Are programmers really smarter?

Smarter than animal trainers?

Smarter than massage therapists?

Smarter than lawyers, artists, plumbers???

If we took a vote here, well we might be biased!

Agreed, a vote would hardly bring much extra information here.

I'd love to see data behind this question, but yes I believe that there is significant variation in the required intelligence to perform the highly various professions that the human race engages in. And I would claim – in all the humility I can muster speaking as a programmer myself – that the average programming job does inherently have a higher bar for intelligence than the average other profession.

It would be very wrong indeed to extrapolate from this information that one should TREAT individuals differently based on their choice of profession! Even if we knew for certain that the Brick Laying profession only consisted of the 1% most intelligent individuals and Data Entry Specialists the lowest 1%, treating individuals with these professions differently from a policy or cultural perspective would, in my opinion, be a great injustice.

The individuals may or may not be smarter, meaning they are a lot of smart people in professions that don't require it, but the computer related professions have a higher floor for intelligence to be successful, mainly abstract thinking.

I don’t think the constraint is smart people existing, it’s smart people choosing this career path. If we culturally produced more engineers (like some other countries do) then that could depress pay.

Human programmers will surely have comparative advantage over AGI that isn’t human at all, not to mention has no evidence of existing anytime soon.