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(08-21-2015, 03:30 PM)Verad Wrote:(08-21-2015, 03:27 PM)Ignacius Wrote: I think he's being sarcastic, Oli, it's fine! Â I went to architecture school, nobody on this forum has a chance of making me feel bad if they tried. Â The KSA was the mental equivalent of the agoge. Â I think the better response is:
Oh God, but who has time for them?
Not quite! It is, historically, a snob's argument, the same way that Shakespeare couldn't have possibly written his plays because there's just no way anybody in the middle-class could have written things that sharp. Perhaps you are not consciously being a snob about it, and that is fine.Â
As for time, well, you went to architecture school, and I to a liberal arts degree. Clearly the time is self-evident.
Wit isn't necessarily the tool of the snob. Â Just recall that wit was the province of the literate and the educated, and for the better part of a few thousand years, the only people getting taught to read, in fact taught at all, were the rich and privileged. Â I figured it was sarcastic because it hasn't been that way for a long time. Â With universal education comes the concept that wit is actually the province of the intelligent. Â We just weren't teaching all the intelligent to read or write, so we have no record of the zingers told between the cobbler and the ferryman.
However, these days, wit is perceived as a trait of raw intellect, not education. Â Knowing a statistic that might derail someone's argument is effective, but not necessarily witty. Â Being able to logically deconstruct someone's argument in real time without the statistic certainly is. Â Wit is just a measure of mental reaction time, sort of the time it takes to process a response.
That makes it VERY obvious in conversation, even in RP-lapse, who thinks of a good response in a few minutes, who needs a few hours, and who needs a few days. Â And none of these three people are more effective, more knowledgeable, or even more right. Â Wit, and by extension intelligence, are measures of speed. Â They're not easily faked unless you can insert a good response six posts down the line, and that's only if you can come up with the response while it's relevant.
That's not as easy as you might think it is. Â Hence the line I drawled about time. Â Maybe if I gave people a few days to think up the best response possible, they could mimic it better, but giving people a few extra minutes before typing generally doesn't turn someone who isn't very good at turning phrases into a rhetorical machine. Â It's not as easy as you might think it is. Â Some people really have a hard time with it.