Pinker’s The Blank Slate came out at a point when I was just about old enough to understand it but still young enough to be completely open to its ideas.
I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that Amanda Hess is a fervent believer in IQ when it’s used to spare those who score lower than 85 from the death penalty.
"On the other hand, Musk’s not infallible as a tweeter and sometimes falls for obviously wrong ideas."
Everyone does. Peter Thiel was a peak oil guy, putting his money into bets around the same time I talked an old friend off the ledge on the same topic.
130+ strikes me as about right for Musk. Anti-IQ types like to point out that IQ isn't totally correlated with money but everyone has an intuition that the highest paying jobs go to people around 130 on average. 160 and above is usually associated with less lucrative interests.
I thought Musk was overrated a decade ago and never understood the worship. I don't know that he has a genius for organizing factories. Doesn't he mostly take over and glom on to other people's work? I mean I have to admire what he does and what his interests are and that he puts his money in cool stuff, but i never got the impression he was a genius (as in a guy who creates novel things).
One of the most amusing things in recent years is how the left turned on him as soon as they discovered he was super pro free speech on the internet.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think the math SAT is less discriminating towards the top. There are few super difficult problems on it and lots of room to make a careless error in the middle of a solution. If you are impatient like me (yes here is my cope) you could miss some as a lazy teen who couldn't be arsed to double check. So it's also a test of conscientiousness, which is also, admittedly, one of the secrets of success.
Seriously, I think 120 - 140 IQ is the sweet spot. Lots of geniuses simply find everyone else unrelatable or have pathologies that hamstring their brainpower. Martine Rothblatt stays this side of functional but not Ted Kaszinsky.
Agreed. A lot of human characteristics max out in net benefit at 2 maybe 2.5 std dev. Ted's behavior might have been due to other issues besides high intelligence. Anyway, I don't buy the 140+ IQ=genius. Genius implies creativity.
I’ve never met a genius and very few of the next level down which I call brilliant. Musk always seemed to me in the gifted range with a super human level of concentration, focus and industriousness.
The November 1999 issue of Esquire magazine, with a hot young Charlize Theron on the cover, was titled "The Genius Issue." The lead article profiled a number of super high-IQ individuals, most of whom led really odd lives and contributed nothing much of value to the world. It was such a fascinating article that I kept the issue, which is available for cheap on eBay.
The left started to turn on Elon even before he bought Twitter. The reason they turned on him is because they turned on EVs. The only reason the left went big into EVs was a reason that the transportation minister of Norway gave away three years ago. That they only started pushing EVs because everyone thought they were a far off thing, distant future ware. When their real purpose was to get people out of cars altogether. Then Elon came along and actually delivered a mainstream-ish EV lineup. Upsetting the apple cart.
Really? I've never heard that before. I would greatly prefer a world with almost no cars and trains everywhere and walkable spaces (around me anyway). I recognize the transition might be impossible. I hate buses though.
Some people don’t like crowds. Personally, I loved living in a box in the sky where I could take an elevator and walk to nice restaurants. I also love my current rural life, where I can barely walk down my own driveway. I hated a townhouse in the ‘burbs. Crowded but not walkable.
Do you have a car? I hear people say such things and I’m dubious. Simple put, cars are awesome!! Especially after 6 pm. Public transportation is ok at certain times of the week if you live and work in the right places and if you live in a low crime city.
Yes but i don't drive much. it's not that I take public transport instead. I just don't go a lot of places. When I lived in NYC and Cambridge I went carless and loved it.
Buses are fine when they're clean and safe; run on a predictable schedule; and are double-decker, so you can sit upstairs and watch the world roll by.
Public buses here in Hong Kong hit all of those criteria, so I like them. But if you subtract any of those variables, they fall way behind trains as a dependable transport mode.
Even when they are clean, safe, and one-time, buses have have a noise level and ride comfort that is only worse riding in the bed of a pickup. I am glad to have buses as a reliable back-up for when I am down a car, but riding them day after day is wearying.
>It’s of course an interesting question because Musk’s business accomplishments as an industrialist are so astonishing (running two radically different hardware companies in electric vehicles and rockets, plus SpaceX’s subsidiary Starlink, which is doing very well).
Don't forget that he also founded a company that became a major part of PayPal. And was one of the initial investors in OpenAI. And before all that he had a successful proto-Yelp startup in the 90s. It's pretty impressive how many of his judgments have paid off.
