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Great Minds Think Alike
52 Plays1 year ago
In this episode Andrew and Patrick discuss what makes a great mind, "thinking alike" vs "thinking the same," and concept that great minds discuss ideas, while small minds discuss people.
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Transcript
Introduction to Rudyard Kipling's Influence
00:00:00
Speaker
and the brave new world begins when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins as surely as water will wet us as surely as fire will burn the gods of the coffee book headings with terror and
00:00:28
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Hello everybody.
Meet the Hosts: Patrick and Andrew
00:00:29
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And thank you for joining us again for another episode of the copybook headings podcast. If you're just joining us for the first time, this show is inspired by the poem by Rudyard Kipling called the gods of the copybook headings. And every week we take an old saying proverb or maximum and we break it down to see what we can learn from it. I am your host Patrick Payne. And with me as always is my co-host Andrew Stevens and Andrew, how are you? Hey, I'm doing all right. How are you?
00:00:54
Speaker
I am living the dream, man. We've been having some cold weather, snowy weather. What about you guys? Yeah, a little bit of both for us too. And yeah, whenever it snows, my dog, I shake my head on my dog. We should record a video just so he gets...
00:01:19
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As soon as there's snow on the ground, he will stop drinking water out of his dish. He does not care for his water anymore. I can put fresh water in there. He'll sniff it. Doesn't like it. And he just eats snow and eats snow and eats snow shivering and his tail is tucked and he's like wheezing because his throat is all cold, but he just.
00:01:40
Speaker
You know, there's just no teaching him. What kind of dog is it? He's a Britney. He's a bird dog. Oh, those are pretty dogs. That's funny, man. Yeah. Our dog likes to go out and play in the snow. I don't know. She eats it a little bit, but then she mainly just comes in and gets everything wet. So that's always fun. But yeah.
00:02:04
Speaker
Kids like to play outside and we've been skiing and stuff, so that's been fun. It's just the last time we went skiing, it was still stinking cold with the wind up there, but yeah.
Engagement and International Audience Curiosity
00:02:15
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Cool, man. Oh, I wanted to make a little announcement. We have some big, exciting things coming on the podcast here. We've got a much larger podcast giving us a shout out here pretty soon. We'll announce them more later, but we've got probably some growth coming.
00:02:36
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with some people who are willing to kind of give us some publicity here. So really grateful to all of our faithful listeners thus far. And if you are a new listener coming in, we'll have, you know, we'll catch up to speed on what we're doing. But if you haven't, if you aren't already, go to follow us on social media, that would really help. We're at Copybook Pad podcast on X, which is where we post most of our stuff.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah. And, uh, in particular, I want to know who our loyal listener in, uh, I think Belgium is. Yeah. Uh, you know, we have people around the world, different countries, you know, a few episodes here and there are downloaded, but you know, apart from the U S there's only one country, I think that has downloaded like all our episodes. So I don't know if it's someone using a VPN or if we have an international follower, but, uh, can't reach out on X. I want to.
00:03:31
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Heck yeah, yeah. Shoot us a DM or something, man. We'd love to meet you. So yeah, appreciate all the listeners and we're, how many episodes are we at now? We've got, I feel like- 37 or so. Yeah, we're getting up there. We have to do something special for 50. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Got a good, got an interesting one. Very common one this week. This is one you had selected. You want to throw it at us?
Origins and Debate: 'Great Minds Think Alike'
00:04:02
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Yeah, this is, uh, great minds think alike. Yep. It's a good one. I like to use this one. Um, and it's one that to go into the origins a little bit, there's kind of like, you know, like a lot of ours where there'll be something from like the 17th century, like in this case, that's not quite the same. Some old, you know, English book and, um,
00:04:28
Speaker
the sentiment is similar but it's not exact same wording that's kind of what this one is so goes back to about the 17th century but there's also a second half to it that doesn't often get quoted but it's it's part of part of the whole saying which is great minds think alike but fools seldom differ so it's got both sides of the coin on this one thing talking about the great minds and the the foolish ones so yeah that's
00:04:56
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That's what I could find on it. Did you find anything other than that? No, I didn't. So that's more information than I found. How old did you say it was? What was the year? Sorry, just dropped my phone. Let's see. 1600s. I'm trying to find the exact wording here in this article I found.
00:05:25
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but of course I'm not finding it. Oh, here we go. Um, so 16, 18. Okay. Um, and, and I don't know my pronunciation of my, you know, middle English, whatever this is, but, uh, good wits do jump, jump meaning agree with. So, um, and then the exact phrasing I think came around in 18, 16.
