To me, being an intellectual doesn’t necessarily mean someone is exceptionally smart in the traditional sense. I’ve always taken it to mean a person who can take a few steps back and dispassionately, honestly evaluate things from a distance. It describes how they think, not what they think.

I listen to a lot of podcasts with guests/hosts I’d consider intellectuals, and I’ve often found that, given the same information, these people tend to land on the same or similar conclusions on unrelated topics. Another common trait of an intellectual is that their ideas don’t map neatly onto a political ideology. They don’t adopt ideas wholesale but instead form opinions on different subjects individually. Maybe I’m talking about intellectual honesty now, which might be slightly different, but that’s my take on it. I remember Sean Carroll defining intellectualism along these lines on an old podcast, and it resonated with me.

There have been two recent events that, in my view, serve as good tests of a person’s intellectual honesty. First was the Trump assassination attempt. One of the thinkers I admire most is also one of the most anti-Trump people I know, but I was confident they’d still condemn political violence like this, which they did. The second event was just a few days ago: the landing of the Starship 1st stage. If a person is so blinded by their hatred of Musk that they can’t admit how impressive that was, then I don’t consider them an intellectually honest thinker.