Hah, you can't be serious! Look around you - asymmetry is so painfully obvious that even pop theories propose to split intelligence into "book smarts", "street smarts", "social smarts", etc.

In reality, I don't think "smart" is a word that makes much sense, outside of the context of signaling social status (pIQ).

Which is really total agreement with your point. "Smart" is as much a partial ordering as "friendly" is, for a lot of the same reasons.

I don't see the connection. Asymmetry in the relation "is smarter than" simply means that it is impossible to have both "X is smarter than Y" and "Y is smarter than X" (for X != Y).

In the context of individuals of incomparable intellect, it is inappropriate to say that either is smarter than the other -- never mind that they are both smarter than each other.

I think that's the core truth of "genius". Melville put it, "Genius all over the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round".

Joseph Campbell, Isamu Noguchi, Martha Graham, and Rudy Arnheim were all geniuses in very different fields, but they were also drawn to each other in friendship & collaboration. They can't compare to each other on any scale, but somehow shared something in common.

Secondly, even for someone X who is maximally smart, the statement "Y is smarter than X" can be true if its in a particular context. E.g. take two people who are maximally smart... there no one smarter than X in math (or whatever) and no one smarter than Y in history. Then X is smarter than Y and Y is smarter than X... depending on how you use the word.

Edit: So long as no one is maximumly smart.

Now define "smartness".