7 January

I would say what makes a person smart is if the ideas they have capture and change reality in some powerful way. It’s the ideas that make them smart, it’s not them (ideas don’t belong to any of us, they can be shared by millions). How does a person come upon the best ideas? Ideas need a home, as much as me or you, without a home they don’t survive. Ideas live in institutions. Schools, universities, libraries, bureaucracies etc. Institutions are the past (memory) and future of society, acting in the present. Ideas are the eternal part of society, smart people inject eternity into social life, via ideas, via institutions.