00:05:56
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Um, so it's, it's been around for awhile and it's kind of changed over the years. Interesting. And so to jump me meant to agree with in back in those times. Apparently that's what, uh, drquote.com informs me. That's interesting. Well, uh, cool with an E at the end. I don't know if that gets pronounced, but, uh,
00:06:20
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Okay. Well, sweet. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's really interesting. I didn't realize it was, it was that old, but so, so when you, when we're looking at the full quote, it's basically saying smart people tend to agree with each other and stupid people do as well. Yeah. I think pretty much. Okay. All right. Yeah. Well, what do you, uh, what do you make of that one? What was it that jumped out at you? It means you want to discuss it. Uh, well, I think part of it is.
00:06:48
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I wasn't sure that I necessarily would agree with it. Maybe I'll come around. Um, cause I feel like, I mean, well, the way colloquially, the way, the way I use it, it, it, it does work, right? Like if someone agrees with me, I want to, I will say, great minds think alike. Cause then we're, you know, I'm complimenting the both of us. Right. So, um, but thinking of like the actual great minds of history, they're,
00:07:18
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the kinds of people who are really thinking outside of the box and disagreeing with their peers. And probably, you know, if you compare two great men and their styles and their approaches, they might not really go at things the same way. And so it's kind of in that regard, it seemed like it was not true to me. That's why I kind of want to pick this one. I want to pick this one and pick it apart and talk about it.
00:07:45
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That's kind of what I thought too was that this one when I first heard it Well, I have obviously heard it a bunch of times and used it myself, you know the same type of type of way that you have but when I Started really kind of thinking about it and digging into it. My first reaction was well, this one doesn't seem true at all Because we can think of so many examples of great minds that are thinking dramatically different differently and and
00:08:13
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and got me started thinking a little bit about, you know, what makes people disagree and, and, and various things. And, and oftentimes I'll run into people that I think are very intelligent and yet they have an opinion on something that I consider just kind of buffoonish, you know, and I'm just like, I, you know, maybe it's me that's the fool. I don't know, but I wonder if it has more to do with just intellect and it has to do with, you know,
00:08:43
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history and upbringing and character and honesty and all sorts of other facets of a human being more than just intelligence.
Proverbs and Perspectives: Ideas vs. People
00:08:55
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Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense to me. And also thinking about this one as with the two parts, you know, because they're saying the same thing, right? Like that great, great minds think alike, fool seldom differ.
00:09:12
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It's set up in the phrase as if they're opposites of each other, but in reality, it's saying the same thing twice. So it's really just saying people tend to agree with each other. Great minds agree with each other and fools agree with each other. So I guess it comes down to what you're saying, like what's the difference between the great mind and the foolish one and
00:09:42
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And how can one tell when one is being wise or foolish? Yeah, it does kind of remind me of a saying, I don't know if it's a proverb necessarily, but I've heard it said that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss things or something, and then foolish minds discuss people.
00:10:06
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Have you ever heard that one before? Yeah, that sounds familiar. Maybe we should pause it and look that one up. Okay, through the magic of editing, we're back. I found a little bit on this one, so my quote was a little off. The quote is, great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.
00:10:32
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Um, and, uh, I think it had been attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt for awhile, but I don't know if that's accurate here on this website, saying that early a strong match, um, known as appeared in a 1901 autobiography by Charles Stewart. Um, as a child in London, Stewart listened to the conversation of dinner guests, such as history scholar, uh, Henry Thomas, uh, buckle, who had sometimes this discourse engagingly for 20 minutes on a topic. Um, so anyway, whatever.
00:11:00
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Wherever it came from, yeah, that's the quote. Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. And when I heard that one, I kind of, that one I did seem to think, yeah, that does seem kind of true. Whereas if you are in a room full of highly intelligent people, they may differ in their opinions, but they're usually discussing some sort of idea. Whereas if you go to, you know,
00:11:24
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I don't know, the other side of the tracks where there's people who are, I don't know, aren't as impressive. They're usually just gossiping about other people. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a good one. That's a, we've got a nice two for here for. Yeah. Double episode two for the price of one. Yeah. Cause they do, they do go well together. Um, well, I think, you know, a lot of times we will bring in just, you know, personal experience and stuff. Um,
00:11:54
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Do you have, did anything come to mind for you in your professional life or in your family with this one about great minds thinking alike? Or for that matter, this other one that you brought up with the great minds talking about ideas.
