Rewarding Dumbness: How Modern Society Filters Away Intelligence

Human society has always applied filters, to select who should be in a particular group. This is both evolutionary and required for good social dynamics. But we also apply filters institutionally, using systems of meritocracy to vet candidates both in academia and industry. I argue that these institutional filters are far too narrowly-defined to account for the complexity and high-dimensionality of human intelligence. I argue that today's complex world suffers from such narrow filtering, elevating a kind of "dumbness" in society. What we need now, more than ever, are problem-solving groups, composed of diverse individuals, filtered not by standardized tests and whiteboard exams, but by their ability to contribute to collective problem solving.

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