Something that occurred to me is Bob's squealing about how intelligence is the only virtue stems from his unwavering belief that an intelligent person can only make the correct decision. Relativism aside (what is "correct" may vary from person to person), it ignores the fact that intelligent people can, in fact, be incorrect and make an objectively wrong decision. Two examples, both in the financial business:
First, the now-defunct hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). LTCM was a hedge fund that began in the early '90s, and within a few years had over $100 billion in funds (or over $179 billion today.) Now, LTCM was not started and headed by trust find babies with no experience, but by economists, college professors (from Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, to name a few places, and I believe a couple had Nobel prizes), and professional stock traders. These people were the cream of the crop when it came to a business like this. Yet, by 1998, LTCM was in deep financial trouble, and by early 2000 it had been ignominiously dissolved. What happened? Simply put, the fund invested in high-risk markets without a plan, and were blindsided when those markets (namely Russia and Asia) collapsed. The story was recorded in a book appropriately titled "
When Genius Failed."
The next example is
Enron, an energy company whose increasing debt and failed projects were covered up by management, increasingly desperate to present the façade of a functioning company to increasingly suspicious shareholders. These cover-ups included accounting tricks, outright destruction of evidence, and deliberately misleading those members of management who interacted with shareholders. When Enron finally collapsed and the evidence of wrongdoing was presented, it shocked the world, as Enron was, at least initially, considered both profitable and competently managed. This story has been chronicled in the ironically titled "
The Smartest Guys in the Room."
While I could go on, I think my point is clear. Intelligence does not mean you are objectively correct all the time. For dolts like Bob, though, intelligence is like magic: it can do anything.