The highest IQ people I know are all either
fully locked in and building or investing in AI. goal is to work towards generational wealth in the midst of a new technological revolution
fully checked out of society and the corporate rat race. they are quitting their job, deleting social media and moving to the middle of nowhere to live a quiet life with no distractions
Literally no in between
I was thinking about this post on X because I definitely identify with the second group. Yet 99% of the people I know remain firmly entrenched within the system, and I don’t think that comes down to IQ.
My impression is that “AI bugs” optimize for wealth while looking toward the future. “Neo-rurals” like me live in the present and optimize for freedom. “Normies,” on the other hand, seem stuck in the past and optimize for convenience.
I’m not sure why, but all of this reminded me of a video I saw a few years ago at La Casa Encendida in Madrid. A teacher was explaining capitalism to a group of children:
“Imagine you have oranges… under the capitalist system, you sell them for money – and with that money you buy orange juice.”
I’ve always felt that exchanging something precious and finite – our time – for something that can be printed infinitely, at will, isn’t a particularly good deal.
The tripartite framework is neat but probably flatters all three groups – including yours.
The “AI bugs” aren’t just optimizing for wealth while gazing nobly at the future. Many are optimizing for status among a specific tribe that happens to use future-talk as its currency. The IQ correlation in that post is cope – smart people cluster around whatever the current high-status game is. In the 90s they all went to Wall Street. Now it’s AI. Calling it a “revolution” makes it feel like insight rather than momentum-chasing.
Your group isn’t immune either. “Living in the present, optimizing for freedom” can be a beautiful thing – or it can be aestheticized avoidance dressed up in Thoreau clothes. The neo-rural fantasy has its own status markers, its own Instagram (before you deleted it), its own quiet conformism.
The orange/capitalism parable is charming but philosophically lazy. Time is finite and precious — but money isn’t just “printed infinitely.” It’s also stored labor, coordination infrastructure, optionality. Trading time for money isn’t inherently degrading; trading it for bad deals is. The peasant who never sold his oranges didn’t achieve freedom – he just stayed hungry.
The more interesting question hiding in your post: why does identifying which group you belong to feel so satisfying?
That impulse – to locate yourself on a map of the enlightened – might be the thing worth examining, regardless of which quadrant you land in.
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