For hundreds if not thousands of years, human intelligence has been a rare and valuable good. Those who had large amounts of intelligence could monetize and achieve high social status with it. Political leaders sought them out. Universities paid them to teach, do research, and publish on the topics about which they were smart. Being a “knowledge worker”—one whose job involved the creation, synthesis, or distribution of intelligence—was a role to which many aspired, and was often viewed as a credential leading to long-term and lucrative employment.
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