On 05/02/2026 09:12, Kiran K Karthikeyan via Silklist wrote:
Brian Klaas’ framing feels closer to the truth for me — power doesn’t just corrupt, it attracts the corruptible. Which is why I’m wary of making this an IQ/EQ story. It feels more like a systems/selection problem — we’ve built ladders where empathy is optional, and constraints are negotiable. In that world, arrogance isn’t just a flaw — it’s a competitive advantage, and institutions quietly reward the traits that make it easier to treat people as instruments.
I am also suspicious of the notion that these people are high IQ people. Their actions are often... shortsighted, hardly a five-dimensional chess strategy. I suspect they've gained a position of power mainly through luck combined with *some* intelligence to exploit it, but the luck is the dominant factor; and they've used that power to accumulate more power. It's like a real-time strategy computer game where once you've overwhelmed your opponent you can cut off their access to resources.
Kiran
-- Alaric Snell-Pym (M0KTN neé M7KIT) http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
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