Also, just FYI I assume the rare brand of cars you're thinking of are "McLarens," not "McClarens."
>For example, in the mid-1950s, Harvard, wishing to increase the brainpower of its students, stopped putting an upper quota on the number of high-scoring Jews it would accept. How’d that work out for Harvard?
I just finished reading Jerome Karabel's excellent book The Chosen, on the history of admissions at HYP. The 1920s WASP administrators of HYP, like the headmasters who taught them at St. Grottlesex boarding schools, generally devalued IQ and academic achievement in admissions, compared to athleticism, charisma, and force of personality. Which they cold-bloodedly figured would lead to alumni who were political and business leaders, as opposed to scholars and professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.).
The economy has gotten more STEM friendly, so Harvard benefits these days from having more Mark Zuckerbergs and fewer Dink Stovers. (Dink was a Yalie, and Harvard has always been brainier than Yale, but I can't think of an exact equivalent for Harvard.)
>Musk, who was born in 1971, took the SAT twice in the late eighties or early nineties, according to Walter Isaacson’s semi-authorized biography. This was back when the SAT was seriously correlated with IQ. On his second try, he scored 730 Math and 670 Verbal or 1400, which would be a score in the 1500s today.
My impression from Isaacon's book is that Musk was a slacker academically in high school, so I suspect he didn't study too hard for the SAT. His employees and colleagues report that he comfortably handled very complex technical problems at his companies, so I think he has more raw brainpower than a 1400 on the old SAT would indicate. (Not that that's anything to scoff at.)
Yes, maybe he doesn't like Trump, but in his public pronouncements Pinker has always made sure to denounce the right, while what he is saying undermines core beliefs of the left. I think that's a survival tactic on his part. I don't blame him for it, just as I don't blame Ann Coulter or Heather Mac Donald for steering clear of the issue of black IQ. A public intellectual's gotta do what a public intellectual's gotta do.
Since all activity by the left is consciously driven towards a political agenda, they assume everyone else does the same. Any work to determine how people have different capabilities (which somehow is the antithesis to the liberal project) becomes "laundering into evidence of inherent superiority".
The idea that some researchers were motivated by the idea that matching people to their capabilities and potential would make the world a better place does not compute with the left. Not only that but enrages them.
So any investigation into such reasonable topics is verboten, plus anyone wanting to investigate shall be marked as verboten.
"The average verbal score of college-bound seniors in 1988 was 428 and average math score was 476, total 904"
That seems awfully low--not much more than average IQ of the whole population, which ought to be the lower bound of college. What percent went to college over time?
Even back in the day about 1/3 of Americans attended university in 1966, so this suggests a min IQ of 106 for white Americans (and less for others).
So presumably, the wealth of the US allowed it to spend its treasure (at least partly) on broader university entry and likely also accounts for the "well-rounding focus" that includes a focus on sports and extra curricular activities. By comparison (UK), in 1920, 2% got degrees, in 1950-2.3% and in 2010-42%. Additionally, higher degrees 1920-0.3%; 1950-0.3%; 2010-23%. A much more exclusionary approach until the current century.
One imagines that at some point, it appeared that at least there was no harm in attending university🙄
In brain-to-brain combat, I am sure Elon Musk's brain would give Stephen Pinker's brain a real whipping.
More seriously, Secretariat was some horse, arguably the greatest racehorse that ever lived. I saw the Belmont Stakes of 1973 live as a boy. What a performance, the announcer crying, "Secretariat is like a giant machine!" I still watch the race on you tube every once in a while. Incidentally, Secretariat was born near where John Wilkes Booth was killed and where the last Horne's restaurant is located.
"Moving like a tremendous machine," but yeah. I think it was Steve Sailer who alerted me to the story of Jack Nicklaus breaking down in tears at the wonder and majesty of that performance. 31 lengths? Literally incredible, but it did happen.
Of course, the real takeaway from this is: success is not a pure function of IQ. There are plenty of math profs at mid-tier universities who have more raw mathematical horsepower than Musk, but who have accomplished much less.
It reminds me of how Steve Hsu likes to bring up that Jeff Bezos wasn't as smart as the top Princeton physics students. Dr. Hsu's interpretation of this (as usual) seems to be that physicists are smarter and better than everyone else. My interpretation would be that, as important as it is, there's more to life than IQ.
