Intelligence Myth

Human cognition is indistinguishable across populations.

Every human being is capable of speaking a language, abstract thought, long-term planning, and other high-end cognitive abilities we understand as metacognition.

These are incredibly complex, difficult, and cognitively taxing processes that, nevertheless, the majority of humans do effortlessly. Every day.

For example:

To speak a human language, you must memorize tens of thousands of words, an additional tens of thousands of collocations and idioms, common language patterns (i.e. grammar), and then you have to apply the information from your environment to create something original — a descriptive sentence.

You then have to create more sentences out of thin air, stress-test them against your environment to predict if they all make sense, and finally put them together into a coherent chunk that represents an idea, story, request, etc.

This is a very broad overview, and I am not going any deeper than simple sentences, but the process already looks daunting and extremely difficult. Yet humans do it all the time, every day, and never think much of it.

It's automatic, effortless, and part of what makes humans human.

The idea that a creature capable of such complex mental processes could be "stupid" is absurd.

But throughout history, and even in the 21st century where people consider themselves "enlightened" and "rational", they consistently apply cognitive labels in ways that are obviously biased and have little to do with reality.

In the 21st century, "intelligence" is an ideology. A value judgement humans apply to one another because it serves their material interests, and not because they are genuinely evaluating cognitive abilities.

The "Genius" Myth

Every once in a while, an individual human being (or group) makes a discovery. Retroactively, societies label these humans "geniuses".

To justify this label, people often point out that these people have unusual thinking patterns, original solutions, or insights and predictions no one else had ever thought of before. Therefore, they must have been geniuses.

There are even lighthearted stereotypes of "cranky genius", or "solitary thinker", or "crazy scientist" which explain how ordinary people perceive inventors and innovators across history.

And perception is the key word.

The truth is that most so-called "geniuses", i.e. people who invented or discovered something groundbreaking, are typically unknown, unheard of, and in most aspects of human life, unremarkable; many had friends, families, pleasures, regular meal times, etc. Very few of them were truly quirky or "crazy".

By the same token, many people displaying "genius" characteristics were forgotten simply because they never managed to achieve any breakthroughs — even if their work ethic, methodology, and thinking patterns aligned perfectly with other "geniuses" who nevertheless discovered something.

In other words: a) If you discover something, you get labelled a "genius", b) but if you discover nothing, you do not even exist in the popular memory.

"Intelligence" is mythologized to the nth degree. And since humanity doesn't actually understand what intelligence even is, I don't think it's wise to believe such wantonly assigned labels.

Even if everyone agrees that "this particular person was a genius!", we are talking about the popular perception and NOT an objective truth.

A million donkeys can be just as wrong as one donkey.

What Is "Intelligence"?

At the time of writing, nobody really knows what intelligence is.

We can see it, we can sense it, we can show examples of what it does — as I did at the beginning of this post, explaining how humans speak languages — but there is no consensus as to what it is exactly.

If you ask 100 people to tell you what intelligence means to them, you will get 100 completely different answers.

There is no answer to that question.

Even "geniuses" rarely provide unusual answers pointing to an alternative logic type or display special cognitive abilities.

It seems that people are intelligent; they are aware they are intelligent, they can sense it intuitively, but that's where we hit the roadblock and bang our heads against the wall.

So far, there is no reliable way to test a person's intelligence. There are IQ tests, but they are notorious for testing a person's performance in a particular field. A field which a particular institution values and selects for.

IQ tests are more of an ideological procedure than a reliable way of testing one's intelligence.

Additionally, to test one's intelligence you would have to level the playing field first. You can't deny people nutrition, basic education, sleep, etc, and then compare their IQ test results against someone who was well-fed, educated, and gets adequate sleep his entire life.

That's how you reinforce ideologies and stereotypes. That's what modern societies do.

Nobody tries to learn what intelligence is, or objectively test the differences between individual humans.

Humanity is very far from solving this mystery; theories exist, but no theory is bulletproof. Also, the complexity of intelligence makes it very difficult to quantify. And because no one tries to understand it, and institutions promote ideologies to justify power structures, rather than engage with it in good faith, I would not be surprised if the answer is never found.

For now, intelligence is an unknown.

What Is A "Genius"?

"Genius" is an ideology.

A genius is just somebody who was retrospectively assigned the label because of a discovery they had made.

A discovery that humanity decided was important enough to warrant widespread recognition and to elevate said individual in society.