00:12:21
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Yeah, well, like I said about the first one, my initial reaction was that I found more exceptions than I did, you know, rules to this one. And so because there's so much disagreement. But with this second quote, that's kind of what got me thinking, okay, maybe there are some similarities between great minds. And maybe even if they're not coming to the same conclusion or holding the same opinions,
00:12:46
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maybe they do all think alike in terms of the process of the way they go about information or the things that they care about, the things that they discuss, be it ideas versus other things. Does that make sense? Yeah, that does. I think that's probably locking into the real truth behind this one.
Defining Great Minds: Mastery and Understanding
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Yeah, that even the way that people go about
00:13:13
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thinking about the ideas and processing them, that can all be different among, you know, smart people. But yeah, the fact that that is what they're thinking about, that's what they're focusing on, is the defining feature. It's pretty broad. It applies to a lot of people, but it is a different thing. This also kind of brings into mind, for me, like the way that
00:13:43
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you know, business today, the way that people get, people get rich is, is on scale and on ideas rather than the people who work, you know, with other individuals. Right. Um, and that's not to say that working at a smaller scale is unimportant because it's clearly not. Um, but, uh, but that's, you know, the people who are making the billions are dealing with the big ideas, the big scalable products, um,
00:14:13
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particularly software and things like that that don't have a lot of that physical limitations. I think that kind of ties into the ideas, events, people type hierarchy, I guess you could call it. Yeah, I think so. And if we kind of look at it this way, I think it's easier for me to start spotting some similarities
00:14:42
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Because, you know, if you have a room full of intelligent people that disagree, they might be 180 degrees opposed on a bunch of different ideas, but they might all agree on some basic parameters. They might all agree that the best way to hammer this out is to sit around a table and discuss it. They might agree that, you know, they might have certain ways to do things. Whereas, you know, if you get into a room full of fools, they might think the best way to do it is by screaming at each other or having a fistfight.
00:15:12
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So the process seems to be the main similarity to me. But yeah, I like the point you brought up about. You can see these ideas that, as you mentioned, scale. Some software developer can scale that idea, and he can replicate it very easily and bring a lot of wealth very quickly versus someone who maybe is
00:15:42
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a plumber or something that works at an individual scale, they can be successful too. It's just harder to, it's not infinitely replicable like a string of ones and zeros, right? Yeah, exactly.
00:15:57
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Okay. So I just thought of something, um, which says great minds think alike, but how would you define great mind? Like, would you, would you call a great mind, just someone with a high IQ or someone who is learned, has had some education? What are your thoughts there? Um, I think, you know, first and foremost, like what comes to mind for me is mastery, you know, some, some degree of, of mastery of deep understanding of.
00:16:27
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a certain field or topic, where the basics, I think, are the foundations, the basics are well enough known that they don't really have to be thought about. And so you can, that person is more free to explore bigger concepts, more fringe ideas, and play around with those kinds of ideas that are above all the basics, right? And that's,
00:16:57
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And so I think that really spans all kinds of fields and all kinds of pursuits. It doesn't have to be strictly academic pursuits. We're getting, I mean, this is artists. This is crafts people and people who build and things like that.
Societal Perceptions and Popular Opinion
00:17:18
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I don't say that this applies to absolutely everything, but it's more broad than people might want to limit it to just to scholars.
00:17:28
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What about you? Yeah, I like that answer. And I, when you look at it that way, I do see how you can start seeing some similarities between these, you know, quote unquote, great minds. I'm thinking of people who, even if they were a, you know, maybe a tradesman or something most of their life, or they started a small business or something. If you got a bunch of those guys together in a room,
00:17:52
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who owned a carpentry company or a plumbing company or this and they just started small and they just kind of worked their way up, maybe hired a guy or two and then they became successful. If you got a bunch of people in that room together, I imagine a lot of stuff you'd hear would be very similar. I bet they'd have learned much of the same life lessons
00:18:09
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they would probably hold similar opinions on a lot of things. And maybe not all, maybe they'd have some different political opinions or something. But in terms of how to do business, how to treat others, how to manage employees, I think you'd start hearing the same types of things over and over. Yeah, yeah, I think with with enough experience, you know, you've seen you see a lot of the same stuff that other people do who have that kind of similar experience, for sure.
00:18:39
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Yeah, and well, in this part of the show, typically is kind of when we ask each other about the what Kipling calls the gods of the marketplace, which is basically society's view on on these things, society's ever changing, you know, popular opinion. So what do you think is the is the marketplace's ideas of this? Do you think it's this is something that people agree with? Or do you think it's something that is society believes the opposite?
