Editor:

Regarding your cover blurb "Hunting for the smartest person in Humboldt" ("The H Factor, Dec. 25"): The better pursuit is for the wisest.

Socrates is apposite. "I am wiser than this man," he declared at his trial for treason in 399 B.C., "for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, when actually he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy that I do."

It is naively and perniciously American to seek the smartest instead of the wisest. Consider the hubris of "the best and the brightest" in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Paul Mann, McKinleyville