I see an intellectual as someone who explicitly places his or her writing and argumentation in dialog with a tradition (meaning: sequence) of other intellectuals who have written on the topics s/he is engaged with — references, in short
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Of course, that’s not sufficient. When people think it is, that’s when you get the phenomenon of the poseur or the pseudo-intellectual, who goes through the motions of name-dropping for prestige purposes, but who has little original to add to the tradition.
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I would say that an intellectual identifies inefficiencies and can't help but try to optimize them.
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Yikes
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An intellectual computes a function not efficiently computable by a non-intellectual—because of having key state (from canon, grand tour), or computational superiority.
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Canon = language input. Which leaves your definition resting on grand tour alone (by which I assume you mean actual wide-ranging travel)
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Symbols is language in a broad sense so this doesn’t quite qualify
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That’s language use
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By the quality of decisions, of course. In the short term, luck plays a large role, but over a longer time span better decisions win. Your question is straight out calling for a poker analogy.
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That’s where I went. I know someone is an intellectual if they are capable of shame when they play bad and win anyway.
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