I imagine that people of high intelligence would be more likely to understand the greater implications of using ad blockers (driving the creations of paywalls, etc.) and so would be less likely to block ads, even when they know how to do so. It's hard to draw conclusions, though--who knows if this chain of speculation actually leads back to a significant confounding factor?

They would also be aware of game theory, and may choose to use adblock but not tell anyone, or even actively campaign against it while using it themselves.

I'm not suggesting smart people are unethical, but rather that ethicality and intelligence are fairly orthogonal, and that your proposed means seems to have more to do with the former than the latter.

As to the speculation, you are of course right. I'm just putting off studying. Speaking of which...

It's also potentially the case that intelligent people recognize that it's silly to be completely upset over ads and that few sides with really obnoxious ads have good content in the first place. Perhaps, to them, it's just not worth the trouble.

But neither is trying to convince anyone on the internet that you're smart in the first place.

So we're all just projecting what we do onto the smart people here, right?

I find that people with very high IQs tend to care less about practical computer usage skills. Anyone noticed that Math (or even CS theory) professors are terrible with computers?

Experts in other domains who simply don't give a hoot about web browsers.