And if the discovery is so important that it gets remembered for decades? Then the genius in question becomes mythologized, not just recognized.

Now, how do modern humans explain "genius"?

The aforementioned IQ tests seem to be testing something, and they somewhat correlate with better life outcomes. Many believe that high IQ = genius.

But correlation is not causation, and I think associating IQ with genius is too far fetched. There are plenty of IQ150+ people who are unremarkable and never make any discoveries.

This contradicts the popular idea that "geniuses" are just high IQ individuals. Not that IQ tests are necessarily worthless — that would be jumping to conclusions — but they are far from reliable if you are interested in anything more than an ideologically motivated label.

Other than that, there are stereotypes that make a case that geniuses = weirdos, therefore all weirdos are potential geniuses.

This is based on real innovators who entertained a lot of garbage for years (e.g. Newton's Alchemy) before arriving at a perfectly sensible and useful discovery.

But for every Issac Newton, thousands of obsessive weirdos had spent decades entertaining garbage that turned out to be dead ends, or thousands of people with unique insights and ideas that couldn't get anyone to listen.

We don't refer to them as geniuses because humanity only mythologizes useful weirdos.

Other than the "weirdo" stereotype, there are dozens of myths and stereotypes frequently applied to geniuses, but I don't want to entertain them the same way I don't usually entertain religions, politics, or rumours. They exist to perform social functions, NOT to explain reality.

Moving on from stereotypes, humanity only elevates those geniuses who make discoveries in fields that have been deemed important. For example, a scientist working on an antibiotic will be elevated to the rank of "genius" even before the medicine is safe and ready for distribution. Meanwhile, a manual labourer who independently creates an original manufacturing process and revolutionizes his economic sector remains a low-status male.

Henry Ford is the most widely known example of someone who was undoubtedly intelligent, but because he and the present societies have not valued his contributions much, he remains a rather obscure figure.

This is why I refer to "intelligence" and "genius" as ideologies; modern societies are hereditary caste systems in all but name, and the genius label is applied selectively to reward those innovators who happened to be at the right place, at the right time, and created something that a particular society deemed "valuable" at the time of discovery.

Intellect, grit, the "right" field, and luck all play a part in whether or not someone gets labelled a "genius" or an "imbecile who is only good for manual labour".

It is never your intellect alone. The label is misleading.

Historical Injustice And Wasted Genius

Here on Earth, we are too preoccupied with immediate survival to contemplate metaphysics, do experiments, pursue projects, and waste tons of resources trying to invent better tools and machines.

Things have changed in recent decades and centuries, but "wasteful" pursuits are still very much frowned upon.

For most of our history, we had very little room for error; time and energy not spent gathering food or maintaining shelter seemed wasteful. Downtime not dedicated to rest was viewed as abnormal. After all, you cannot survive if you don't gather food and keep your shelter in good condition, and you will not be able to do that again if you don't rest afterward.

If you went against the grain to pursue "your passion" or make a discovery, you risked running out of essential resources or exhausting yourself. Both were dangerous.

In hindsight, it was these exceptional humans who pursued their interests and created original tools or ideas that benefited all of humanity and improved our material reality. Had all humans just gathered food and rested all the time, we would still live on savannas and hunt with spears.

But there is something uncomfortable I don't think anyone realizes.

Making discoveries is hard. Nobody has ever stumbled upon a solution or created a revolutionary tool on their first try. The "genius" myth makes it seem that way, and it has sabotaged progress throughout human history.

Many would-be innovators were punished, exiled, or persecuted for failing. But you cannot discover anything new unless you are prepared to fail. It is simply not possible to propose a tentative hypothesis if the punishment for failure is exile or socio-economic death.

And that is exactly what happened to anyone before they even tried; the threat of social and economic ruin was enough to discourage most from ever trying.

My personal hypothesis is that the first inventors in history — human hunter gatherers — made discoveries only if they happened to live on lands abundant in megafauna, had a good or neutral relationship with neighbouring tribes, and spent most of their time on play; time during which they could tinker with tools, create art, and essentially "waste" some of their abundant resources.

I cannot imagine a hunter-gatherer tribe preoccupied with survival on a daily basis that has the time, energy, or cognitive resources to invent a sling or a bow. But I can imagine a peaceful tribe inventing dozens of primitive toys, accidentally inventing "the bow", and deciding to apply it in hunting or warfare.