The founder of Jimmy John's is a great story. John Liautaud finished next to last at the bottom of his high school class. His dad told him he all but had to enlist in the service. He made a deal with his dad to loan him $20k (or thereabouts) to start a hot dog shop. If it failed, he'd figure out a way to pay him back and enlist. So...he realized the equipment cost too much and switched to sandwiches. After lots of ups and downs and learning the ropes the hard way, suffice to say I think he is close to being worth almost $2 billion today. Never discount drive and determination!
Capitslism is better at making a wider variety of people richer via legitimate means than anything else in all of prior history. Even stupid people come out better for it.
Musk must have impressed the Stanford Materials Engineering admission committee to admit him ~ 1996 for an incoming class of ~15-20 students ? What does that say about his IQ, his practical intelligence …. Surely > 140 IQ and I doubt if the admissions committee would cover emphasize GMAT /GRE which can be "hacked" by preparation? What does it say about his self-confidence to leave the program after a few days — but he had the credential of admission to such a prestigious program and that was all he wanted or needed from Stanford. An admission letter that doubles as a credential ….
2) do IQ tests become less repeatable above , say , 135 ? One wrong question and that changes your score many points ? Can someone correct me ?
The problem with the IQ test is drive and determination is such a critical element to success.
My brother in law was considered the genius in the family; went to Dartmouth as a math major. However, he was ahead of his time with the "life balance" work outlook and went into a government role... where no work happened after 5pm, weekends and given lots of vacation. His brother - my husband - was an above average student but not a genius by any means. He went to an average state school. He went on to law school, chose a rigorous aspect of it, and is making more than ten times a year of his brother's salary. You just can't predict things. I don't have IQ numbers for them, but I"m pretty sure my brother in law outshone him on that factor.
I don't know Elon... but the guy doesn't quit. Drive and determination in the face of "no" :)
Small anecdata in IQ heritability: I was a mathy kid in Palo Alto in the 70s and on the math team in high school. Later at Stanford I kept getting surprised at how many of my professors were the fathers of my math teammates (including head of the Math Department, Nobel Prize physicist, Dean of Engineering.) Coincidence...?
Good analysis. Thanks for posting, it was interesting to read. The two prongs of the left's attack on Musk's intelligence (that he's low IQ or average) or that IQ is a bad metric are misinformed and foolish.
Probably a regional thing, but here in the NYC/NJ suburbs, "Penn" refers to Penn State and "UPenn" to Musk's alma mater, so I was confused at first. Not as confused as I would have been if he'd actually gone to Penn State, however.
The desperate need of Western Progressives to deny IQ: is it just the race thing, or something bigger? I wonder if the Blank Slate Hypothesis operates to free Western elites from any sense of the older noblesse oblige to one's fellow citizens. If everyone, or at least every white person, has an equal chance to be Bill Gates, or a BigLaw partner, that heightens the sense of accomplishment--merit, if you will--of those who succeed in academia then Blue City careers, even as it validates indifference to the fate of those lazy blue collar losers back home dying deaths of despair when the mines or factories shut down or move overseas.
I think it includes race but goes further in terms of diversity and equity in so far as I have a fear that it relates to the primacy of the verbal over math in the currently prevailing times. There seems to be plenty of deck chairs for comms. and public relations types through to journalists and lawyers to move around around the deck. Courtesy, verbal skills, obfuscation, lying all go a long way towards success in many environments or if not success at least avoidance of failure or blame. In our times, it takes some courage to reference ideas of objectivity and reason that underpinned so much of the unspoken meritocracy of the past. For example, to explain to someone that they are an imbecile would likely be seen as a microaggression or worse but be much more necessary in the mine or the factory ("keep clear of the rotating blades"). Those spheres operated on very fine tolerances and understandings of risk-far more of a maths/perceptual/logical slant. Although I think that all endeavours likely benefit from broad intelligence, some areas require it absolutely-and back to McNamara's morons.
Pinker’s The Blank Slate came out at a point when I was just about old enough to understand it but still young enough to be completely open to its ideas.
It’s the most important book I’ve ever read.
I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that Amanda Hess is a fervent believer in IQ when it’s used to spare those who score lower than 85 from the death penalty.
and picking someone with whom to reproduce.
The three sixes takes no account of IQ.
Isn't that joke standard for every woman, especially dumb sluts with more tattoos than bare skin?
I have no truck with such women.
Nor I and Amanda Hess appears to be not one of them.
I’ll bet you further that she thinks she’s smarter than Musk because she scored higher than him on the verbal
Steve's in his wheelhouse.
