Smart doesn't matter much

I know someone intelligent but crazy as a bedbug. In a blog she nicely and correctly attacked the existence of "race" as a load of hooey. I still prefer Hitchens, but, hey, he's a professional. Then, however, like a Charles Manson speech at a parole hearing, the blog went from the reasonable to the absurd. Here are my comments.

Yes, of the multitude of ridiculous memes that have been made up out of thin air, race ranks right up there with religion as a force for holding humanity back from advancing in all sorts of different fields. Which is why Christopher Hitchens refuses to fill out questions about his "race." I myself mark "Other" and, when possible, enter "Human." Which, given the perspectives and level of reading comprehension in Mississippi, will probably get me classified as a Hmong tribesman one day.

On the race question I tend to agree with you, but I have to take exception with the hypothesis you present for your thought experiment.

"If we were all suddenly unable to distinguish color, what would happen? People would be judged on merit and ability. It wouldn't happen overnight, because the money is in the hands of those whom the current system has favored, but our country would change irrevocably. Power would go into the hands of the most talented, the most capable, the most intelligent."

"Talented" or "capable" are ambiguous terms. Talented at what? The most common sense definitions create a tautology: power goes into the hands of those most capable of attaining power. (Of course, we're begging the question of what "power" is.)

I don't particularly care about those issues because whatever definitions are used, "the most intelligent" is not going to be a significant determinant for power, nor should President Obama's election be taken to mean that the country is moving in that direction. Yes, he is indeed smart and articulate and, yes, those attributes probably played a role in his election by providing a sharp contrast with the snickering, fumble-tongued President Bush. Obama's erudition, however, was hyped and in many cases believed as a disadvantage within the Republican base, they marked Obama as "an elitist" because he could construct a reasoned and extended argument and could think on his feet and communicate his ideas.

For all of the politics present in academia and artistic organizations, they are oriented more towards individual effort (or small scale political effort), leading to more chance for intelligence to be properly utilized. Exposure to a large organization where each project requires work from dozens of departments and hundreds of people will soon disabuse you of the value of intelligence. As the sign says, "None of us are as dumb as all of us." It took several years working within the context of a Fortune 500 company before I finally accepted that, yes, indeed, I am a genius and that, yes, that creates problems for me.

Exceptionally or profoundly gifted people are not just intellectually gifted, they are emotionally different as well. (http://www.gt-cybersource.org has some brief yet interesting reports on this sort of thing.) As one of the authors pointed out, no one expects a 40 IQ child to be mainstreamed, yet this is often considered acceptable for a child of 160. There are emotional and social differences regardless of which side of the bell curve you are on.

These differences do not go away simply because someone moves from childhood to adulthood. Extremely intelligent adults making reality-based decisions will, within large organizations, rarely advance quickly unless they are so profoundly gifted in their domain that they change the nature of the domain. Usually, either their expertise is needed in a particular position or their inevitable conflicts with the inevitable incompetents will impair their advancement opportunities. Intensity is difficult to mask, and being required to step outside of reality based thinking is incredibly difficult for myself and the other extremely gifted people with whom I've worked. http://www.sengifted.org/articles_adults/Nauta_GiftedAdultsInWork.shtml has an interesting take on gifted employees in working environments:

Table 1 Characteristic statements made by gifted employees and people in their working environment concerning adaptation problems
What the working environment notices		What the employee states
1	Many conflicts with management and authorities	I have a great sense of justice
2	Cannot listen to what others say	My ideas are not understood, but I’m usually right
3	Difficult to place motives. What’s behind it all?	Apparently I’m a threat to my colleagues
4	Bad timekeeping, for example in meetings	I’m being held back all the time, it all goes so slowly
5	Strongly fluctuating performance, without any clear cause	I have no idea what I want, I find almost everything interesting
6	Not clear where the employee’s optimal work position is; concerns him/herself with all kinds of things	I get too little appreciation, people don’t see what I’m capable of
7	Lack of perseverance and discipline	I’m easily distracted
8	Is difficult to approach, not social	I dislike social talk
9	Makes all kinds of demands concerning work environment factors	I can’t understand how other people can work in that noise

I've experienced most of the above personally. Large scale organizations tend to give power to people that fit certain social and personality templates, whether consciously or unconsciously. The more profoundly gifted you are, the less likely that you will fit within such a template. (Unless fitting in or management is your template, I knew some managers that fit into that mold.)

Smart doesn't mean much in large scale organizations and, quite frankly, it never will.