I feel ya, I also generally am very against "it's just common sense!" type reasoning. But have you ever spent time with, like special education students? Like someone who will need to live with their parents forever because they can't learn to do things like read or write? It's nice to believe that maybe if only they had been given the right environment, they wouldn't have those problems - it's also just not true. Or perhaps we can take a more extremely example of someone who suffered a major brain injury. It sucks, and it's unfair, but at the end of the day some people really are definitively less smart than others. And by that same token, those others are definitively more smart than them. Of course, once people are at a certain level, it gets a lot harder to tell, but that dynamic is still in play. Likewise, if you've ever had the experience of interacting with a gifted kid, it's pretty clear that they're smarter than others.

That's a good distinction about intelligence being generally advantageous. That is why I said generally - it has some clear disadvantages like loneliness or a deeper awareness of the world's problems, etc. But most of the time, being smart is advantageous, don't you think? I mean, what is intelligence other than an ability to correctly understand reality? I do agree that sometimes having a false understanding of reality can coincidentally help you out, but knowing how things really are is certainly the superior strategy. If you think otherwise, it's always easy to make yourself dumber and reap the rewards. I don't mean that sarcastically or cruelly. I just mean, there's a reason we don't see intelligent people lobotomizing themselves to have better lives.

Agreed the chart only shows correlation and not causation in either direction.

Sorry buddy, but "Einstein wasn't smart" just isn't something I can take seriously.

Denying intellectual disparities denies the vulnerability of people with special needs, not to mention average folks who are constantly being deceived, swindled, manipulated, propagandized, and parasitized by the rich and powerful.

You don’t know people who are clearly dumb?

The average ACT score for college bound seniors in Florida is 18. The test costs money, which means they’re at least trying. It’s childishly easy. My cat, who is illiterate, can score almost as high (answering at random).

What kind of conversations can you have with folks who can’t do arithmetic or read simple sentences?

I want to stress that Americans, uniquely, are really weird about testing mental ability, because of their history of racism. Nevertheless, intelligence is a real phenomenon.

A high IQ doesn’t make you a good person, and it clearly has very little to do with accumulating wealth. But it does make life a hell of a lot easier. It enables you to do second order reasoning and engage in abstract deliberation, which is indispensable for ethics and science. Or do you think it’s a coincidence that average IQs rose 30 points in the last 100 years exactly in tandem with moral progress?