"On the other hand, Musk’s not infallible as a tweeter and sometimes falls for obviously wrong ideas."
Everyone does. Peter Thiel was a peak oil guy, putting his money into bets around the same time I talked an old friend off the ledge on the same topic.
130+ strikes me as about right for Musk. Anti-IQ types like to point out that IQ isn't totally correlated with money but everyone has an intuition that the highest paying jobs go to people around 130 on average. 160 and above is usually associated with less lucrative interests.
I thought Musk was overrated a decade ago and never understood the worship. I don't know that he has a genius for organizing factories. Doesn't he mostly take over and glom on to other people's work? I mean I have to admire what he does and what his interests are and that he puts his money in cool stuff, but i never got the impression he was a genius (as in a guy who creates novel things).
One of the most amusing things in recent years is how the left turned on him as soon as they discovered he was super pro free speech on the internet.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think the math SAT is less discriminating towards the top. There are few super difficult problems on it and lots of room to make a careless error in the middle of a solution. If you are impatient like me (yes here is my cope) you could miss some as a lazy teen who couldn't be arsed to double check. So it's also a test of conscientiousness, which is also, admittedly, one of the secrets of success.
I think the majority of geniuses are dysfunctional and don't create anything.
Speaking as a genius, the creation is easy; it's the sales that are the trick.
Seriously, I think 120 - 140 IQ is the sweet spot. Lots of geniuses simply find everyone else unrelatable or have pathologies that hamstring their brainpower. Martine Rothblatt stays this side of functional but not Ted Kaszinsky.
Agreed. A lot of human characteristics max out in net benefit at 2 maybe 2.5 std dev. Ted's behavior might have been due to other issues besides high intelligence. Anyway, I don't buy the 140+ IQ=genius. Genius implies creativity.
I’ve never met a genius and very few of the next level down which I call brilliant. Musk always seemed to me in the gifted range with a super human level of concentration, focus and industriousness.
The November 1999 issue of Esquire magazine, with a hot young Charlize Theron on the cover, was titled "The Genius Issue." The lead article profiled a number of super high-IQ individuals, most of whom led really odd lives and contributed nothing much of value to the world. It was such a fascinating article that I kept the issue, which is available for cheap on eBay.
The left started to turn on Elon even before he bought Twitter. The reason they turned on him is because they turned on EVs. The only reason the left went big into EVs was a reason that the transportation minister of Norway gave away three years ago. That they only started pushing EVs because everyone thought they were a far off thing, distant future ware. When their real purpose was to get people out of cars altogether. Then Elon came along and actually delivered a mainstream-ish EV lineup. Upsetting the apple cart.
Really? I've never heard that before. I would greatly prefer a world with almost no cars and trains everywhere and walkable spaces (around me anyway). I recognize the transition might be impossible. I hate buses though.
Some people don’t like crowds. Personally, I loved living in a box in the sky where I could take an elevator and walk to nice restaurants. I also love my current rural life, where I can barely walk down my own driveway. I hated a townhouse in the ‘burbs. Crowded but not walkable.
Do you have a car? I hear people say such things and I’m dubious. Simple put, cars are awesome!! Especially after 6 pm. Public transportation is ok at certain times of the week if you live and work in the right places and if you live in a low crime city.
Yes but i don't drive much. it's not that I take public transport instead. I just don't go a lot of places. When I lived in NYC and Cambridge I went carless and loved it.
Buses are fine when they're clean and safe; run on a predictable schedule; and are double-decker, so you can sit upstairs and watch the world roll by.
Public buses here in Hong Kong hit all of those criteria, so I like them. But if you subtract any of those variables, they fall way behind trains as a dependable transport mode.
Even when they are clean, safe, and one-time, buses have have a noise level and ride comfort that is only worse riding in the bed of a pickup. I am glad to have buses as a reliable back-up for when I am down a car, but riding them day after day is wearying.
The left didn’t turn on EVs, they pushed them. There are no doubt a few fringe types against motor vehicles of all types but they’re a minority.
Steve is a conservative but more like a leftist in that he has a worldview that is internally consistent.
Musk is now just a populist conservative who says wacky things without caring how they all align.
>It’s of course an interesting question because Musk’s business accomplishments as an industrialist are so astonishing (running two radically different hardware companies in electric vehicles and rockets, plus SpaceX’s subsidiary Starlink, which is doing very well).
