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A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

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Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#201

Post by robocat »

dustingetz wrote: post #168

Communication; gifted people can struggle to explain what they’re doing to normies

In my experience, the ability to explain is a side effect of being gifted. A gifted person can simplify complex subjects and concentrate on the important points, they can find different metaphors that work, or fit their explanation to your knowledge, and are often self aware enough to understand their own thought process. The less gifted often struggle to teach.

However “that’s obvious” is also often said intuitively by very smart people, where they are correct but they can’t actually explain how they know they are correct.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#202

Post by mvdwoord »

Grustaf wrote: post #166
DecayingOrganic wrote: post #28

While I agree with the article, it is important to distinguish the macro from the micro point of view. From the micro point of view, a talented individual has a greater a priori probability to reach a high level of success than a moderately gifted one. On the other hand, from the macro point of view of the entire society, the probability to find moderately gifted individuals at the top levels of success is greater th…

I think it's mostly just that intelligence is not terribly important for success. Tenacity, street smart, charisma, connections, passion are all more important than IQ.

Taleb wrote extensively on this. IQ only statistically relevant at the bottom end of the scale (barrier of entry) but meaningless for "success" otherwise.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#203

Post by iateanapple »

michaelt wrote: post #187
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which leads to the following: How do you measure if someone is a good president? What measurements do you use to claim Trump is not a good president? Surely it can't be approval ratings since you can't expect public to understand nuances behind the decisions and what the president actually has to be doing? It can't be just GDP because GDP might have been going up anyway? It can't be what the president is saying in pu…

> What measurements do you use to claim Trump is not a good president? Number of his supporters arguing that objectively there's no such thing as a good president :-p

> Number of his supporters arguing that objectively there's no such thing as a good president :-p

That’s probably a bad metric because his supporters love him.

It’s the swing voters making those kinds of comments because they want to vote for him but he’s done some dodgy things.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#204

Post by RaceWon »

joeberon wrote: post #125
stjo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL: Didn’t know I was stupid for having different goals than starting a family. In non mockery voice: I think there is nothing wrong in being smart and perusing academic titles, wealth or recognition. Can’t I be happy travelling the world because I have so much passive income that I don’t care how much I spend? Can’t I be happy running megacorporation without a child?

If that makes you happy then fine, but it's wrong to assume that it's the ultimate goal for everyone to be mega rich. Honestly it's a very common mistake for people to be totally sure that everyone in the world desires to be rich and famous

>>that everyone in the world desires to be rich and famous

Keep the fame, I just want the freedom that money buys. I was never famous; but I have been asked for autographs and been stared at by total strangers with hero worship in their eyes--it is bizarre, and it made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I can't imagine anyone wanting that.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#205

Post by solidasparagus »

Barrin92 wrote: post #69

Well, the title is easy to answer, even many exceptionally talented people are never rich, and there's a significant amount of luck involved in being rich. It's pretty easy to be smarter than many people while never having financial success, or respect, or an audience or whatever. It's worth picking up the actual thesis from the article though. If for example Hastings is rich, does that mean he's not an idiot (or doe…

> average S&P 500 company now lives fewer than 20 years

No, the average age of an S&P 500 company is now less than 20 years. Which is heavily influenced by the rise of technology and the many S&P 500 companies that were created in the last ~20 years. It does not mean that companies are dying faster, just that S&P 500 is filled with young companies.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#206

Post by tosssingaksla »

lazyjones wrote: post #100

I love the way people who consider themselves smart rationalize their lack of success/wealth, including here. - I don't want to be wealthy anyway - To be wealthy you have to be ruthless and I prefer to be nice - smart people are so busy with issues much more important than money - wealthy people are just lucky idiots - wealthy people are just idiots who are better at exploiting other idiots - people who are wealthy s…

High IQ is correlated with higher income but not higher wealth

Wealth and income is not the same thing, a smart person might for example not invest as much in order to dedicate to his hobby more time, etc. Not everybody pursuits wealth, but everybody needs a good solid monetary base. That's why if you are smart you should have that base covered, and that shows in the studies that present correlation between income and IQ.

Just remember the difference between income and wealth.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#207

Post by fao_ »

xtiansimon wrote: post #183
Grustaf wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's mostly just that intelligence is not terribly important for success. Tenacity, street smart, charisma, connections, passion are all more important than IQ.

Don’t forget good looks and a rich uncle to bail you out of a jam.

Exactly. People on here seem to forget that almost every single rich person that can be named had hereditary money.

Jeff Bezos now has more money than can be made if an American family earned 63k for 2 million years. He also had parents that gave him a so-called "three hundred thousand dollar investment" (more money than most people see in a lifetime even while working hard for their family, dedicating most of their life to work and barely managing to enjoy life), while ignoring or dodging every single tax he can get away with.

It's weird how most people are fine with that, because they seem to see themselves as temporarily embarrassed billionaires, or because they aren't able to understand the sheer amount of money.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#208

Post by Ma8ee »

stjo wrote: post #120
Ma8ee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that many smart people have better things to do with their time than making more money. I have everything I need and really want. I much rather play with my three year old son in the garden than being able to afford a new Tesla.

TIL: Didn’t know I was stupid for having different goals than starting a family. In non mockery voice: I think there is nothing wrong in being smart and perusing academic titles, wealth or recognition. Can’t I be happy travelling the world because I have so much passive income that I don’t care how much I spend? Can’t I be happy running megacorporation without a child?

That was one of the more butt hurt of all possible interpretations of what I said. And without knowing anything at all about you, and only judging from your comment, my guess is that hit a bit of a nerve. Why is that?

And I didn’t mean to say that playing with three year old kids in the garden is the only thing that is worth pursuing. It was just an example close to my hearth right now in my life in my circumstances and in my part of the world. Of course there are many other worthy pursuits. My point was only that trying to get a bigger pile of money than other people I don’t consider one of them.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#209

Post by 1bc29b36f623ba8 »

77pt77 wrote: post #178
koheripbal wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just proved his point. Going to an ivy league school does not make you successful. There are many many unemployed useless Stanford, MIT, Harvard graduates in this world.

> There are many many unemployed useless Stanford, MIT, Harvard graduates in this world. Is this really true? All the statistics I've read suggest otherwise.

Well, there is a lot of graduates from those universities to begin with, so it's only logical that there is a certain amount of useless graduates that end up unemployed. The same logic applies to the rest of humanity.

The real question is whether those graduates are more likely to be useless and unemployed than people who did not graduate from the same universities.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#210

Post by lostmyoldone »

AtlasLion wrote: post #67
innagadadavida wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these are good factors, but don't leave out ego. Many smart people would rather be "right" and preserve their ego than make money.

Or social skills, many highly gifted also have less developed social skills.

Is this actually true, except from a normative perspective?

Onne would definitely expect the highly gifted to think/act differently socially as well as in several other areas, but is it actually correct to say they have less "developed skills", except possibly in the sense that they probably has had less reason to, and fever opportunities to develop these skills with their peers?

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