Some years ago I came up with the theory that for high intelligence there is something like the Dunning-Krugger effect: people with just enough intelligence (above average, maybe even what I call “entry-level genius”) to notice they’re more intelligent than most people they cross paths with but not enough to understand the limits of intelligence - in terms of how much extra capability it gives, of how little it matters when thinking is unstructured, just how much people undermine their own intelligence and deceive themselves driven by their own fears and desires, and how in most areas of knowledge domain experience always trumps even the most extraordinary intelligence - thing that natural advantage of them makes them way more capable than what it actually does.
Some of the dumbest intelligent people I crossed paths with were like that: just enough above-average intelligence to feel they’re “superior” to most people but not enough to figure out that the extra CPU power they were born isn’t all-in-all that amazing an advantage, it certainly doesn’t mean they can intellectually most people in intellectual domains they themselves have little experience in, and that it by itself it doesn’t do much to help them without thinks like knowledge, structured thinking and the ability to look for, accept and correct one’s own skill-gaps, knowledge-gaps and even blindspots.
I suspect that part of the problem is that the likelihood of one such person crossing paths with the trully extraordinary intelligences (for example, an IQ of 180 or above is present in only about 1 out every 1 million people, so there is a pretty low chance to cross paths with those outside certain professional or educational environments) means many such “entry-level geniouses” run around feeling like they’re superior people, never having been disavowed of that notion by somebody who can run intellectual circles around them.
Some years ago I came up with the theory that for high intelligence there is something like the Dunning-Krugger effect: people with just enough intelligence (above average, maybe even what I call “entry-level genius”) to notice they’re more intelligent than most people they cross paths with but not enough to understand the limits of intelligence - in terms of how much extra capability it gives, of how little it matters when thinking is unstructured, just how much people undermine their own intelligence and deceive themselves driven by their own fears and desires, and how in most areas of knowledge domain experience always trumps even the most extraordinary intelligence - thing that natural advantage of them makes them way more capable than what it actually does.
Some of the dumbest intelligent people I crossed paths with were like that: just enough above-average intelligence to feel they’re “superior” to most people but not enough to figure out that the extra CPU power they were born isn’t all-in-all that amazing an advantage, it certainly doesn’t mean they can intellectually most people in intellectual domains they themselves have little experience in, and that it by itself it doesn’t do much to help them without thinks like knowledge, structured thinking and the ability to look for, accept and correct one’s own skill-gaps, knowledge-gaps and even blindspots.
I suspect that part of the problem is that the likelihood of one such person crossing paths with the trully extraordinary intelligences (for example, an IQ of 180 or above is present in only about 1 out every 1 million people, so there is a pretty low chance to cross paths with those outside certain professional or educational environments) means many such “entry-level geniouses” run around feeling like they’re superior people, never having been disavowed of that notion by somebody who can run intellectual circles around them.