
Only one computer scientist in the world's top 100 public intellectuals - brent
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4293
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sfk
The title of the list is a gross misnomer. Half of the people on the list are
political activists of some sort.

Take Barenboim. Why is he an intellectual? He is a fantastic pianist, a (IMHO)
mediocre conductor and an activist for peace in the middle east.

Take Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is a Dutch politician who build her entire career
upon the fact that she has suffered a lot being raised as a female Muslim. She
is definitely not what I would call an intellectual.

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kkshin
For better or for worse, the modern connotation of an intellectual is heavily
slanted towards the matters of humanities and arts. I've had the pleasure of
studying under some great computer scientists, but unfortunately, although
geniuses in their field, very few of them could be considered an
"intellectual" in the current form of its meaning.

~~~
neilc
Note that the list is of _public_ intellectuals -- intellectuals who play a
prominent role in public discourse. Most great computer scientists tend to
stay out of the public realm, for the most part -- and perhaps with good
reason.

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cia_plant
The emphasis is obviously on the "public" more than the "intellectual."
Witness Thomas Friedman's place on the list!

~~~
menloparkbum
"He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a
Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without
genius."

[http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm](http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm)

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mattrepl
There are two biologists, one physicist, one neuroscientist, and one medical
scientist. The list is dominated by individuals with careers in politics,
religion, literature, philosophy, and history.

~~~
krschultz
I agree, a list of the Top 100 Intellectuals would be dominated by
mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and probably a hacker or to, but this
list is titled The Top 100 PUBLIC Intellectuals, i.e. public policy, so I
wasn't expecting any different.

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osipov
I don't have much faith in their selection process. Their list of economists
includes the man who guided Russian economy into a 40% GDP drop.

>Yegor Gaidar, Russia, Economist, politician

>Gaidar was Boris Yeltsin’s acting prime minister from June 15 to December 14,
1992 and a proponent of “shock therapy” for the Russian economy.

~~~
asdflkj
You left out:

>He is a contributing editor to FP.

That should make clear both the quality and the nature of this publication.

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mynameishere
They left off Charles Murray who incidentally derived a novel way of measuring
intellectual influence semi-objectively.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment>

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rp
So, who are some computer scientists (and mathematicians) that should be on
the list? That is a loaded but honest question.

~~~
technoguyrob
Grothendieck, Knuth, Paul Cohen, Terence Tao, Shing-Tung Yao.

In my opinion Godel was the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, but
he's dead.

~~~
wheeler
How can you possibly think that Grothendieck should be on a list of _public_
intellectuals?

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DaniFong
There's also Noam Chomsky

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mdemare
I find it very hard to believe that Slavoj Zizek is better known, or more
influential, than, say, Linus, RMS, PG, Joel, ESR or many others in our field.

Silly, vague, badly defined list.

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drios
IMHO Mandelbrot, Prigogine, Mccarthy and Minsky should be on that list and by
the way Baremboin was born in Argentina.

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brent
... and zero mathematicians.

