ahem post 794.
It was so good, it bears repeating. 
The post you quoted from adaher was from back in August. I doubt if even he believes most of it anymore.
I think it’s still a pretty good analysis. He just failed and for exactly the reasons I stated. Shame too, because he’s got the mind, but it seems that for the first time in his life he just wasn’t interested in learning. Guess when you get older it really is tough to learn new things.
If he thinks the pyramids were built to store grain, and that evolution is a lie from Satan, and that homosexuality is a choice, and that the US is very much like Nazi Germany, then he’s never been interested in learning much outside of a narrow range.
As far as he’s demonstrated, he’s never learned a thing in his life that isn’t related to medicine.
His politics are a mish-mash of RW misinformation. He’s a walking skill, devoid of nuance.
Age has nothing to do with it. My Mom was still reading non-fiction, (even while suffering dementia), until her death at age 96. Carson is a year younger than I am and I would be embarrassed to know as little as he knows outside his specialty field. He’s a merely brain mechanic and nothing but a brain mechanic. I know a lot of auto mechanics with wider interests in acquiring knowledge than he has demonstrated.
Auto mechanics are a dime a dozen. Go to a trade school, you’re an auto mechanic. Brain surgeons are in just a BIT of a different category. Not to mention the fact that tons of car owners can do some work on their own vehicle, or have a friend who is not a professional who can help out. Now I don’t know about you, but if my brain is on the fritz I can’t just go to Bob’s house and ask if he can take a look.
It isn’t about complexity or relative rarity of practitioners. It’s about whether someone knows things beyond a single field. If your knowledge is ten miles deep and an inch wide, you’re ignorant. It doesn’t matter if that’s the most difficult ten miles of any field, you’re still ignorant if you never branch out and learn things outside your core specialty.
Carson’s manual dexterity is amazing, I’m sure, but we’ll eventually be able to replicate it with hardware and software. Carson’s knowledge can already be replicated much cheaper and more durably with a shelf full of textbooks. The question everyone must ask themselves is whether there’s anything about them which cannot be replaced in that fashion. If the answer is “no”, that’s a problem.
Well said. Amazing that he’s been taken so seriously for so long as a potential President.
He’s only really been taken seriously by the ignorant fringe that mostly agrees that those beliefs are factually accurate.
The horrifying part is that there’s more than a dozen or two Americans that delusional and yet not institutionalized.
The problem with textbooks and computer/robotics is that the potential for some forms of innovation can’t necessarily come from nonorganic sources.
For instance, in my chosen field (EMS), there’s a piece of equipment that is used to help remove someone from a vehicle following a crash: the KED, or Kendrick Extrication Device. To look at it, it’s ugly and uncomfortable (part of my training involved being strapped in it to demonstrate how it works). But it works.
Here’s something that’s not in any textbook that I’m aware of, and I doubt that a computer could have thought of it “on the fly.” EMS really exemplifies the adage that necessity is the mother of invention. If you take the KED and invert it (upside down), it works almost perfectly for a patient with a broken hip. There are dozens of other tricks like that, and the longer someone is in their chosen field, the more unofficial tricks they learn.
You put me in the horribly inconvenient position of having to defend Carson. I feel like I need a shower now. I still won’t vote for him, even if he got the nomination. But we’re not quite at the technological point where you can ask a computer about a trick like the KED and have Majel Barrett’s voice tell you how to wing it.
nah.
Clearly a brain surgeon requires far more training than an auto mechanic. However, more training in their respective fields is all that separates the two careers, these days. Surgeons practice a trade more than a profession. Years ago, medical doctors were students of the liberal arts and the respect given them was based on that overall knowledge as much as for their ability to wield a scalpel. Carson is nothing more than a highly skilled mechanic. He demonstrates no evidence that he possesses any knowledge outside his particular trade.
(I know both MDs and CMs who are very well educated. Nothing about either trade prohibits a person from educating himself or herself to be a truly well rounded individual. However, the presumption that all MDs are so well-rounded is an anachronistic belief–that also denigrates mechanics–that ignores the current reality and Carson is a clear example of that.)
… the fact they were gentlemen, part of the upper class, as opposed to manual laborers such as surgeons (barber-surgeons, then), who worked with their hands and got dirty. Hence the progression, still active in the United Kingdom, of Mister to Doctor to Mister: An untrained man is a Mister, a man who is now a Medical Doctor is a Doctor, and a Medical Doctor who is a surgeon is, once again, a Mister. (Women? Doctors who are women? Their brains are just big enough for love… )
Beat up on Carson all you want, but don’t do violence to history while you’re at it.
Kildare, Welby, and even Casey, (with Zorba, of course), to say nothing of Martin Arrowsmith, were all (portrayed as) broadly educated men in the U.S.
While they were similar, the trends in respect for doctors in the U.S. and the U.K. were not identical.
I haven’t really been following this election, so I just saw a video of Ben Carson for the first time. There is just no way he isn’t stoned or something. The man has -100 charisma, which is just one of many reasons he has zero chance of ever winning a national election.
Charisma is the only thing he does have going for him in politics. Now, his charisma falls just as flat on me as it does on you, but it nevertheless manages to work (somehow) on millions of people.
Did anyone watch Superhuman? They have a brain surgeon on that show as a judge who actually does look like he could be successful in politics.
Ben Carson speaking on equal rights.
You see how silly this is. I mean, it’s beyond ridiculous that you take the most abnormal situation and then you make everyone else conform to it. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. That’s one of the very reasons that I have been an outspoken opponent of things like gay marriage. I don’t have any problem with gay people doing anything they want to do. You know, it’s a free country, there’s freedom of association.
However, when you now impose your value system on everybody else and change fundamental definitions and principles of society, I have a big problem with that. Everybody is equal, everybody has equal rights, but nobody gets extra rights. And when we start trying to impose the extra rights based on a few people who perhaps are abnormal, where does that lead?
How charismatic can he be while addicted to Nyquil?