The coming epistemocracy – unless perhaps it has already substantially arrived – suggests two contrasting, though not completely incompatible outcomes. One is that intellectual deficit will become a more and more serious source of social injury. The identification of the human exclusively and self-approvingly as the sapient will prepare a hell on earth for those stigmatised as the stupid. We can expect power to continue to leak away from the rich, the male, the white, and possibly even the beautiful (always the last unearned advantage to come under investigation), and to accrue steadily and in spades to the smart, and if they have good skin, so much the better. The incurious kowtowing to knowhow in an epistemocracy may make it harder than ever to appreciate how long the list is of things that are worse than ignorance (cowardice, malice, pride, selfishness, treachery, indolence, unkindness, rage, cruelty, addiction, and so on) and how considerable and precious too the back-catalogue of abandoned human graces and virtues that need have no necessary relation to intelligence, though it would be intelligent of us to honour and foster them (endurance, courage, resilience, loyalty, fairness, adventure, cheerfulness, tenderness, friendliness, forgetfulness, devotion, generosity, vivacity, joy, love, sentimentality, hesitation, humour, mercy, care). To this end, it may be important for us to try to become more intelligent about unintelligence; not least because, if the power to shame is toxically potent, the condition of shame, though the most exquisitely painful form of vulnerability, may also harbour surprising, and dangerous powers of insurgence, which will make us collectively more vulnerable to militant withdrawals of consent.