oddly this doesn't take into account my extremely low IQ friends who mined a bunch of bitcoin early on
I believe “dumb luck” is the phrase that describes that.
The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
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Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#32It's not a surprise that cognitive ability (the paper seems to define it as relatively close to classical IQ) is not highly correlated with earning ability or even value production for society. I would argue that a much better correlant of both production value and capture value is conscientiousness, or vaguely synonymously, hardworking, diligent, etc. A brilliant world observer who tweets their witty one-liners all…
I wouldn’t be sure about that. A lot of very smart people go on to great success in academia, earning decent but non-noteworthy salaries
"earning decent but non-noteworthy salaries"
I think that's sort of the point though. And even the "decent" salaries (whatever that means exactly, relative to industry) is arguably limited to a relatively small number of tenured faculty at a relatively small number of elite schools--concentrated in certain fields.
Don't get me wrong. Being a tenured professor, especially with an endowed chair, at an Ivy or equivalent, is a pretty good gig if you're cut out for it. But, in the scheme of things, there aren't a lot of those positions.
Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#33Implicit is the presumption that the smartest people optimize for wealth, or that the smartest people are good at optimizing for wealth. Outside of Wall Street, "smart" people - academics, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. - are just as likely to make bad personal finance decisions and/or to stay in labor (rather than management) positions for most of their careers (leave aside the dual-track IC/management ladder at…
Are they really smart then? You are using a straw man fallacy by redefining who’s smart.
Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#34It's not a surprise that cognitive ability (the paper seems to define it as relatively close to classical IQ) is not highly correlated with earning ability or even value production for society. I would argue that a much better correlant of both production value and capture value is conscientiousness, or vaguely synonymously, hardworking, diligent, etc. A brilliant world observer who tweets their witty one-liners all…
Value production is tricky when you start influencing large numbers of people. A witty one liner a day may only be worth say 10c/month to you but * 1 million people that’s 1.2 million dollars a year. Actually extracting that value is a different story.
If the earth has only a single witty one liner writer, he might bring 10c/month to people. 100000 of them and in aggregate, they probably bring negative value to society (spam).
To put it other way, you are more likely to bring value to society if you want, and focus on bringing value to society. Your will goes first, your ability then enable you to do so. Cognitive ability affects the latter more than the former.
Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#35Billionaires not a billion times smarter than someone with a dollar to their name, news at 11.
Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#36oddly this doesn't take into account my extremely low IQ friends who mined a bunch of bitcoin early on
Anyone can buy tulips in the beginning, even accidently.
Maybe of interest to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChSUvdU_Sbk
Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#37Here is one wacky theory behind the drop at high levels: maybe this is mostly a function of which jobs require certain cognitive levels, and how much those jobs pay.
For example, there are quite a few jobs that pay well which require above average abilities such as management, engineering, medicine, law. But arguably there are jobs that have higher requirements such as theoretical scientists, mathematicians, university professors, philosophers.
Those jobs that have the highest requirements actually pay less than the ones with slightly lower requirements. So maybe what is happening here is that people are more likely to end up with a job that utilizes their unique abilities, but at some point that has and negative impact on outcomes.
For a while I have been on the opinion that we waste the talents of the top 0.1 percent of thinkers by having them debate in the ivory ivory tower while they could be doing a lot more in the real world by going into management, politics, or engineering. But what do I know: maybe 9 dimensional math about strings will prove highly practical some day and add more value than another Da Vinci (who was very involved in practical problems).
Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#38They key here is that you can be as intelligent as you want, but don’t be a dork. It’s a U-shaped curve where if you really are highly intelligent you can actually teach yourself how to not be a dork and come out of the other side both intelligent and smooth.
Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#39> The top 1 per cent even score slightly worse on cognitive ability than those in the income strata right below them. We observe a similar but less pronounced plateauing of ability at high occupational prestige.
Idk this seems unsurprising to me. Basically implies that sheer intelligence can get you near the top, but the people at the absolute top had additional traits that pushed them beyond.
Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners
#40Actually surprised that there is this much of a correlation. Making money and being smart to me have always seemed only lightly related, like height and basketball skill. Many dumber people than me I know making much more than I am, and many smarter people making much less.