-culture and the weird questions of the deranged lunatics known as The Teeming Millions.

I think my reply is missing a few paragaph breaks. Insert them where you see fit.

You can ban me off the Dope if you want, but ASIMOV is THE winner!

Cecil "fills the gaps", as HeadlessCow appropriately mentions, but Asimov ROCKS!

Now, if only Cecil could have worked with Isaac in a book ilustrated by Larry Gonick, we'd have all the knowledge in one tome!

Doc Isaac even answered some questions that hadn't even been asked yet. isn't that what real science fiction is? More importantly, Asimov himself claimed to be "the World's Greatest Authority" and I am not going to argue with the world's greatest auhority.

I watched a documentary on Asimov years ago. He had phenominal output when it came to writing. I can't remember the exact amount any more, but he could write a book in a day. He didn't like to relax and kept busy most of the day writing. He knew about what he wrote too.

[HeadlessCow]

Asimov also apparently loved making indexes with notecards. He would take over the entire floor of a room and play with all his cards until it worked right. Anyone who can find enjoyment in doing that is at least a couple levels of genius above the rest of us.

[Wendell Wagner]

I think of Isaac Asimov and Cecil Adams as being good at different things.

Asimov was a very good but not great science fiction writer. He was lucky in getting into the field at just the right time to make the maximum impact. He was (as he admitted himself) not a very good researcher as a chemist, but he was a first-rate teacher of chemistry. Writing science fiction taught him about story-telling and writing. Lecturing taught him how to organize and present a somewhat difficult subject. Thus, when he decided just after the launch of Sputnik that he should quit his teaching job to write science popularizations, he already had all the necessary skills.

He was the best science popularizer ever. He was also quite good at history. (He said in his autobiography that he came close to switching majors to history in college.) In his nonfiction books that were not about science or history, he was very good at the aspects that were closest to science or history. For instance, I consider _Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare_ as superbly readable book on all the sorts of historical, linguistic, scientific, mythological, etc. things that might be mentioned in a thoroughly annotated version of the plays. This is very useful, but there's a lot of literary issues which the book doesn't even try to address. Similarly, Asimov's guide to the Bible was great on historical and scientific background, but I certainly wouldn't read it for theological instruction.

Asimov was also one of the best essayists. He was great at finding subjects about which he could tell you lots of interesting facts in precisely the space of his monthly _Fantasy and Science Fiction_ essays. I remember one of his essays in which he took a list of the populations of the world's largest cities and found a slew of fascinating things to say about it.

However, in about a third of his essays, when he talked about philosophical, religious, or political issues, I didn't in general find him to be very helpful. Even though I agreed with him on some issues, I don't think he had the skills it takes to argue about those subjects.

And, of course, Asimov was incredibly prolific. I've seen a calculation which said that if you count without duplication all the things that Asimov actually wrote (not all the other people's stories in anthologies with his name on them and not repeated appearances of the same stuff in several books), he wrote more than 200 books worth of material.

I think of Asimov as being an interesting contrast with G. K. Chesterton. Both of them wrote huge numbers of essays (in addition to their fiction and their book-length nonfiction). Chesterton often got his facts wrong, but even when that voided the point he was trying to make, I often found that he had made a interesting attempt at an argument or a useful analogy. Asimov seldom got his facts wrong, but when he tried to make an argument too far from the facts, he didn't make a very good case.

On the other hand, Cecil Adams is the best "quick study" ever. He can take nearly any subject and with a week of research tell you everything important about it that can be fit into a one-page article. He knows what points in an argument can be dismissed as too implausible to be considered and when there is there is a reasonable case to be made on both sides of an argument. (And let's not forget one of the biggest reasons that we read _The Straight Dope_, which that it's often funny as all get out.) If I absolutely had to have an answer to some question in a limited time and had only Adams and Asimov to ask (yes, ignoring the fact that Asimov is dead), I would certainly go with Adams. But then, Adams has never written any book-length popularizations, and I have no reason to suspect he'd be particularly good at it.

