“Some of the people I met in grad school with supposedly the highest IQ’s were without a doubt some of the dumbest people I have ever met.” –Lewis Woodford
Yes, Lewis: all one would have to do is look at what goes on among the elite (the decision makers: most of which have either masters or PhDs (to see how clueless such people can be. Or as I like to joke: some people can be intellect abundant while being wisdom deficit. Hardcore materialists and libertarian economists often fit that bill to me. Plus that, there has been research that has shown that the ability to predict things does not correlate with education or knowledge. This is because more intellectual people tend to commit more to their given systems –their egos being as invested in them as they are. And make no mistake about it: I, myself, have embraced the view you are offering.
That said, I would ask you to consider a more complex model that addresses the issue you are presenting via a book I have been talking about lately, Arthur Lupia’s Uniformed: Why People Know so Little about Politics and What We Can Do about It. It’s basically a pedagogical manifesto with hard science behind it. And I must confess from the start that my embrace of it is a blatant exercise of confirmation bias. But the main thing I found useful was his model of information, knowledge, and competence.
Information is our stock and trade here in that it is the ONLY thing we, or anyone else, have to offer. And we offer information in the hope of affecting the knowledge of other individuals: the cumulative effect of the information the individual, via the limits of working memory, chooses to assimilate –that is from a variety of sources of information besides us.
But it is in the domain of competence that we get at the complexity of your point. Competence is the manner in which one’s body of knowledge (that is built on the information they have (is applied to a given and valued task. And it is Lupia’s concept of Competence which was a bit of revelation for me in that it proves more useful, that is in terms of complexity and subtlety, than that of intellect which is what you are addressing. (And please do not take this as condescending or trying to “correct” you! I am just offering another model.) What I would suggest is that you are, as we all often do, conflating intelligence (which is hierarchical in nature (with competence: which is democratic in nature. I would argue that what you see as a lack of intellect in people is actually a lack of competence in tasks you value.
And this is where my confirmation bias (and a little ego stroking (forgive me if you will! (comes into it. To me, there are 3 means by which we collect information in order to become the intelligent creatures we think ourselves to be: the personal anecdotal (that which we experience ourselves), the social (that which we get via others such as friends, artists, or journalists), and the academic or god’s-eye view which we achieve through traditionally established methods: technologies. Now the popular doxa would support the hierarchical/ vertical/Platonic model in which the academic stands at the top of the INTELLECTUAL ladder –like some corporate hierarchy or something. My position, however, is that the relationship between the three is horizontal with a slight upward lean towards the academic. This is because, in terms of competence, intellect is always relative to a given task an individual finds themselves faced with. You could, for instance, be a quantum physicist but still look like an idiot in front of the small town mechanic in the town your car broke down in. For myself (that is with all the knowledge I have accumulated), if I were dropped into a ghetto and found myself with a thug that was willing to get me out of it, that thug would always be the most competent and knowledgeable person in my space.