Don't forget that he also founded a company that became a major part of PayPal. And was one of the initial investors in OpenAI. And before all that he had a successful proto-Yelp startup in the 90s. It's pretty impressive how many of his judgments have paid off.
Also, just FYI I assume the rare brand of cars you're thinking of are "McLarens," not "McClarens."
>For example, in the mid-1950s, Harvard, wishing to increase the brainpower of its students, stopped putting an upper quota on the number of high-scoring Jews it would accept. How’d that work out for Harvard?
I just finished reading Jerome Karabel's excellent book The Chosen, on the history of admissions at HYP. The 1920s WASP administrators of HYP, like the headmasters who taught them at St. Grottlesex boarding schools, generally devalued IQ and academic achievement in admissions, compared to athleticism, charisma, and force of personality. Which they cold-bloodedly figured would lead to alumni who were political and business leaders, as opposed to scholars and professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.).
The economy has gotten more STEM friendly, so Harvard benefits these days from having more Mark Zuckerbergs and fewer Dink Stovers. (Dink was a Yalie, and Harvard has always been brainier than Yale, but I can't think of an exact equivalent for Harvard.)
>Musk, who was born in 1971, took the SAT twice in the late eighties or early nineties, according to Walter Isaacson’s semi-authorized biography. This was back when the SAT was seriously correlated with IQ. On his second try, he scored 730 Math and 670 Verbal or 1400, which would be a score in the 1500s today.
My impression from Isaacon's book is that Musk was a slacker academically in high school, so I suspect he didn't study too hard for the SAT. His employees and colleagues report that he comfortably handled very complex technical problems at his companies, so I think he has more raw brainpower than a 1400 on the old SAT would indicate. (Not that that's anything to scoff at.)
Thanks, I'll fix it to McLarens.
"How’d that work out for Harvard?"
Don't ask the Unz Review mob.
It's interesting which politicians' SAT scores or grades didn't leak the last 40 odd years.
Pinker included a Trump bash to maintain his status with the Left. Tiresome.
Maybe he doesn't like Trump?
Yes, maybe he doesn't like Trump, but in his public pronouncements Pinker has always made sure to denounce the right, while what he is saying undermines core beliefs of the left. I think that's a survival tactic on his part. I don't blame him for it, just as I don't blame Ann Coulter or Heather Mac Donald for steering clear of the issue of black IQ. A public intellectual's gotta do what a public intellectual's gotta do.
Since all activity by the left is consciously driven towards a political agenda, they assume everyone else does the same. Any work to determine how people have different capabilities (which somehow is the antithesis to the liberal project) becomes "laundering into evidence of inherent superiority".
The idea that some researchers were motivated by the idea that matching people to their capabilities and potential would make the world a better place does not compute with the left. Not only that but enrages them.
So any investigation into such reasonable topics is verboten, plus anyone wanting to investigate shall be marked as verboten.
"The average verbal score of college-bound seniors in 1988 was 428 and average math score was 476, total 904"
That seems awfully low--not much more than average IQ of the whole population, which ought to be the lower bound of college. What percent went to college over time?
The SAT scores probably include the football teams of Oklahoma, USC, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan and Virginia Tech.
Even back in the day about 1/3 of Americans attended university in 1966, so this suggests a min IQ of 106 for white Americans (and less for others).
So presumably, the wealth of the US allowed it to spend its treasure (at least partly) on broader university entry and likely also accounts for the "well-rounding focus" that includes a focus on sports and extra curricular activities. By comparison (UK), in 1920, 2% got degrees, in 1950-2.3% and in 2010-42%. Additionally, higher degrees 1920-0.3%; 1950-0.3%; 2010-23%. A much more exclusionary approach until the current century.
One imagines that at some point, it appeared that at least there was no harm in attending university🙄
In brain-to-brain combat, I am sure Elon Musk's brain would give Stephen Pinker's brain a real whipping.
More seriously, Secretariat was some horse, arguably the greatest racehorse that ever lived. I saw the Belmont Stakes of 1973 live as a boy. What a performance, the announcer crying, "Secretariat is like a giant machine!" I still watch the race on you tube every once in a while. Incidentally, Secretariat was born near where John Wilkes Booth was killed and where the last Horne's restaurant is located.
"Moving like a tremendous machine," but yeah. I think it was Steve Sailer who alerted me to the story of Jack Nicklaus breaking down in tears at the wonder and majesty of that performance. 31 lengths? Literally incredible, but it did happen.
