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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

#161

Post by krisroadruck »

csomar wrote: post #105
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 don't really know about your situation and if you are actually doing it now. But based on experience, people who get married usually dismiss friendship with singles and instead look for friendships with people who have families/kids.

You certain thats not bi-directional, or more likely - the other way around? As a single person who can go do fun things at the drop of the hat without having to get permission from someone else, or set up a babysitter, or any other number of roadblocks, trying to set up an outing with married with kids crowd is incredibly irritating, time consuming and often fruitless.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#162

Post by eterm »

cryptarch wrote: post #113
zeroer wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holding cash on purpose is a pretty terrible idea in just about every political environment. Nobody who's rich actually does this, unless is specifically earmarked for an upcoming purchase or an emergency fund. You're better off with stocks and metals.

How is holding large amounts of cash bad? I don't understand, could you elaborate on that?

Cash doesn't grow and is generally devalued through inflation.

A diverse portfolio is better protected against inflation, cash ought to make up some of a diverse portfolio but not a large proportion of it. Bonds are a better way of having cash-denominated assets since they still have returns while not being particularly risky (in the general case).

Cash is still useful however because it is easy to access quickly without losing value to having to sell quickly and doesn't incur fees.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#163

Post by ikeboy »

lisper wrote: post #41

Getting 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…

I've noticed that a lot of successful people got there by doing things that, on the surface, don't seem to need a lot of brainpower. But, when you get to know them more, you find that they're smart. I think that very often, being smart leads someone to succeed but invisibly, so it's easy for others who don't know the whole story to attribute it to luck.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#164

Post by yummyfajitas »

The actual paper, available on sci-hub, does not agree with this innumerate journalist's interpretation of it.

http://www.pnas.org.sci-hub.ac/content/113/47/13354.short?rs...

In fact, the paper shows that IQ is a great predictor. Personality is a much worse predictor on highly g-loaded tasks, and a good predictor on some others (e.g. wages). But (IQ, personality) pairs are an even better predictor than IQ or personality.

The only way you can draw the conclusion that IQ doesn't matter much is if you compare to predictors of the form (IQ, personality, achievement, grades) (and a few similar ones). Shockingly, using achievement to predict achievement yields a more accurate predictor than using (IQ, personality).

(I really do not understand this paper's methodology of graphing r^2 values. I don't get how this was published, but lets assume that was a reasonable way to go.)

This paper also ignores the fact that IQ, grades, and many personality traits are correlated. Insofar as these metrics are correlated, it completely invalidates this analysis; some of what the authors attribute to personality or grades is actually just the explanatory power of a second IQ measurement.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#165

Post by trishume »

The low correlation of IQ and future wage is surprising to me given what I've seen elsewhere. For example https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Sternberg2/publi... finds that IQ predicts 15% of the variance in income and 25% of the variance in socioeconomic status.

Also See http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%... where IQ tests predict future job performance measurements across many studies as well as job interviews and only slightly worse than work sample tests.

Although I did look at the original study and that number comes from a linear regression of log wages and IQ percentiles. I'm not convinced that the R^2 number you get out of those two numbers really means much, the correlation is highly significant at least.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#166

Post by pitay »

babuskov wrote: post #138
visarga wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's not get caught up on what dead ancestors may think. The world is already overpopulated. Overpopulation causes depletion of natural resources, degradation of the environment, conflicts and wars caused by such lack of resources, and there being less resources per capita. Adding people when it is causing problems like these is harmful.

However, people having 2 or 3 or thereabouts children isn't something to be worried about too much, so go ahead if you want to. But people who have lots of children has to stop. This is per person, so it includes men who have children with different partners. If it is left too late, then less can be done about it.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#167

Post by auggierose »

Clubber wrote: post #25
gozur88 wrote: post #3

The assumption here is that everyone sees the accumulation of wealth as the most important goal in life. I don't think that's accurate.

I see money as freedom. My ultimate goal is to save enough so that I don't have to work. Eventually, that will be the case, hopefully not on my deathbed. If the majority of the population thought that way, we'd have an economic collapse though, so forget what I said.

A friend of mine told me the same thing. He considers money as freedom, and he will retire next year at the age of 42. I agree that money is freedom, but for the last 15 years or so he worked his ass off getting up at 5am in the morning working for other people. 15 years of your most productive time as an adult is a lot, and there is something to be said for just doing what you want to do during that time instead of earning money for afterwards.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#168

Post by varjag »

forgetsusername wrote: post #155
varjag wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are losing them to inflation.

At a very slow rate, at very low risk. There are always tradeoffs. I think bad about cash.

There's enough of compound effect to make your cash worth a lot less by the time you retire. E.g. here in Norway you'd lose 50% value of your savings over 20 year period.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#169

Post by adrianN »

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…

What do you plan to do when you're old? Right now it might be simple to earn enough money to pay your bills, but if you don't earn enough to save a significant portion of it you risk not having enough once earning money becomes harder.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#170

Post by caseysoftware »

> After following some 1,000 New Zealanders for more than 30 years, researchers concluded that tests of language, behavioral skills and cognitive abilities taken when children were just three years old could predict who was most likely to need welfare, commit crimes, or become chronically ill.

Whether this is true or not, this is going to have huge ramifications as people believe it and try their various notions of pre-crime and their latest "save humanity" scheme.

And if it is true, it has the potential to disrupt society as certain groups - by ethnicity, socioeconomic, geographic, religion, etc - tend to fall in or out of this bucket: the idea that "[group X] is always/never on welfare and therefore..."

Without even knowing the rest of the "therefore" it's fascinating and scary to consider.

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