Summary Of James Fallows How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves

James Fallows’, “How Actual Smart People Talk about Themselves,” is an opinionated article that discusses about the qualities the author believes truly smart people possess. Fallows publicly shares his ideas in how smart people behave, establishing the target audience to be individuals who are interested in becoming intelligent, or to those who wish to find out whether or not they are truly smart. Since The Atlantic, which is biased in favor of liberals, published the article, the majority of the target audience can be assumed to be supporters of the left wing. Although the article’s content strongly relates to the topic of intelligence, Fallows mainly prioritizes in criticizing US president Donald Trump’s recent twitter post where Trump described

In the first paragraph, the author makes an analogy stating that he had interviewed “[“like, really smart”] people whom the world views the way Trump views himself.” Here, the “world” is represented by the whole population, and they admiringly respect the achievements made by the smartest people in the population. On the other hand, Trump, who is just one person out of the whole population, is the only one to view himself admiringly. Through this analogy, Fallows attempts to portray Trump’s egoistical character. The tone here is satirical about Trump’s egocentric personality as the author utilizes Trump’s exact phrases from the twitter post - “like, really smart” - in the analogy. Fallows directly refers to how Trump had specifically and publicly described himself to be very intelligent, and this reference highlights the vanity embedded in the tweet. The diction choice “like, really” added to the adjective “smart” further shows the readers that Trump forcefully asserted the idea of him being smart to the public crowd, which underlines his selfish behavior to portray himself as a perfect human being. The incorporation of the exact same phrase in the analogy therefore is ridiculing Trump’s egomaniacal self-admiration considering that Trump is the only one to view himself in that way. The analogy is additionally paired with the disclaimer that Fallows

Fallows mentions that he had interviewed people such as “Gates, Jobs, Musk, Page,” which the “names have become shorthands for their respective forms of brilliance.” The anecdote of interviewing these people not only shows that Fallows have experience interacting with very intelligent people, but also highlights the high level of intelligence the author is dealing with right now. This appeals to the readers’ ethos as through this anecdote, readers can recognize Fallows’ expertise in the field of distinguishing the traits that exceptionally smart people possess. Also, Fallows had previously “help select winners of fancy scholarships.” In these occasions, the judges must carefully consider every single characteristic of each candidate to choose the winner for the scholarship because they are choosing the winner from a group of people who are already all identified as highly intelligent. The diction “fancy scholarship” further emphasizes the glory in achieving these scholarships, and thus implying that Fallows had dealt with exceptionally intelligent individuals who were worthy enough to be nominated as candidates for these grand scholarships. This anecdote hence shows the audience that Fallows is a veteran in observing and determining the smartest individuals. With his credibility built, Fallows appeals to the audience’s ethos, which he