The thing many don't talk about is that often intellectuals already have a selection bias built-in. Those who get to that level have already established a significant amount of tolerance for monotony and compliance with the in-group. Also, many who would or could be intellectuals filter themselves out because they favor less bureaucratic systems or they find it limiting to live at the whims of the state.

I remember a discussion a while back (on econ twitter or possibly Econtalk podcast) where a student asked how one could become an economist focused on the Austrian school, given that top U.S. universities don’t teach it and there are effectively no research advisors for it in the mainstream. The practical advice was to go through the traditional economics track, earn the PhD, secure tenure, and only then(!!!) shift to the research you actually care about. The implicit warning, though, was how difficult it is not to grow complacent and lose your original spark over that long journey of navigating the system’s monotony, incentives, and required conformity. It seems to filter for exactly the tolerance and compliance you describe... Those who make it through are the ones who can endure the institutional expectations long enough to gain the credentials and platform, and by then many have internalized enough of the prevailing worldview that the “switch” either never fully happens or ends up heavily diluted. Those less willing to play the game simply self-select out earlier, which leaves the intellectual class even more skewed toward the status quo...