> It's equally egregious to ascribe mistakes or errors (no matter how
> great) to personal intelligence (or lack of it). Both intelligence
> and stupidity are egregious myths. It can't even be really
> established in the case of extreme exceptions (Einstein, Kant,
> Shakespeare).
I'm interested to see you didn't include any examples of extreme stupidity. They're not so easily found, in fact. Didn't Oscar Wilde say something about that -- "like a rare tropical flower? Only breathe upon it, and the bloom is gone?" But now that I think of it, he was maybe talking about Ignorance rather than Stupidity.
I've always thought stupidity should not be understood as the mere absence of intelligence, but a distinct faculty in its own right -- a quality which can even coexist with intelligence, in principle. Hence, say, Winston Churchill. It's a faculty which has all the resourcefulness and creativity of intelligence, may even be its twin, but it's turned to the opposite end -- to the maintenance of self-obfuscation rather than insight.
If there's anything that's the diametrical opposite of stupidity, it's low animal cunning (e.g. George Bush the younger, Ram Emanuel, etc.). That absolutely cannot coexist with stupidity, but maybe it can't really coexist with intelligence either.