00:19:11
Speaker
Um, yeah, I think, I think people, I think this one holds up. Um, I think the, the breadth to which this is allowed to be employed though is, is what gets policed, right? Like, um, you go through different phases in society of what ideas are, are allowed to be thought. And, um, and so, um,
00:19:41
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So right now, I'd say there are certain ideas that even if you're a great mind that if you publicly espouse, you will be kicked out of polite society for. But then there's others where they're popular. And so if you agree with them, you're de facto a great mind as well. So it's a two-sided one where
00:20:10
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It is valued, but within parameters that are probably much too narrow.
00:20:18
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Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And I don't think we've seen kind of this level of thought policing, at least not at any time in my lifetime. And I think it probably has to do with just how easily ideas are spread now, whereas the gatekeepers had taller gates before where they were able to, if you didn't get a spot on TV,
00:20:42
Speaker
No one's going to hear your idea. You could write some little newsletter and send it out in the mail to whoever would sign up for this stupid thing or pay for it. But people with kind of quote unquote fringe ideas or ideas that were outside of the mainstream would never get any traction. Now, if you're a smart person,
00:21:01
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who is good at writing and you have a Twitter account or account on X should say, you can gain a lot of followers that people could list you even if you have ideas that are dramatically outside the norm, right? And so I think we see a lot of the
00:21:22
Speaker
the people in the mainstream, for lack of a better term, I don't know exactly what to call them, but the people who are kind of in the norm, a lot of them, I've seen just kind of complete freak outs of people hearing radical ideas for the first time where they've been sheltered and isolated this whole time and they don't want
Political Bias and Intelligence Perception
00:21:42
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to hear them. They don't want to hear these ideas and they don't think anybody else should be able to hear them either. And so, yeah, I agree with that.
00:21:48
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Um, and one of the things I was thinking is, um, Oh yeah. Um, it's a, I hear all the time that, you know,
00:22:00
Speaker
People will have this this this opinion that like smart people hold the opinion that I hold have you heard people like say that kind of thing like like You know people with my political persuasion are the smart ones, you know, and you'll hear it all on various sides you know, these people are the smarter ones or these people are the more educated ones or these people are the more compassionate ones or or and in
00:22:26
Speaker
And really, if you know anything about statistics, most of that is just completely meaningless because it's like even if it was statistically greater on one side, it's not enough to really mean anything. But yeah, I hear that a lot too, which is what came to mind. Yeah, it's based on whatever kind of group you're in, whatever your political ideology
00:22:55
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Those are the great minds and you all think alike and then the people on the other side are the fools who seldom differ, right? And it really is just kind of a viewpoint issue where the consensus, you know, my side's consensus is,
00:23:19
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is the right one, and so we are the smart ones. Yep. Well, I will say this. As far as this proverb goes, I find myself kind of living it or listening to it sometimes when if I run across a group of people who I find very intelligent or very
00:23:47
Speaker
wise or just honest, good people with some intelligence to back it up as well. I tend to kind of follow what they say, at least I want to hear what they have to say. And so oftentimes, if you see a lot of these people doing... And to me, to be a great mind has to be, like you mentioned, that mastery, which is great.
00:24:12
Speaker
Um, I think there has to be some, some morality there too. Like if, if you're a highly intelligent scumbag, like I don't really care what you have to say, but if you see someone that's kind of like intelligent, they got some wisdom, maybe they got some nobility to them too. They, they seem like a genuinely good person. That's someone that I'm going to want to seek out. And if there's a group of people like that, oftentimes I do hear really similar ideas coming from those types of people, at least in certain circles. Yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
So I think one thing I've been kind of like circling around, but, um, you know, I'm curious to hear what you think about how to kind of protect yourself against, you know, the confirmation bias that comes with this one that comes with, um, so you, you found your smart people and you think they're good, smart people to be around for, for the reasons you said.
Guarding Against Confirmation Bias
00:25:05
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Um, but a lot of that is, is somewhat subjective and, um,
00:25:11
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Like, how do you keep your head on your shoulders and make sure you're
00:25:19
Speaker
that you're agreeing with actual great minds, I guess. Yeah, good question. One, I think people don't talk enough. And maybe that's just because I'm a talker myself. But we have a lot of rules in society. You don't discuss politics. You don't discuss religion. There are these various things.
00:25:48
Speaker
But sometimes they need to be discussed. Sometimes ideas need to be discussed. So people have, as those things have been shoved out of dinner parties and polite society, they've found their way online.
