RE: Dunning-Kruger effect / Remove the cause and the effect will cease. / Self examination is the key!
I don't think righteous and ego work as a phrase. In a very real sense it is a oxymoron. Righteous means right ego is usually associated with wrong. In the religious sense it means Right Spiritually. Ego means wrong Spiritually. However I get what you mean. That a person who thinks there are people of lesser ability then themselves is very ego centered. What I have notices is that the fact that some people are hiding from the truth so much that it effects there cognition is being miss comprehended as a state in fact that they are of lower ability. Just in thinking that there are people of lower ability we affect our own cognition. We in effect are deciding that there are limits to our own cognitive ability and indeed there must be if there are limits for someone else.
It is only when you realize that really you get what you put into something, that you realize your cognition is no different then the muscles in your body. That the neural plasticity of the brain at any time can and does constantly rewire your brain means that in truth you get what you put into it.
Just to clarify my point on righteousness, of course, it can be a virtue, but when taken too far into extremes, can become zealotry. It isn't the righteousness of itself I was referencing, but an extreme sense of it.
And you're right, there are no short cuts, the brain is in fact a muscle. A fact which not a lot of people are privy to, and can be trained just as much as the rest of our physical body, like you say.
Totally agree that zealotry isn't a good thing.