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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

#191

Post by Declanomous »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #164

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 personal…

They are testing whether personality and IQ are correlated to success. R-squared is a measurement of dependence. So basically they are graphing this correlation on a scale from from 0 being "this variable is independent of success", to 1 being "success is perfectly correlated with this variable".

The actual measurements are in a separate appendix, so I'm not sure how the calculated all this.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#192

Post by eeZah7Ux »

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.

> If the majority of the population thought that way, we'd have an economic collapse though

...or a much better society.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#193

Post by rayiner »

adrianN wrote: post #169
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.

Unless he decides to make a one-way hike into the tundra when he can no longer work, the kids other people "selfishly" decided to have will support him (even if indirectly, e.g. by working at the companies that he has equity in as retirement investments).

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#194

Post by mcguire »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #164

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 personal…

Check Fig. 4 and the discussion:

"Column 1 in Fig. 4 in the first block of columns (corresponding to wages) shows that IQ predicts wages, but the predictive power is small (around 1% [Adj. R squared of 0.02 in Fig. 4). Column 2 in Fig. 4 shows that self-esteem, locus of control, antisocial behavior, and neuroticism, taken together, are more important determinants of wages [R sq. Of .05]. Both IQ and personality remain as important predictors in wage equations when both are included in a regression (column 3 in Fig. 4). The fourth column in Fig. 4 shows that achievement has more predictive power than IQ and personality alone. When IQ and personality are also included in a regression (column 5 in Fig. 4), achievement test scores remain an important predictor of wages, and IQ and personality also remain important predictors of wages. After controlling for scores on achievement tests, IQ loses around 60% of its predictive power. When grades are included, instead of achievement tests, the effect of IQ becomes negligible. A similar pattern arises across the other outcomes studied."

The achievement measure is from a test (of learned facts and skills?) at age 10 (IIUC).

Further, the paper seems to go to some effort to decompose the raw data into IQ, grades. See table 2. The correlation between iq and personality is fairly weak.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#195

Post by Sohakes »

Hmm, I was thinking... being ambitious, maybe a little greedy, should be a great factor for "success" in terms of importance and money.

I mean, many intelligent people I know don't care much about this kind of success anyway, so I think it's clear that it's more correlated to personality than IQ. Some personality types will have greater success, simply because they are searching for it.

IQ is still correlated simply because, in our society, we came to think that this kind of success is desirable, so many people want it, even if they are not that ambitious. So if you have a high IQ, you will probably have a decent income and moderate success, even if you don't want to be rich or something like that.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#196

Post by JoeAltmaier »

But is it because we reward (unjustly) those that score well and go to prestigious schools? Society is certainly not a blind test; we cannot conclude that these 'predictors' will actually help an employer choose a high-functioning employee. It only predicts who an employer will pay more. Heck, for the best predictor that, we only need to look in their pants.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#197

Post by Sohakes »

qazpot wrote: post #118

It is so nice to see that Money is now the only criteria for success. By that logic J.K Rowling is a more successful author than the Hemingway, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Tolkien and the entire Beat generation plus several others put together.

Exactly. Many intelligent people I know don't even care that much about money, past a certain point.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#198

Post by pitay »

pc86 wrote: post #183
pitay wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

Just in terms of numbers isn't a man having a single child each with 10 women better than 10 couples each having two kids?

In response to your question, have another question. Does a man having a child with woman mean she won't have other children? I don't see any reason it does.

Would a man having a child with 10 women cause huge social problem? It certainly does. Do you want to be a single woman with kids? Doubt it.

Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have? I really don't see any reason for that. There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them because they think they are great and winning life because they have so many children and let other people care for them. Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#199

Post by walrus1066 »

I think your parents socioeconomic class has a big influence on your likelihood to be 'successful' (http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america...).

Social/networking should also play a big role.

My anecdotal observation is, having both of the above (from upper class family and good at networking) is the biggest determinant of success. It sort of makes sense, the upper class bit gives you access to other successful/wealthy people (through private school, parents network), and the social skills the ability to leverage this access.

Also, having loads of money from family makes it very easy to succeed. In the UK you'd just buy as much real estate as possible, farm off the management to an agency, and just sit on your arse while the assets gain in value.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#200

Post by jacalata »

Tinyyy wrote: post #101
jacalata wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article explains that they rank the level of "self-made-ness" out of 10, with 10 being from a poor family with no advantages. Then it says " A total of 34 billionaires, or 8.5%, scored as 10s".

So given 10 possible rankings, it is pretty well distributed then?

Well distributed for what metric? Their backgrounds clearly don't match the normal population, since the normal population isn't 7% billionaires.
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