> Brilliance and creativity do seem to offer some protection against blankfacedness—possibly because the smarter you are, the harder it is to justify idiotic ru

> Brilliance and creativity do seem to offer some protection against blankfacedness—possibly because the smarter you are, the harder it is to justify idiotic rules to yourself—but even there, the protection is far from complete. Brilliance and creativity correlate with nonconformity, but general intelligence probably doesn’t [0]. At least, in my experience, many people apply their (higher than average) intelligence primarily to ‘hoop-jumping’—complying assiduously with the norms of the system. When people with less general intelligence are sticklers for the rules, it’s usually because they aren’t empowered to make an exception: a fast-food worker won’t give out extra sauce packets because consultants with Ivy League degrees calculated logistics and revenue projections that can’t tolerate the slippage. Given that smarter people can justify anything more easily, it stands to reason that idiotic rules would be more easily justified as one gets smarter. [0] terms defined by one's propensity to obtain useful answers to important questions (brilliance), high scores on hard tests (intelligence), and surprising solutions for typical problems (creativity).