You really think the elites are generally better informed than the rest? They don't fall prey to stuff like celebrities, gossip media and so on?

I haven't seen any sign that this is the case among politicians where I live, or among the few quite rich people I've looked into the lives of, mainly through their email and interviews. Compared to the leftists in my "in-group" they're generally very uncritical, poorly informed and pretty narcissistic.

"Elite" has so many meanings, it is near worthless without some tight context.

Most people who are really good at something, and became successful for it, primarily became good by doing. Some of those people read and developed complex thought, and likely and rightly give great credit to that. But many others? Not so much.

On the other hand, I think the quality (or the direction of quality) of a society as a whole has a very strong correlation with the percentage of people who read deeply and widely.

I am not only surprised by how simplistic many people's views and reasoning are, but how unaware they are of the world. And how unaware they are that there are people around them that know so much more.

They are not just myopic, they don't have a map, and are unaware other people have them and expand them.

I had a desktop wallpaper of a visualization of a large part of the universe, the beautiful webbing and voids, where galaxies are pixels or less. An aquaintance asked what it was. When I told her, she stared at it like her brain had just crashed. She couldn't process, couldn't believe, the picture, the concept.

People unfamiliar with that artifact is no big deal. But people not having anything to mentally connect it to when they encounter it is scary.

But they are better informed about and better placed to exploit the things that are profitable. The rest is just background noise.