I met two wonderful, wicked smart people on a politics board. Both are ultra conservative while I’m ultra liberal, but all three of us derive great pleasure from arguing passionately about things with people who disagree with us. We keep our arguing gentlemanly and don’t overreach the bounds of politics, so our ‘discussions’ are actually a lot of fun.
That particular board no longer exists, but there are others out there, I know. There are a lot of eejit boobs who like to holler about politics, but there are also a lot of very intelligent folks that do as well.
You live near some universities I see. Find a local watering hole - some, of course, will be frat boy central, but I’d bet that a few will be more relatively intelligent folks sitting around a bar, hanging out. Especially if said bar has a trivia night.
All of my boyfriends have been quite smart, and they were also royal pains in the tuchus. Could be why I never even thought of tying the knot until years after my friends did. (It could also explain why smart men generally marry women of average intelligence.)
Another idea - if you went to a good college, see if there is an alumni group near you. If there isn’t, you can probably get help from your college to start one. They’ll send you a list of alumni who live near you.
meetup groups devoted to atheism seem to have intelligent people in them from what I’ve seen. In my limited experience, you get a far higher % of people who are educated (both academically and self taught in various areas) than you’d find in a random sampling of people.