But remember this: the key in my hypothesis is a decent material reality. You cannot afford to be "peaceful" when food is scarce or when you are surrounded by hostile humans.

Which was the grim reality for most humans in prehistory.

However, even when the first city-states and kingdoms emerged, and when food surplus and law and order became the new reality, most people would still operate in survival mode for most of their lives; after all, no society would give you their food for free, and the kingdom management and politics required proactive resource accumulation and production. There is no way an individual "genius" could stay in his barn all day and waste time creating fanciful tools for years on end.

No society would accept that.

The only exceptions were the aristocracy who could afford to fund vanity projects (e.g. Egyptian Pyramids), administrators who were state-incentivized to create novel solutions (i.e. "improve my state"), or the lucky few who managed to get a patron to fund their weird obsessions.

The vast majority of "civilized" humans have spent their entire lives working, resting, and living in chronic poverty and malnutrition. They could not afford, nor did they have the energy, to create anything novel.

And statistically speaking, many of these people would be recognized as "intelligent" today. Perhaps some would be given opportunities to develop and have room for experimentation. A few might have even found a mentor, or gone to an institution on a scholarship.

If we accept that 100 billion humans have lived on Earth, and even just 1% of them were highly intelligent, we come to the realization that 1 billion of these humans have had vastly better brains and were insanely capable. Then we come to another realization: most of this genius was completely wasted.

And as you are about to see, continues to be wasted.

Because things aren't much better even today; whimsical societies determine who gets deemed "worthy" of social recognition on account of latent potential. And decisions are made on an empty head, guided by ideologies and myths.

Ideologies and myths that are just post-hoc rationalizations to justify power structures, conquest, and resource accumulation.

The sad reality is this: most of the human genius has been wasted, and it is never coming back.

Modern Societies

Much of the world is poor, war-torn, and oppressive. Most of humanity lives in chronic survival mode.

Even if you are fortunate enough to live in the more prosperous and peaceful societies, you are not out of the woods yet.

Resources are concentrated at the top, and survival is not assured for most; most people are stuck living a peasant's life, struggling for basic necessities, and their entire cognitive bandwidth goes toward solving survival rather than innovation.

States, institutions, and certain privileged commoners create elaborate narratives about "meritocracy", "hard work", or "education" to justify existing power structures. Some of it is cynical manipulation, some genuine delusion.

After centuries of telling people they are "inferior", refusing to educate them, restricting their economic opportunities, and traumatizing entire generations with endless wars, these privileged agents like to point to your lack of formal credentials as proof that you were stupid all along, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

States and institutions retain their monopoly on power, just like their blue-blooded predecessors who claimed a God-given right. At the same time, lucky or privileged commoners blinded by survivorship bias can feel superior and claim "genius" when they are granted their credentials.

And speaking of credentials...

Credentialism is yet another ideology used to "verify" one's intelligence. However, willfully or subconsciously, most fail to acknowledge that you can only obtain credentials if you can afford to obtain them. Furthermore, there is an entire hierarchy of credentials that you ought to, could, or ought not to possess. And because credentials go in and out of fashion constantly — due to technological advancements, armed conflicts, paradigm shifts, and many others — even privileged commoners stay privileged only as long as they adapt to the arms race of credentials and remain "eternal students" who "believe in education" and constantly "update" their qualifications.

It's hard enough for the privileged "bourgeoisie"; constant adaptation is expensive, exhausting, and causes one to live with chronic background anxiety.

The bottom 90% of society never stands a chance; how can you afford expensive education while living on sustenance wages? Willpower and hard work can only get you so far. They cannot rewrite your material reality. Even if the "hard work" ideology says they can.

Peaceful societies promise that education is the "Final Solution" to all your woes. But obtaining adequate education is materially impractical for most, and predicting which credentials will have value is not something most people can do well due to the commodification of education and contradictory messaging. Furthermore, education is an ideology, and ideologies cannot be traded for a share of the economy; try asking your landlord if he would accept your degree as a method of payment. See how far your education can really take you.

As of right now, "intelligence" is more of a socio-economic status marker than a measurement at all. The closer you are to dominant cultural norms, the better your socio-economic position, and the better your domain-specific expertise, the more "intelligent" you are deemed. Wait for the norms to change, or your expertise to go out of fashion, and watch the whole world suddenly remember, "actually, you have been stupid all along".

