“Did I miss anything important?”
Yeah. Maybe the observation is false to begin with. I doubt high status people are less intelligent. We just expect more from them because we are supposed to be able to look up to them. They are probably intelligent people who are no more intelligent than other low status intelligent people. They disappoint us because they are only as smart, not more smart, when compared to others of the same IQ level.
2) How does one affect the process of increasing the rationality of people who are not ostensibly interested in objective reasoning and people who claim to be interested but are in fact attached to their biases?
I find that question interesting because it is plain that the general capacity for rationality in a society can be improved over time. Once almost no one understood the concept of a bell curve or a standard deviation, but now the average person has a basic understanding of how these concepts apply to the real world.
It seems to me that we really are faced with the challenge of explaining the value of empirical analysis and objective reasoning to much of the world. Today the Middle East is hostile towards reason though they presumably don’t have to be this way.
So again, my question is how do more rational people affect the reasoning capacity in less rational people, including those hostile towards rationality?