American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

> the new more intelligence-based economy.

Was intelligence not valued before?

The intelligence premium is definitely higher.

The very intelligent traditional men are the ones under attack in America. The stupid are not directly under attack. The stupid are under attack indirectly, because the true leaders of society are under attack. The evidence of this can be seen in all of the crumbling cities in America. Even Noam Chomsky, a renowned liberal, admits that America is in a decline.

Understanding the reason can start with understanding that the very very intelligent men have been shouldered out of the Ivy League schools. Men have higher quantitative reasoning ability than women. The truly magical men that should be in control of our society are being shouldered out by very intelligent women.

>In 2005, the distinguished economist Lawrence Summers was forced to resign as President of Harvard University after expressing the view, at a seminar on diversity in the academic workplace, that in some fields the innate cognitive differences between the sexes might make the search for a perfect 50:50 gender balance impossible.

Mr. Summers taking damage here is an instance of the de-evolution effect of feminism that we all experience everyday. There will never be a balance in the genders until genius men are stepped on and damaged until their phenotypes have been genocided/they no longer exist. And even in that case, if the very genius men are being stepped on, then genius women are also going to be disappearing, as the same genius men are generally their fathers.

It's hard to apply cultural analysis like this uniformly. I also feel that there is a general trend towards anti-intellectualism in America. I think both things can be true: that 'we' value excellence academically (because it confers greater and greater economic benefit) and yet are less open to ideas that are outside our worldview.

On the other hand, the article suggests that the more intelligent are more likely to be oblivious of their own biases and flaws (and where is that more likely than in politics), so on its own terms is not necessarily contradictory :)

No, it confuses material success with human worth.

And this is not a new human behaviour, it's just exacerbated by increasing inequality, and made more obvious when the rules of success change, favouring different social groups.

American society's infatuation with gungho capitalism certainly plays a part (thanks, Edward Bernaise), but I'm convinced it's a hard wired behaviour, like our preference for attractive people. Associating ourselves with both attractive and the powerful provide an evolutionary advantage.