My take on debunking the classical view of intelligence:

“He/She must know better than I do because he/she is so intelligent.”
“The person just isn’t intelligent enough.”
“You need to have a certain intelligence for…”

They all go in the direction of some human minds being more universal than others. But there is a big misconception going on.

The human brain is at least a universal computer. Universal intelligence is binary; it is either on or off. Just like the universal computers we know (PCs, Laptops, etc.), its only possible hardware improvements are memory and speed. It can’t become more universal.

Many people I talk to are too concerned with the hardware rather than with the software. And by software, I mean ideas, worldviews, or more generally, the knowledge we possess.

To give you an example: There are endless amounts of programs you can run on your home computer, but many of them are irrelevant, do nothing interesting or are even harmful to the computer itself. Every good, useful program, however, can run on both your home PC and a supercomputer.
The only difference is speed, but both can run it. And more importantly, it can be created on both.

This idea is most empowering.

I know several people who are regarded in the traditional view of intelligence as very bright (very high IQ, quite good at physics/math) but who have very bad ideas about the world that totally hinder their progress.
That’s the equivalent of bad programs running on a supercomputer.

Since the ascent of man, genetic outliers have been born with extraordinarily good speed and memory when it comes to their brains’ hardware. But still, no progress has been made for millennia. What was needed was the right software, to make it happen.

Software/ ideas/ worldviews are the main bottleneck for most people. Software has been the bottleneck for all mankind.