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah. So I really do think discussing things is important, but online seems to have less decorum, you know, less, you know, politeness. Whereas if you're meeting with friends, you know, you might not. And if you are meeting with friends, I think one of the things you can do is just make sure you're listening. Make sure you're listening more than you're more than you're speaking.
00:26:24
Speaker
I've seen so many times people, whether it be online or sometimes even in person, I guess the term is straw manning. They'll try to attack some idea and it's really not the idea that the other side that they're attacking holds at all. It's some much weaker version of it.
00:26:47
Speaker
And sometimes I think they're doing it on purpose to score score points or whatever, but sometimes I don't think they're doing it on purpose. Unless I think they honestly believe that their opponents believe those wacky, you know, ridiculous ideas. And like, man, if someone would have just sat down and just listened for a while and be like, well, why do you believe that? It doesn't make any sense to me. And they just, you know, they'd be like, oh, OK, you don't believe this. You believe something similar. I mean, you believe that. OK, I guess I can see where you can come from. And maybe you don't change their mind, but it
00:27:16
Speaker
it helps understand where that person is coming from. Because if there's highly intelligent people, I can typically see where they're coming from. If they're smart enough to lay out an argument coherently and they have the verbal ability to really make a coherent argument, you shouldn't have a hard time understanding where they're coming from, even if you don't necessarily agree. Yeah.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's definitely a limiting factor in this, right? The ability to communicate your ideas clearly. Yeah. And then the flip side is to understand them. And some people struggle with that. That's not their specialty in life. Yeah.
00:28:05
Speaker
And I am not a talker. And so when it comes to, as listeners may have noticed, when I'm trying to work through an idea and formulate that verbally, it takes me a minute. I'm more of a written communicator. I have some time to revise and rethink before anyone ever reads what I am trying to say. So when I'm trying to speak, I have to come up with some things. And a lot of people are like that.
00:28:36
Speaker
Well, yeah, man, well, then kudos to you for jumping out of your comfort zone and being a podcaster, right? But yeah, I've read some of your blog posts and short stories and stuff. And yeah, I mean, written communication is incredibly important too, whether you're, you know, so but I, and that's part of the reason why, even though I tend to get sucked into stupid things sometimes on social media, I haven't really been able to leave
00:29:01
Speaker
Uh, entirely, you know, I still get on X sometimes I still get on other, other platforms because it helps me hone my ideas. It helps me, you know, I am exposed to different people's ideas. And then I haven't, I have a chance to kind of process that in, uh, you know, in a concise way. You know what I mean? Yeah.
00:29:20
Speaker
Okay, last question before we wrap up. I wanna get your thoughts on something. So, in terms of, you know, we often talk about parenting and stuff. Is this something that you would teach your kids? Is something that they should watch out for? Or that something that they could pay attention to that's accurate?
Teaching Critical Evaluation to Children
00:29:38
Speaker
Or how would you, if your kid were to come to ask you, someone says, great minds think alike, dad, is that true? Like, what would you say to them? Right. Yeah, and they might end up asking me about that anyway, because I'll say it, you know,
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah. Right now, my four-year-old might say something and I might reply with great minds, think alike. Right now, she probably doesn't put two and two together, but I imagine pretty soon she's going to ask, well, what does that mean? Yeah. I think this is a good teaching opportunity for kids to interrogate what makes an idea good or bad.
00:30:20
Speaker
um and and worth hanging on to right because you you've got the great minds think a lot you like you've got fools seldom differing um the point is that people are agreeing with each other but but should they um you know is that something are you agreeing with a great person are you agreeing with a fool uh and and i think as part of that something i want to try and explore is i like that other one that you brought up with the
00:30:48
Speaker
ideas, events, and people. I think that's something I want to try and emphasize with my kids to spend most of their time thinking about the ideas and not worry so much about talking about, you know, what the neighbors are doing or whatever, you know, the stuff that's just gossip and kind of frame it that way because I think it's, I think it's a pretty powerful way to think about it.
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, man, love it. I couldn't have said it better myself. I think 100% agree. Well, we're about out of time. We'll leave it there. But yeah, this was a good one, man. Thanks for coming up with this one. And thank you everyone for listening. We will be back with another one, of course, next week. And we will see you next time. All right, we'll see you. Bye. There are only four things certain since social progress began, that the dog returns to his vomit, and the sow returns to her mind.
00:31:44
Speaker
and the burned fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the path. And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins, when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sin, as surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, the gods of the copy market is, with terrors and water at earth.