It's a slam dunk: being smart is always useful

One of the nice things about Brilliant is that it's a community that celebrates and respects intelligence and the pursuit of esoteric subjects. This is in contrast to the larger world where there can be a stigma associated with being smart. We often hear words like nerd, dork, geek thrown around as being smart, by definition, puts you as an outlier of the population. People are afraid of difference, especially when the difference makes someone else better equipped to succeed and hence they often denigrate people who are different.

One of the standard (and admittedly sterotypical) divisions that exists with teenage populations is smart kids vs. cool kids, or smart kids vs. jocks, etc. This article talks about NBA basketball players who are both smart AND jocks and some of their experiences growing up. I found it pretty interesting. Apparently, even though they were in the top 1% of athletically gifted people, they still got grief for being smart and different. The best part of the article for me was the argument by the players that being smart is not something to be afraid of - it's a tool that makes you better at what you do - and that we should make the celebration of intelligence more common in society, similar to how we celebrate atheltic prowess.

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It's a slam dunk: being smart is always useful

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