In serious fact what you allege is not true. The stupidest people I have ever known always did well in life. I followed the careers of many people I knew from high school on. The slowest students, often the ones who dropped out in grade eight, the genuinely dumb went on to have successful careers. In three cases people I know who were widely acknowledged as dumb, even by themselves eventually became leaders in business. Three people I knew who had to be explained everything three times, and had trouble reading, and doing basic maths became managers of department stores. (The boy who helped out the milkman on our block, never went to high school as he had to quit in grade four at the age of 15. He became a very successful manager of a large department store in a major city.) Others I know who could never get problems in school and did little reading became lawyers, accountants, doctors, etc.. Those who dropped out in grade ten went on to become managers, policement, city councillors etc.. Responsible positions. A few better students but by no means the best became professors and teachers. Those people were generally useless at doing anything practical and that was the only good paying position they could possibly handle. Can't do a damn thing? Teach others what you cannot do yourself.
In fact 95% of the people in the world today work steadily at good jobs, or as good jobs as we have to give them. In fact IQ is the poorest possible predictor of success in the world. The bottom 30th percentile of intelligence achieves the top 30% of wage earning, and bonus positions in society. The highest average IQ jobs are taxi drivers and grad psyche students, both of whom you have to acknowledge do absolutely nothing for society.
Go to your next high school reunion. Seek out the dummies, and the super smart. Gauge what they are doing and how much they are making. I will take bets with you that the truly dumb guys and gals are sparkling with social success and make the most money and the geniuses are all going from job to job and generally making nothing. Bookshop clerks, part time labourers, working in electronic stores stocking parts, pumping gas, taxi driving, menial jobs. And the richest? Inherited money? The happiest married? Could not get past question 2 on the math test.
I know about 20 people I realize have giant brains. Far larger than my own, I blush to admit. I happen in about 15 cases to know their actual IQ's due to a glitch in the reporting in the school system. I saw their scores. They started at 140 and went up. Most you would never suspect. Only 15% of them were intellectuals. The rest were kinda simple folk who had never been exposed to the academic world. They all got fair marks from 68% say to 85%. One got routine 90%'s. It was on record she studied a maniacal ten minutes a night. A real underachiever. After 30 years I can safely state that the entire income and achievment record of the group in question would not surpass that of a crippled hamster. Except for one nagging fact. They did change the direction of the world more than any other historical groups I have read about. But alas! They never got paid. That confirms my assertion.
Looking at the group who struggled mightily to get grade ten, half of whom inherited the family business and if I left them my homework in school, I would be embarassed to read it.. or hand it in, for fear of dropping back 3 full grades ... these 'retards' total income and net worth would be sufficient to buy a late model battleship.
Smart don't mean shit. It is what fits into the other dumb animals social schemes that gets ahead.
One of the reasons why high analytical skills does not give significant advantage is that the heuristic of the success path is so complex that it will often not yield to a systematic. An instinctive approach that does not try to solve anything often works better in the short run. Short run success builds up more capital and credit and that leverages more future success more assuredly. Less sure looking paths that are better figured out don't sell, so more often end up with no capital. The average person cannot figure out complex but smart pathways. And the average person will not interfere with people who don't appear threatening, giving the seeming slow more latitude for competition. Usually competition only becames a factor when it is too late to interfere with, but a brainy guy always seems dangerous, so the competitor finishes him off first. He is passed by the tortoise with the less obvious success plan. Smart is dumb and dumb is smart.
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