Overall, credentialism seems good at selecting for people from "good families", but doesn't necessarily select for individuals with high intellect.

Good for aristocrats, bad for intellectuals. Credentialism in a nutshell.

Think back to my earlier Henry Ford example; in modern society, someone of his ilk would be declared a complete moron and predicted to fail at everything he could ever attempt — because he lacked formal credentials.

Henry Ford got lucky that he became an apprentice, secured his own survival, and managed to create something revolutionary. Had he been like thousands of other "Henry Fords" who are denied even a slither of opportunity to prove themselves, his name would be entirely forgotten.

Additionally, your "intelligence-testing" begins at a young age when your brain is not even ready for the volume and nature of the information you are told to memorize, your developing body is not allowed physical activity and play, and you are fully dependent on your family and their socio-economic situation.

Assuming that you even have a family, nobody cares if your family could afford to feed and clothe you, whether or not you suffered any diseases or catastrophes, whether or not you were kidnapped, etc, etc. In other words, your "intelligence" is evaluated after a series of events and conditions out of your control culminate at an "adult age" — whatever that might be — to decide how much human worth you possess, and how high or low you should be regarded by society.

This directly influences your socio-economic opportunities, which further reinforces whether or not you can climb higher on the social ladder, or if you are destined for destitution and forever reminded that it was your fault — because you must have been lazy, unintelligent, or "evil" in some capacity. After all, you wouldn't be destitute if you studied harder, or if you were an obedient pupil at school. Everybody knows that, so it must be true.

The "meritocracy" ideology in a nutshell. And the just world fallacy layered on top of it.

Your failure is always yours. The world is just, society treats everyone well, and you just squandered your chance. That is literally how most people think, even though it is a very self-defeating mental framework to hold.

And reality contradicts it at every step of the way. Your level of self-deception has to reach its maximum to pretend that this is how the world really works. And many people genuinely think that that is the case.

And the irony? Those with opportunities and a good socio-economic situation often don't even hold formal credentials. Some do, but many do not. This contradicts the narrative, so it gets brushed under the carpet, and those who dare mention it are discredited.

The pattern is actually quite obvious; many "intelligent" people either don't possess any credentials, or possess something unremarkable that is not difficult to obtain. But the biggest irony is that the richest, "most successful" people just tend to grow up in a good family and use their resources; they pay people with credentials to work for them, then take all the credit and are declared "geniuses" when something works out.

It is a rather common phenomenon across history, and things are no different today. The only difference is that modern people pretend that this is not the case; simply put, modern people are less honest, but the pattern is identical across recorded history.

I would hate to name names, but the fact stands that the people who own companies and corporations are just privileged aristocrats who either didn't go to school, or went to school only to perform the ideology in front of the public. Their socio-economic success is downstream from the inherited intragenerational wealth, not some hidden talent or "hard work". The ones who do the hard work — and spend years at institutions for the "privilege" of working hard later in life — are paid sustenance wages, or wages that are not representative of the value their work creates. The ones who benefit the most are the ones who deserve it least.

The "education" ideology is a myth for those who want to be successful, but also don't want to face reality and accept it for what it is. But that is a topic for another post.

Now, let's summarize:

Things are objectively better than ever before. So if you think this is bad, just try going back a few hundred years. You will be terrified.

But "objectively better" ≠ good. That would be fallacious logic, even if commonly deployed to distract the masses.

So far, I have only really described the Western World and a few places that also enjoy mediocre prosperity.

Nothing good can be said about so-called "backwaters", and this is where the "Intelligence" ideology intensifies.

"Backwaters" concentrate all resources at the top, and the "genius" myth is useful to that end; it's easier to run an oppressive state when your population is illiterate and believes that only you and your noble family can run the state and its institutions. Deny them education, offer them a useful myth, and watch them never question the existing power structures.

You can continue to accumulate power, resources, AND your people will love you for oppressing them; after all, you have a God-given right to rule them, and were born with superior intellect on top of that, so you must deserve it more than anyone else.

In the eyes of the masses, you are essentially a wizard. You will get treated accordingly — with reverence.

Not everyone is that naive, but dissent in most of the world is brutally punished and leads to nowhere. The masses trust mythologies that harm them, and the feedback loop stays intact.

The masses trust their oppressors, the masses celebrate when dissenters are punished... So the oppressors learn they can be oppressive, and the masses trust them the more.

