>At some point along the way I stopped trying to rank people by intelligence.
I agree. Some of the nicest, kindest and best people I've ever met aren't very bright, and some of the nastiest, stab-you-in-the-back jerks are quite intelligent.
That's not to say the converse isn't true for many folks, but "intelligence" isn't a proxy for the quality of a human, IMHO.