Carl Sagan wasn't in the same league. He was a good but not a great popularizer. (He was also a good but not a great astronomer.) He got somewhat more credit than he deserved because of his charm and his movie-star-handsome looks. I read his book _The Demon-Haunted World_ not so long ago, and while it was often excellently argued and presented for pages at a time, the overall structure was not so good. Furthermore, he sometimes got his facts wrong and sometimes stretched the facts when he tried to make a stronger argument than the case deserved. His grasp of the history of science is weaker than he thinks it is. As I said, Sagan is still a good writer, but he's not quite in Asimov's or Adam's league.

[Ukulele Ike]

Cecil's robots have the ability to harm humans and, through inactivity, allow humans to come to harm.

So I cast MY vote for Unca Cece and his Mighty Robot Armies.

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Uke

[StrTrkr777]

First to Carl if you put the : and the ( or ) or a D together it forms a smilling or frowning faceor an open mouth face. In your post it looks as if you had put a colon and a D for DSC, therefore an open mouth face .

As to E1skeptic, where is that stake and pile of wood when you need it. When I said I would listen to God or my bible over Cecil you wanted to burn me at the stake, now if you choose Asimov, you get the same. Heritic

Jeffery

[Satan]

Well, I will say that at least Cecil probably could get on a plane sometime...

Asimov never left NYC for a long portion of his life.

One of his characters I remember recurring in his robot short stories was a genius expert at space travel who never travelled in space.

Her response when asked about this: "Does a history expert need to travel through time?"

[DSC]

RE: Carl Sagan, W. Wagner writes:

Furthermore, he sometimes got his facts wrong and sometimes stretched the facts when he tried to make a stronger argument than the case deserved.

I believe this was in reference to Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World. Which of his facts were wrong in this book?

[E1skeptic]

StrTrkr777: IIRC, I stopped David B. from burning you! I recommended just a "little torture", remember? It was ARG who I wanted to burn. (still do...).

And now that we agree on something, you want to burn me, and call me "heritic" (sic)?

tsk, tsk.

Saludos.

[tracer]

DSC wrote:

RE: Carl Sagan, W. Wagner writes:

<BLOCKQUOTE>Furthermore, he sometimes got his facts wrong and sometimes stretched the facts when he tried to make a stronger argument than the case deserved.</BLOCKQUOTE>

I believe this was in reference to Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World. Which of his facts were wrong in this book?

W. Wagner may have been referring to other works of his, what with The Demon-Haunted World being in a different sentence and all.

For my money, The Demon-Haunted World is perhaps Sagan's finest work. His fact-checking in that particular book was done more carefully than in his others. I personally didn't care for the emotional (rather than evidence-based) slant he gave to his bleeding-heart alarmist environmentalism in Pale Blue Dot and Billions and Billions.

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I'm not flying fast, just orbiting low.

[DSC]

Question and comment time.

1. In which case(s) did Sagan get his facts wrong? Please be specific, citing source, etc.

Regarding the blue vs. red Mars thing mentioned earlier (assuming this actually happened), I'll say this:

2. One indicator of a good scientist is that they are willing to change their minds as new evidence becomes available.

Maybe this should be in another thread titled "Was Carl Sagan a good scientist?" or something like that. Asimov said Sagan was one of the two smarter than he was. Take it for what it's worth.

[Wendell Wagner]

I've been asked to defend my statement that Carl Sagan was somewhat sloppy in his facts in _The Demon-Haunted World_. It'll take me a couple of days to organize my notes, but as soon as I do I'll start a new thread on Sagan and _The Demon-Haunted World_.

Asimov may have said that Sagan was one of the two smartest people he knew, but that doesn't mean it was an unbiased assessment of his intelligence. He might have been influenced by the fact that Sagan's political and philosophical beliefs were so close to his (and he might have been influenced by his friendship with Sagan). If I were to choose an American writer who I think, based on his wide reading and cogent argumentation, is the smartest person whose books I've read, it would be Garry Wills.

[StrTrkr777]

E1, I am soooo sorry, thank you for stopping David from burning me and only suggesting torture.

I just had to give a little back to you.

Jeffery

[The Ryan]

Are we talking about who knows the most, or who is the better source of information? Cecil definitely is very good at researching information, but how much of his columns is stuff he knows and how much is stuff he just looked up?
Perhaps this belongs in a separate thread, but how do you think Marylin compares to Cecil? (or does she at all?)

