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IQ is only a minor factor in success

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Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#131

Post by Fnoord »

errantspark wrote: post #34
pier25 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you are single and not planning to have kids, right?

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.

> In my world view having a kid is similar to an 18 year prison sentence.

Unless something happens to them you have offspring for the rest of your life; not for 18 years. If you're referring to them leaving the house at 18 y.o. The US trend is that 18 y.o. stay living at home. Personally, I expect students to be the exception to that.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#132

Post by bjelkeman-again »

kakarot wrote: post #86
jacalata wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diminishing returns for your personal enjoyment, sure. But there are plenty of ways any extra money you had could be spent to make a huge impact for other people: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/#approa...

I wish more people saw it this way. Philanthropy is the only thing driving me to amass wealth. I used to be ok with being poor and spending a lot of free time on side projects but more and more I'm becoming disgusted with myself and those around me for living selfishly when so many people around the world are in pain.

I found that there are actually relatively few people with the type of experience most of us here at HN have that work in philanthropy. I mean people with IT background, can-do attitude, consider scaling whatever you build to million or billions of people, entrepreneurial and able to pitch well for investments.

If I work as a reasonably successful IT entrepreneur (I don't think I am going to be Gates, Brinn or Zuckerberg). At most I will be able to give away few million to charity/philanthropy. That is going to have a relatively limited impact. International development funding is $130 billion / year.

Taking my skills and helping spending those $130 billion sensibly, by applying my skills is having a considerably bigger impact, I think.

My team is routinely involved in country level data-to-decision work around things like drinking water supply, sanitation access, food security, agriculture efficiency, climate change adaptation, disaster respons etc. If I add up the population of the countries where we our tools are used for rural drinking water mapping and prioritisation of investments, we end up with about half a billion people.

For me, the best way to use my time I think is helping others by applying my skills to the problem at hand. Working for a faceless shareholder (mine and your pension fund and a bunch of rich people) on something that may be technically interesting, but didn't make a big positive impact on the world and the people in it, just wasn't enough for me anymore. What I do now is more satisfying and has a much bigger positive impact, I think.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#133

Post by Fnoord »

beachstartup wrote: post #96
christmaswoot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rich is having instead of being. Dumb people underthink.

no, being rich is having. in order to get rich, you must do. many smart people overthink, constantly, and to a fault. it usually manifests in the form of 'what if something goes wrong???' and spirals from there. any rich person will tell you, things go wrong constantly, and at the worst possible time. the only important thing is your confidence in your ability to fix things when they break.

> it usually manifests in the form of 'what if something goes wrong???' and spirals from there.

That is because we compare to the successful rich only, not all those who tried to become rich and utterly failed.

This is just masculine vs feminine thinking. Or VC versus slow growth. Or the way we nurture children in the West vs cats, or in Africa. Or quality vs quantity.

You never hear about all the times people prayed to $diety and it didn't help. You never hear about all those people who went to Stanford and didn't graduate. You never hear about all those people who made a startup and failed. OK, you do (on the latter, here), but it takes courage, shame, and selfishness.

PS: You might wanna use some capital letters at the start of a sentence.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#134

Post by johnchristopher »

icelancer wrote: post #39
errantspark wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, but my friends are starting to have kids and I'm rather looking forward to being their crazy uncle and teaching them how to solder and take things apart etc. I love kids, I just don't want to be the one primarily responsible for them

I cannot fault you. Most days I wonder why I decided to have kids. I realize that I didn't decide it in any sort of logical manner that implies normal decision-making. If I went purely on logic and rational thought, I certainly wouldn't have done it. Alas, that wasn't in the cards. I wouldn't take it back, but I tell everyone who is on the fence about having kids to very strongly reconsider if they want to go through…

It depends how big the field you have to plow is. Having many kids helps in keeping and maintaining the field then using it to grow food (for you and your free plowering kids).

Some kind of bootstrap if you will.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#135

Post by sofaofthedamned »

kiiski wrote: post #124
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #95

I always retell this story when this subject comes up: When I was 17 in 1989 I was desperate for a job in 'computers' as it was all I knew, I was damn good at programming etc, but had the usual experience trap - no experience equalled no job. Being naive I paid attention to one of those adverts in the back of the weekend newspapers. I don't know if they were a UK only thing but they had a puzzle and stated that if yo…

I was a member about 5 years ago. I also left the club soon, but my experience was pretty different from yours. I never went to the "official" meetings, but I did go to two of the "Mensa youth" (I was around 20, others there seemed to be 25-35) weekend gatherings in the countryside. The gender ratio was around 60/40 men/women. I don't think anyone even mentioned the term "IQ". It was mostly like a student group outin…

Interesting. My experience was a while ago as I said, 1989, so maybe it was just different then as it just seemed like a club for middle-aged socially men really.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#136

Post by collyw »

k__ wrote: post #125

Much is luck, yes. But also, much seems to be doing the right thing. I know a bunch of founders of smallish IT companies. If I talk to them, they don't seem too smart. But they did a company, and kept it running for many years. So they learned stuff about running a company. Knowing how to run a company is a rather important skill if you want to get rich. And you can get this skill, even if you aren't smart. You proba…

I was thinking when I read the headline "having rich parents is a bigger factor".

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#137

Post by heyalexej »

errantspark wrote: post #29

I'm probably decently smart, but I'm not rich at all. In fact I'm quite poor by most people's standards. I'm also really happy and work fewer hours per week than anyone I know. If there's one thing I worry about it's that I should be trying to be rich because I probably have the means to make that happen. I might be making 200k/yr if I worked full time. I might be able to start a successful company if I put my mind t…

The thing is, that you're incredibly successful. You live life the way you want it and have the freedom to decide what you want to spend your time on. This, for me, is success.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#138

Post by babuskov »

visarga wrote: post #62
icelancer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I wrote it in so nice way. I'm usually more harsh to people.

Deciding not to have kids because it's too much of an effort is so selfish act. You're throwing away all the effort your ancestors put in to get to the point of you being alive.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#140

Post by wolfgke »

> The study found that grades and achievement-test results were markedly better predictors of adult success than raw IQ scores. That might seem surprising -- after all, don’t they all measure the same thing? Not quite. Grades reflect not just intelligence but also what Heckman calls “non-cognitive skills,” such as perseverance, good study habits and the ability to collaborate [emphasis by me] -- in other words, conscientiousness.

I would consider myself as quite conscientious - but working together with people who have less of this trait always ends/ended in a tragedy. So I would rather assume that there are also reasons for the hypothesis that conscientiousness rather hinders your ability to collaborate.

> University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth found that IQ scores also reflected test-takers’ motivation and effort. Diligent, motivated kids will work harder to answer tough questions than equally intelligent but lazier ones.

When I was at school I took multiple IQ tests (I don't know what their exact scores were, but they were really high). At that time I found the problems in the IQ test really exciting. A few years ago I had to solve some "logic puzzles" (what image in a 3x3 or 4x4 box with one missing fits by the hidden rules). 15 years ago I would have considered them as really easy (though "formally" they were not). I would say that since I finished studying mathematics, I find these puzzles much harder. Did studying mathematics make me worse in logic? Surely not (quite the opposite). Did studying mathematics make me worse in solving "logic puzzles" in IQ tests? I'm very sure it did.

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