It probably sounds self-defeating, and you might wonder how on Earth could people fall for a scam like that?

In oppressive states, people are trained from a young age that their "Dear Leader" is chosen by God, Dear Leader is biologically superior, and Dear Leader works hard to protect the masses from evil spirits and delinquents. Most people assume that this is how the world works, so they react accordingly. They just don't know any better, and few people have the temperament to analyze something that everyone around them "knows" is obviously true.

(Westerners are not as brainwashed as the less-literate populations, but they are very close. The differences are small)

But there is a certain tension that all states face:

To invest in your citizens, or not invest?

The tension between educating your population and not educating them is real for oppressive states; educated humans innovate and improve your state in the long run. But if you say, "I am the state!", then perhaps you want to keep them illiterate to prevent coordinated dissent and preserve your own regime.

So either you educate them and give up oppression, or you don't educate them and stay in power.

You cannot have both because they are contradictory. It is impossible.

Most of the world opts for mass illiteracy; in contrast, Western countries give the masses just enough literacy to be useful, but not so much that they threaten the existing power structures. Some of the resources and power have been reluctantly given up, but only insofar as it benefits these states. Thus only the most "worthy" of individuals — i.e. most ideologically captured, conformist, upper class, etc — receive the boon of education and get their share of the economy. Not so much that they actually achieve a good quality of life, but good enough to set them apart from other peasants and give them the illusion of superiority — which further divides the masses, which then helps in preventing a unified front against the state, etc, etc.

The West claims to be better than the rest of the world, and objectively, things are slightly better there than anywhere else. But that is merely a result of better geography, material conditions, and the recent absence of war (approx. 80 years of peace), which allowed mediocre prosperity to emerge. The West is NOT morally superior, even if it likes to pretend it is.

In fact, the Western World is in a uniquely unstable state; it could still go back to being openly oppressive and preserve itself, or it could continue to allow its people mediocre education and risk instability — because even mediocre education stirs up dissent and disobedience.

At the same time, the Western powers dominate global politics partly because their populations are mediocrely educated and can reliably innovate. If that changes, "the West" will lose its global dominance.

What should the poor tyrants do? Educate their people, preserve the global dominance, but at the risk to their personal wealth and power? Or should they deny their citizens education, preserve their own status, but risk becoming dominated by foreign states that choose to empower their own subjects and educate them?

Which way, heads of state? Which way?

And if it's still unclear why Western states refuse to educate their citizens, and instead opt to walk the line between education and illiteracy, just remember that "the West" is not a higher ideal of human progress or well-being, even if it loves to portray itself as such; "The West" is a collection of smaller states run by regional warlords and merchants who are motivated by selfishness, greed, and power-hunger. What benefits the elite doesn't always benefit the state, and what benefits the state doesn't always benefit the individual commoner.

Elite interests > State interests > Individual well-being.

[LINK TO FULL POST ON EDUCATION SYSTEMS]

The "Intelligence" Myth

Historically, this gap in education and perceived "intelligence" is what led to the dehumanization of entire populations to justify exploitation, conquest, and slavery.

American hunter-gatherers and African tribesmen, whose cognitive abilities were on par with Western populations, but nevertheless possessed no formal credentials or diplomas, purely for the fact that they lived natural human lives with no formal bureaucracy and institutions, were deemed intellectually inferior and declared "savages".

And because taking stuff from stupid savages with bows and arrows is "improvement", it was used to justify imperialism and colonialism on a global scale.

In reality, the intelligence hierarchy that places Western society at the top and indigenous practical knowledge at the bottom was manufactured only to justify material interests and the resulting conquests.

This ideology persists even today among many Westerners, even if official narratives have stopped openly promoting it.

That is to say, the official narratives did not discard the "Intelligence" ideology completely. They just stopped elevating one nationality or race over another. But the ideology is still applied when rationalizing why individual humans are higher or lower in the caste system in relation to one another, and therefore deserve access to more opportunities and resources than that other "stupid" group of humans.

The rest of the world is either at war — and has no time to manufacture abstract narratives about intelligence — or believes their own stories about what makes a person "intelligent", depending on which material interests they seek to rationalize.

Another big reason why the "Intelligence" ideology persists is self-aggrandizement.

The truth is that humanity hasn't changed for at least 50,000 years. But that idea doesn't sit well with the self-deluded, pompous individuals who like to think of themselves as "enlightened" and "rational", and like to point to prehistoric humans or medieval peasants as examples of "stupid" and "superstitious" humans.