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-Ryan
" 'Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter.' " -Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

[StrTrkr777]

Marilyn is not fit to lick Cecil's shoes clean. If she raised her IQ infinitely should could not match Cecil. If you want a picture, Marilyn's knowledge would be an atom of a speck of sand and Cecil's would be the known universe.

She should not even be compared to the master.

There is no comparison.

Jeffery

[Wordsmith]

Could someone help me out here? I read on some Asimov site that he met a well-known SF writer (Ray Bradbury?) in a taxi, and they agreed that Asimov would always refer to Bradbury as the best SF writer in the world, if Bradbury would always refer to Asimov as the best science writer in the world. But I'm not positive it was Bradbury... Did anyone else read this?

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Wordsmith: One of the elite few who knows that George Herbert Walker Bush was a Huge Berserk Rebel Warthog.

[glee]

I heard the deal was betweem Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.

[earendel1]

Satan said: One of his characters I remember recurring in his robot short stories was a genius expert at space travel who never travelled in space.

Her response when asked about this: "Does a history expert need to travel through time?"

Actually, it wasn't a character from his robot stories. The character was Wendell Urth, who appeared in several stories compiled in "Asimov's Mysteries".

[sunbear]

DSC says "I've read (and have) at least 85 of his non-fiction books, and I've found them to be excellent."
Name a few.
I think I read maybe 3.
I got the idea that he could read 2 books and write a book that was way better than either one on the same topic. Any topic

But I never got the idea he was a practical man. So suppose our car breaks down in the desert, I'd rather have Cecil in the car than Isaac.

[Alan Q]

Wow, talk about apples and artichokes! The intelligence criteria for the Doc & Unca Cecil may be different, but they've gotta be a push when it comes to humility!
--Alan Q

[Wendell Wagner]

glee writes:

> I heard the deal was betweem Asimov and
> Arthur C. Clarke.

Yes, the deal was between Asimov and Clarke, not Asimov and Bradbury. Asimov tells the story several times in his books. Clarke also tells the same story. The story wouldn't make any sense if it were Bradbury, since he hasn't written any science books.

sunbear writes:

> But I never got the idea he was a
> practical man. So suppose our car breaks
> down in the desert, I'd rather have Cecil
> in the car than Isaac.

Asimov admitted as much. He tells the story of how once his car broke down at night on a weekend, and he had difficulty finding a towing service open. As it happens, he had broken down not too far from where his brother Stanley lived, so he called him. Stanley drove over to where Asimov's car was and tried to help him call towing services. Finally, Stanley said, "You know, Isaac, if you're so brilliant, why don't you have AAA?" Asimov said, "Oh, I do have AAA." With nothing more said but with a strange look at his brother, Stanley took Asimov's AAA card and immediately got him a tow truck.

There's no such thing as a universal genius. Everybody has their strengths and their weaknesses. (You can read my review of _Good Will Hunting_ and see how ridiculous I find the idea of a universal genius in that film. Go to http://www.dcfilmsociety.org, click on Reviews, and then click on Good Will Hunting.)

This is why I think that hero worship is ridiculous. Everyone has their weaknesses, even Cecil Adams. He may be able to produce a one-page answer to general knowledge questions within a week (and, what's more, a funny answer) better than anyone else, but undoubtedly he's weak in other areas.

[David B]

StrTrkr said:

Marilyn is not fit to lick Cecil's shoes clean. If she raised her IQ infinitely should could not match Cecil.

But it's not just a matter of IQ. I was reading a book, Origins of Genius which pointed out that it takes more than a high IQ to make a "genius." The author said you need to do something with that IQ. He specifically pointed to Marilyn as having the highest recorded IQ and then noted what she does with it -- she writes a weekly newspaper column which answers puzzle questions.

But take a look at Cecil. He solves the problems that nobody else dares to tackle! He is globally recognized as a genius, and will be throughout history.

[Narile]

While it is true that there is no such thing as a universal genius, it always impresses me just how wide some of the great genius's intellects ranged. From Leonardo D'Vinci, to Voltaire, to Feynman, Oppenheimer , and of course Cecil. Indeed sometimes I think that is one of the true measures of genius, the ability to ponder and consider abstracts that are widely disparagate.

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&gt;&gt;Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry....unless the other guy is bigger than you.&lt;&lt;

---The dragon observes