Do you agree with the statement, “Belief is the death of intelligence”? –@TheSlycophant
Everything is funny about the question. For instance, you use the word “agree”. What if you had used the word “believe”. As in, “Do you believe in the statement, ‘Belief is the death of intelligence’ “? Then I am intelligent if I say “yes” or intelligent if I say “no”. It’s a contradiction.
So I’ll stick with the contradiction. First comes belief, long before intelligence. Imagine you are lonely on your planet. Sort of like in that book “the Little Prince”. Now you see another planet. You might think, “there’s people on that planet. I’d like to go there”. So you have a belief. The belief forms a bridge to that new planet so you can cross it and see.
Oops! No people on that planet. But I see new planets now. So I form more beliefs. More bridges. I cross those to explore.
Belief lets you explore the universe around you. You have a belief, you test if it’s true. You experience the belief. Then the world becomes real. Then you become more intelligent.
You bring up a great example, though (in your later tweet) that belief in an earth-centric universe prevented us for hundreds of years from believing in a greater universe.
So yes, have beliefs, but never get stuck in them. There’s no set of facts that are actually true and universally definitive (dusting off my “Godel, Escher, Bach”). As long as you have new beliefs you’ll never get stuck. Make sure you have new beliefs every day, in fact, and you’ll get more intelligent every day.
Every day, your beliefs will be the birthplace of new intelligence. The three wise kings will visit each birthplace and bless you.