# Lack of Peers?? and social problems associated with intelligence *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 20 Oct 2011* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Gwern Branwen *20 Oct 2011, 01:31* > From the dual n-back mailing list: > On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Dennis Peterson > wrote: > > I recently saw Gene Wolfe speak at a conference. Aside from being a great > writer and an engineer, he's a Korean War veteran. He said he once asked a > bunch of college students what a friend is, and they all said "Someone who > shares your interests, who you can talk to about interesting things, etc." > He was somewhat appalled. He said "No. A friend is someone who will give you > a drink out of his canteen." > He went on to talk about some of the great friends he had during the > war...guys who had nothing in common with him, but they liked each other > anyway and looked out for each other. ``` gwern http://www.gwern.net ``` --- ### Marc Aramini *20 Oct 2011, 19:01 · in reply to Gwern Branwen* Well, sometimes the more people ostensibly have in common with you, the more you argue with them (wolfe mailing list, anyone?). I like Wolfe's definition there. > --- On Wed, 10/19/11, Gwern Branwen wrote: > From: Gwern Branwen > Subject: Re: (urth) Lack of Peers? and social problems associated with intelligence > To: "The Urth Mailing List" > Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 6:31 PM > From the dual n-back mailing list: > > On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Dennis Peterson > > wrote: >> I recently saw Gene Wolfe speak at a conference. Aside >> from being a great >> writer and an engineer, he's a Korean War veteran. He >> said he once asked a >> bunch of college students what a friend is, and they >> all said "Someone who >> shares your interests, who you can talk to about >> interesting things, etc." >> He was somewhat appalled. He said "No. A friend is >> someone who will give you >> a drink out of his canteen." >> He went on to talk about some of the great friends he >> had during the >> war...guys who had nothing in common with him, but >> they liked each other >> anyway and looked out for each other. > -- > gwern > http://www.gwern.net > _______________________________________________ ---