Huh, did the title on HN get changed? It's now "IQ is only a minor factor in success" which doesn't match the Bloomberg article title "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?". It makes some of the comments that were written before the change seem a bit strange.
IQ is only a minor factor in success
61–70 of 296 posts
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not single, but you're right about the kids. In my world view having a kid is similar to an 18 year prison sentence.
I wanted kids. I believe your statement is still correct. In my case I subjected myself to prison because of biology ruling over my logical processing unit. Humanity goes on as a result of that, I am quite sure of it. :)
Well... in order for you to wonder at how "biology ruled over your logical processing unit" a lot of people had to sacrifice their freedoms, before you. Don't beat yourself over it, it's such an important thing that it is equal to "being alive". And what you lose as a person, your DNA gains as a living system. DNA is such a chump. I never realized how much work it does. Every protein in our bodies is copied from DNA. It does so much copying and processing, it's amazing. And for such a hardworking pal, it's OK to sacrifice yourself. It's busting its ass too, in order for any of the billions of processes in our bodies to happen.
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
this so much. I never cared about aquiring wealth, i want to be able to enjoy most of my life which is usually a different path than the one that brings in most money.
I think that smart or smarts and your definition of wealthy play into it; smart I find being able to do what you set out to do all the time without money holding you back. For some people that means you need to be rich for others (like me) it does not.
Could be the case yeah. For me wealth means just to have enough so i dont have to care. Which IMO is rather easy as software engineer in switzerland, or digital nomad in south east asia.
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#64Willingness to cross the line between crime and honesty appears to be the major factor behind success, to me.
Every successful company has a dark side.
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accumulation of wealth may not be the ultimate goal, but it shortcuts your way to achieve the goals of other pursuits.
I think you will find that, in general, it does not. Often it actually detracts from your ability to pursue other goals. People think, "I need money" to do X. They put off X until they "have money". All along the way they intend to do X, but the prerequisite of getting money consumes their time and energy. The funny thing about money is that it's a bit like computer memory. No matter how much you have, you can always…
For most of my twenties, I lived in Hawaii for some years pursuing exactly this agenda. I was very poor, but by the beard of Zeus I had a mighty fine time.
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#66There are many parts to this. We're talking about IQ and these same people may not necessarily be emotionally intelligent, for one.
A lot of people with high IQs may also be very rational / logical in their approach towards life. They might think objectively, and that's the point. They're right - they don't need the excess wealth at all. They've accounted for everything they needed to - their life, their security, and that of their children, spouse, parents, etc. They're for the most part content with their personal lives, their success, their jobs and most importantly their income. They're I assume, smart enough to know what could make them more money, and how they need to behave and interact. It's not ignorance; it's sheer conscious choices.
On the other hand, there are those who aren't smart / wise enough. They'll make much more money, but may not be as nearly satisfied, no matter how much they make.
We might be mistaking intelligence / business-sense with wisdom, which is a higher domain - it's got more to it, than just IQ.
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#67I have to point out that this question functions as a classical reference to the life of Thales (born 624 BC) - touted as the first philosopher. In the apocryphal story, he proved he could be wealthy if he wanted to and- according to one version - grew rich by predicting that the olive harvest would be good and investing accordingly. Having information others do not has always thus ruled the markets :) https://en.m.w…
H = Σ p log p
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#68[deleted]
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#69I'm not addressing the claim of this article, just the methods.
IQ has a misleading (and factually inaccurate) name. The Q stands for quotient, but an actual IQ is not a quotient at all. IQs are ordinal ONLY. They allow you (to the extent that IQ tests measure intelligence) to rank people, not assign numerical values. It is not possible from IQ scores to say "Alice is x% more intelligent than Bob", only "Alice is more intelligent than Bob".
Due to the non-cardinal nature of IQ scores, the correlation with income as reported in the article isn't something that you can really do. To do this, we would need a cardinal measurement of intelligence instead.
Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success
#70Getting rich, at least under our current system, has a lot more to do with luck (mainly being in the right place at the right time) than it does with being smart or even working hard. The reason perseverance (which is related to working hard, but is not quite the same thing) helps is that the more willing you are to keep playing the game without winning the more likely you are to eventually win. (You can see this dyn…
Getting rich is doing instead of thinking.
Smart people tend to overthink to much.