The Capacity For Intelligence Is Not Intelligence

Intelligence, like many other concepts, tends to be misunderstood, misdefined, and misused.  Intelligence is nothing other than rationality--a rare thing at any time and place in recorded history, but something that is not wholly beyond anyone's grasp.  The genuine possibility that someone could become more intelligent (there is a point past which someone cannot become more rational, but irrational people can align themselves with reason), though, does not itself make someone a rational individual.

A person is not intelligent simply because they could develop thorough intelligence in the future, the major ramification being that protecting someone from criticism because they might improve at some point is inherently unsound.  No person who refrains from utilizing whatever rationality they might possess deserves intellectual gentleness in the present because of the potential for future betterment, and yet irrational people are often defended in the name of a hypothetical change of mind that might never even occur--and that probably won't happen at all.

The analogy of a bowl illustrates the nature of intelligence.  That a bowl could be filled with water does not mean it is currently filled; this only means it has the capacity to hold water at some point in the future.  The difference between these two states of the bowl is obvious, but it should be no less obvious than the distinction between intelligence and the capacity for intelligence.  A person's future worldview and intellectual state do not and cannot justify tolerance beforehand.

No matter how intellectually deficient someone is, there is always the possibility that an unintelligent person will develop their intellect.  After all, intelligence is not fixed.  Each person is capable of becoming the best version of himself or herself.  While it is true that intelligence is scarce, it is not as if an unintelligent person is inescapably bound to their stupidity.  Nonetheless, the possibility of eventual intelligence does not mean a person deserves intellectual mercy in the present.