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The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

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Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#41

Post by alistairSH »

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #33
solatic wrote: post #28

Implicit 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.

The study apparently used some flavor of IQ test, which already makes assumptions about what “smart” means.

And is who “really smart then”? I knew plenty of people in college who were of similar general IQ as me but chose career paths specifically to maximize income (finance, largely). And I knew plenty who were smarter than me who went into fields such as education or PT/exercise science because that’s what they wanted to do.

So it doesn’t surprise me in the least that IQ correlates with high income to a point, but beyond that point other factors (largely desire to be wealthy) play a larger role.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#43

Post by [deleted] »

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #33
solatic wrote: post #28

Implicit 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.

[deleted]

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#44

Post by tropsis »

adverbly wrote: post #37

Here 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, universi…

It's also a matter of personal preference and individual skills. A person who is capable of 9 dimensional math about strings might not be able to do well anything else, or might not want to do anything else.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#45

Post by finolex1 »

If a job requires that you run 100m in 12 seconds, your local champion runner can do it as well as Usain Bolt. Most jobs might be like that in terms of the cognitive ability required for success. Beyond that, other differentiating factors may play a stronger role (social skills, diligence, etc.), as well as pure luck (being on the right team at the right time).

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#47

Post by sokoloff »

solatic wrote: post #28

Implicit 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…

Plenty of Wall Streeters also make bad personal finance decisions.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#48

Post by sokoloff »

stuaxo wrote: post #46

Given that the majority of wealth is inherited, how smart you are doesn't need to be related at all.

Citation needed. The references that I looked for suggested that around 30-40% of wealth is inherited. No citation that I found suggested that it was a majority.

Do you have any sources that I could additionally review to support the majority claim?

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#49

Post by groestl »

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #33
solatic wrote: post #28

Implicit 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.

Maybe you're thinking of No true Scotsman?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

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