Oh shit, I never realised that was Jones in A Scanner Darkly.

But yes, it’s such a good film. Definitely in my top 10 of all time.

Smart and hot, what’s not to like?

But yeah, “what dumb people think smart people sound like” seems to be a real theme with conservative influences and politicians.

Same with how conservatives think posturing, bluster, strong-arm tactics, unwillingness to compromise etc. are a sign of strength – “how weak people think strong people act”.

Now I think it was because they were actively looking for understanding something new, and did not represent the general population.

Assuming that intelligence (and I don’t mean IQ or any other psychometric “proxy” for intelligence, but intelligence as an abstract trait) is normally distributed like most other traits, 50% of people are going to be dumber than average because in normal distributions the mean is the median. The “general population” is not smart by any definition.

And anyone trying to claim that intelligence as a concept is completely socially constructed and that there is no difference in intelligence between people, or tries to conflate IQ etc psychometric measures and intelligence, can shove it up their ass.