This is actually hilarious.
The fact that _you_ are putting “smarter” in quotes, proving my point, means that you’re losing the argument - and, furthermore, viewing a random exchange on the internet in terms of ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ instead of viewing it as a means of finding the truth or at least exchanging different perspectives already says a lot more than could fly beneath your head.
To add insult to the injury, by your own request, you already accept the fact that PhDs are “smarter” only in terms of arbitrary metrics _defined_ by the PhDs.
I’m sorry if you actually spent money on getting yours, though. I would try to let go of the ego and accept it and not try to cope with it in a thread that everyone forgot about (the only reason I’m replying is because I’m getting reply notifications from the ‘HN Replies’ bot).
Either way you're losing this one badly.
IQ and 'intelligence' are difficult qualities, no doubt, but they crudely do exist, and PhD's are 'smarter'. That's pretty much unambiguous.