I think there is something to the low IQ thing!
I am in a location that gets infrequent snow, and we happened to get a good bit over the weekend. County offices closed, businesses closed, and schools are now going to be closed for the third day in a row.
Local Facebook and NextDoor groups are blowing up with people outraged at the decision to close schools tomorrow, even though most roads are perfectly fine. I've been driving around since Monday (I do have 4x4).
The outrage goes something like this:
"I can't believe they're closing schools again, the road in front of my house is totally clear! It's ridiculous! This is an outrage!"
Well ok, the roads in front of YOUR house may be clear, but when you get to the hilly and more rural areas of the county--where school buses still have to drive--those roads are very treacherous right now. A school bus drove off a hill and flip just a few years ago when it it hit a large patch of black ice going around a curve. This is not a theoretical issue.
There is just a really large contingent of people who just cannot think in "what ifs" or beyond their immediate "right now" situation. (And to be clear, if they were saying "the schools should have had alternative plans for dangerous school bus routes" I would agree! It's just the idiocy of "me me me, now now now" that is striking.)
That's almost certainly true, but the point I'm driving at is that the position of aristocrat ought to be filled by those who can tell you about skipping breakfast whereas those that did have breakfast should be the ones toiling in the mines for their local lord.
Yeah, and an ideal aristocrat should also have an internal monolog and be able to visualize an apple in detail.
True enough.
We'd all like to be governed by philosopher kings, but unfortunately we get easily corruptible and manipulatable midwits instead, who are themselves corrupted and manipulated by delusional midwits.
As Heinlein said, "intelligence" or "science" doesn't provide moral wisdom or equate to competent leadership.
What people are really using various words for is to try and explain "good decision making" for problems that arise in the future. Which very easily slips to "I want someone to be able to tell the future"
Someone who's assessment of a situation and decisions that can turn a 50/50 good/bad decisions into a 55/45 in charge is what builds civilisations. Unfortunately there's no way to screen for that in any meaningful way.
Philosopher-kings are great, but its the sophists who gave Socrates the ol' hemlock tea, and it's hard to filter sophistry when seeking intellectuals.