The "caveman" myth is actually an excellent case study of the "Intelligence" ideology at work:

1. Modern humans use advanced technology, therefore they must be "smart";
2. Prehistoric humans were dumb-dumb "ooga boogas" living in caves, running around jungles and screaming, and hunting wild animals with spears and clubs, therefore they must have been "stupid".

The truth that everybody ignores:

1. Modern scientists have deep expertise in ONE field, then must rely on external infrastructure — GPS for navigation, grocery stores for sustenance, specialist humans for repairs and gadgets, state enforcement for peace and safety — just to stay alive.
2. Prehistoric humans had to integrate so much information that the comparison is not even close in terms of raw cognitive demand:
   1. knowing hundreds of plants — which are toxic, edible, where they grow, how toxicity changes with season and preparation, etc
   2. knowing animal behaviour — which are dangerous, how they hunt, when and where they sleep, etc
   3. tracking and hunting — which is a genuinely sophisticated hypothesis-testing in real-time, reading partial evidence and inferring what happened and what might happen next, laying traps, etc
   4. navigating across huge swathes of lands and territories without maps — a completely different cognitive skillset
   5. weather prediction from cues
   6. tool manufacture — requiring understanding of material properties and craftsmanship
   7. diplomacy — social coordination for group hunts, foraging, resource division, conflict resolution within the group, negotiation and trade between groups, oral transmission of accumulated knowledge across generations, etc
   8. long-term planning — resource management, reproductive cycles, migratory patterns, food rationing vs feasting, etc

Any of these individual domains would be considered impressive expertise in a modern specialist. And hunter-gatherers had to do ALL OF THEM simultaneously.

...and they are the "stupid" ones according to modern societies.

The same societies that would not survive even a day if you dumped them in the wilderness and told them to "just figure it out." The same wilderness that hunter-gatherers not only survived, but where they actually thrived.

In reality, material conditions between societies is what determines how much power they have relative to other groups; Europeans with metallurgy, guns, ocean-faring ships, horsemanship, etc had 100x more raw power when compared with "wild savages."

NOT 100x more cognitive power; 100x more KILLING power.

The difference in material conditions was rationalized as proof of moral and intellectual superiority. And everybody knows that killing non-sentient species is just "hunting" and not murder, so it was widely accepted.

When 1 "intelligent" human killed and enslaved thousands of "savages", he became a landowner. But when 1 "savage" killed just one European, he was considered a "dangerous animal" that had to be put down. Together with the rest of his "pride".

I could go on and on, but the pattern of ideology being used to justify oppression couldn't be more clear.

"Intelligence" as we know it in the 21st century is just a convenient set of beliefs to justify the status quo among the privileged few who happen to enjoy a decent material situation and do not want to acknowledge that they owe it to luck or intragenerational wealth they had inherited. Entire states further used it to justify wars of aggression, exploitation, and slavery across centuries.

The truth is inconvenient, so it is dismissed in favour of a convenient myth.

Conclusion

Most humans do not show any obvious signs of intellectual superiority or inferiority. Everyone is capable of the same mental processes as the next person.

Even most so-called "geniuses" are indistinguishable from other humans. There are some tiny differences, but even they do not obviously point to a hidden hardware on which their brains operate.

The "tiny differences" I mentioned refer to obsessive thinking, hyper-curiosity, or just very original — though often perceived as radical — ideas about the world, technology, science, etc, etc.

The only real cognitive differences that we managed to observe so far? Better memory, faster cognitive processing, ability to visualize several concepts simultaneously, etc. Basically, they make you think faster, but don't grant you any superhuman cognitive abilities that are inaccessible to anyone else.

There are very few claims of "biological superiority" where a prodigy displayed previously-unknown structures underneath. Most admit they are just more focused.

Biological differences MIGHT really exist. But modern societies are more concerned with ideologies, and "geniuses" are primarily motivated by self-interest in this unfortunate world. Until these factors change, and intelligence is studied seriously, and not through the ideological lens, the present evidence suggests there are no major differences in people's cognitive hardware.

The only obvious differences exist between "the most stupid" and "the most intelligent" humans across the IQ spectrum, but even these are mythologized to another dimension.

The middle 85% of the spectrum are basically identical in capabilities — exactly where most "normal" humans and "geniuses" alike live.