Why do smart people have bad political takes?

A recurring complaint I have seen by Richard Hanania and others on the center/middle-right is that the tech-right, who are otherwise intelligent, come off as dull, uniformed or intellectually-incurious about politics:

And again:

If someone is smart enough to become a billionaire, why doesn’t this transfer to producing interesting or intelligent discourse?

Hanania says they are “clearly smart”. They are smart, but not actually *that* smart. Think the difference between 115-130 IQ vs 150+. Many of these people are ‘midwits’ (in a strictly categorical sense and not pejoratively) that landed early on a tech deal or exit, and are under of illusion of being smart or incisive, when they were lucky.

Compare Moldbug, who it’s reasonable to assume has an IQ of at least 160 and was a child prodigy (who graduated from college at 18!), to the average ‘tech person’ or ‘vc person’. Clearly there is an IQ gap, and this can explain why the discourse of the former sounds smarter. Just as there are perceptible differences of ability by outsiders between people of average IQ vs high IQ, there are also noticeable differences between the ultra-intelligent the merely intelligent.

Truly incisive, smart discourse is closer to 150 than 125. What I mean is, our expectations of people at the lower-end of the range is inflated. People with ‘only’ above-average IQs typically do not have profound or interesting insights into society, and this is perfectly fine. Society needs thinkers, creators, and builders; not everyone can or should be all three.

Second, people whose careers involve billions or hundreds of millions of dollars on the line likely have more pressing priorities than having ‘interesting political takes’ or being up-to-speed on politics. Why does the CEO of a trillion-dollar car company and space company need–or should be expected–to also have good political opinions? Consider Henry Ford, who a century ago, similar to Musk, expressed some ideas that today are politically incorrect, and even back then were controversial. It’s also possible that personality traits correlated with entrepreneurism, such as high risk tolerance or rejection of conformity, are correlated with holding fringe views.

Moreover, in comparing ‘wealth vs erudition’, the IQ threshold for the latter is possibly higher, due to high g-loading of verbal ability and crystalized IQ (how much you know aka ‘book smarts’). A top score on the verbal part of the GREs or the ‘old’ (pre-1995) SATs is rarer than even having millions of dollars. As I discuss earlier, verbal ability is possibly harder and more g-loaded than even math/quantitative ability:

As I argue in “‘Thought leader’ is just another form of elite status,” being a successful pundit or thought-influencer is much more uncommon and difficult than even being a highly competent and wealthy businessman, with a higher intellectual barrier to entry. The people who are the most successful at business and make decent money are not the smartest, even if they are still pretty smart and competent overall. (Although there are some exceptions, like Bill Gates or the founders of Google.)

A common stat I cite is that the threshold for being smart enough to qualify for Mensa (1/50 IQ rarity) is 5x as common as being a millionaire (1/10) as of 2025. As America becomes wealthier, the rarity of the latter will keep falling, yet a million dollars is still seen as a lot of money and unattainable for many. No amount of AI or other advances will suddenly make people richer in a quantitative sense. But IQ is fixed, and there is some evidence to suggest mean IQ may even be falling.

Imagine your typical social media influencer who has a sports car yet is not that smart. It’s not like anyone is consulting Andrew Tate or Mr. Beast for their political advice or to negotiate peace treaties in the Middle East.

As if it was not otherwise evident, having an original (and, importantly, useful) intellectual insight is really difficult. In the context of academia, when someone accomplishes this feat there is not uncommonly a ceremony that includes the awarding of a certificate and the individual adding special letters to his or her name.

Also, what makes for a good take anyway? A good opinion is correct, novel, and not too obvious. If it’s obvious then it’s uninteresting. But being wrong too many times is bad too. For example, many people who are otherwise smart or insightful in other ways, predicted that the 2020 election would be overturned or spread baseless/nonsense q-anon rumors. Others predicted that Covid or Trump’s tariffs would destroy the global or US economy instead of only being a setback.

Such incorrectness is seen on the entirety of the political spectrum, not just on the extremes. Being wrong too often could be indicative of having a faulty ‘mental model’ of the world or putting ideology above accuracy. For example, Richard Hanania and others on the center/middle-right were confident in April-May 2025 that Trump’s tariffs would sink the US economy. This was a reasonable or nuanced take, but entirely wrong.