Tremendous machine is the correct quote. I just watched the 1973 Belmont Stakes yesterday.
Of course, the real takeaway from this is: success is not a pure function of IQ. There are plenty of math profs at mid-tier universities who have more raw mathematical horsepower than Musk, but who have accomplished much less.
It reminds me of how Steve Hsu likes to bring up that Jeff Bezos wasn't as smart as the top Princeton physics students. Dr. Hsu's interpretation of this (as usual) seems to be that physicists are smarter and better than everyone else. My interpretation would be that, as important as it is, there's more to life than IQ.
The founder of Jimmy John's is a great story. John Liautaud finished next to last at the bottom of his high school class. His dad told him he all but had to enlist in the service. He made a deal with his dad to loan him $20k (or thereabouts) to start a hot dog shop. If it failed, he'd figure out a way to pay him back and enlist. So...he realized the equipment cost too much and switched to sandwiches. After lots of ups and downs and learning the ropes the hard way, suffice to say I think he is close to being worth almost $2 billion today. Never discount drive and determination!
Capitslism is better at making a wider variety of people richer via legitimate means than anything else in all of prior history. Even stupid people come out better for it.
Musk must have impressed the Stanford Materials Engineering admission committee to admit him ~ 1996 for an incoming class of ~15-20 students ? What does that say about his IQ, his practical intelligence …. Surely > 140 IQ and I doubt if the admissions committee would cover emphasize GMAT /GRE which can be "hacked" by preparation? What does it say about his self-confidence to leave the program after a few days — but he had the credential of admission to such a prestigious program and that was all he wanted or needed from Stanford. An admission letter that doubles as a credential ….
2) do IQ tests become less repeatable above , say , 135 ? One wrong question and that changes your score many points ? Can someone correct me ?
The problem with the IQ test is drive and determination is such a critical element to success.
My brother in law was considered the genius in the family; went to Dartmouth as a math major. However, he was ahead of his time with the "life balance" work outlook and went into a government role... where no work happened after 5pm, weekends and given lots of vacation. His brother - my husband - was an above average student but not a genius by any means. He went to an average state school. He went on to law school, chose a rigorous aspect of it, and is making more than ten times a year of his brother's salary. You just can't predict things. I don't have IQ numbers for them, but I"m pretty sure my brother in law outshone him on that factor.
I don't know Elon... but the guy doesn't quit. Drive and determination in the face of "no" :)
Small anecdata in IQ heritability: I was a mathy kid in Palo Alto in the 70s and on the math team in high school. Later at Stanford I kept getting surprised at how many of my professors were the fathers of my math teammates (including head of the Math Department, Nobel Prize physicist, Dean of Engineering.) Coincidence...?
Good analysis. Thanks for posting, it was interesting to read. The two prongs of the left's attack on Musk's intelligence (that he's low IQ or average) or that IQ is a bad metric are misinformed and foolish.
Probably a regional thing, but here in the NYC/NJ suburbs, "Penn" refers to Penn State and "UPenn" to Musk's alma mater, so I was confused at first. Not as confused as I would have been if he'd actually gone to Penn State, however.
The desperate need of Western Progressives to deny IQ: is it just the race thing, or something bigger? I wonder if the Blank Slate Hypothesis operates to free Western elites from any sense of the older noblesse oblige to one's fellow citizens. If everyone, or at least every white person, has an equal chance to be Bill Gates, or a BigLaw partner, that heightens the sense of accomplishment--merit, if you will--of those who succeed in academia then Blue City careers, even as it validates indifference to the fate of those lazy blue collar losers back home dying deaths of despair when the mines or factories shut down or move overseas.
I think it includes race but goes further in terms of diversity and equity in so far as I have a fear that it relates to the primacy of the verbal over math in the currently prevailing times. There seems to be plenty of deck chairs for comms. and public relations types through to journalists and lawyers to move around around the deck. Courtesy, verbal skills, obfuscation, lying all go a long way towards success in many environments or if not success at least avoidance of failure or blame. In our times, it takes some courage to reference ideas of objectivity and reason that underpinned so much of the unspoken meritocracy of the past. For example, to explain to someone that they are an imbecile would likely be seen as a microaggression or worse but be much more necessary in the mine or the factory ("keep clear of the rotating blades"). Those spheres operated on very fine tolerances and understandings of risk-far more of a maths/perceptual/logical slant. Although I think that all endeavours likely benefit from broad intelligence, some areas require it absolutely-and back to McNamara's morons.