Should levels in 3.5e-era Golarion material be modified for PF play?

[S'mon]

I was just thinking about this in relation to Guide to Korvosa specifically, since I'm running CoTCT. I'm not thinking about APs, where the levels of encountered NPCs are set to give the PCs a good challenge, but rather the background NPCs.

In ISWG it discusses NPC levels on Golarion, and suggests that level 11-15 characters are rare, typically a handful in any given nation, while level 16-20 characters are legendary individuals of great power. Hoever 3.5e material seems to adhere pretty much to 3e D&D norms, where very high level characters are a lot more common. So Korvosa is a city state and just a Large city, not a Metropolis, but has some high to very high level characters (eg Toff Ornelos is listed as Ari 1/Wiz 16) who hardly seem legendary in the setting. Personally I like the PF approach to NPC levels a lot better; for one thing it stays closer to the roots of the game.

So I was wondering if there is any guidance/recommendation on conversion, lowering NPC levels? Do other GMs have any particular formula or approach they take?

[Drock11]

In my opinion, the way it's going Golarion is slowly building up the Archmage on Every Street Corner Syndrome that the Forgotten Realms has, and it's getting every bit as bad as most other 3.5 stuff had, except theirs is skewed a tiny bit more to martial characters and to bad guys.

I have to think that the whole level 11-20 characters being rare stuff was either discarded as part of Golarion continuity, or is just not thought about anymore when material gets made for the setting.

The list of high level characters in Golarion is starting to get lengthy and it grows with new products coming out all the time.