The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:35 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #32

aqme28 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by iforgetti » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:37 PM UTC

13of40 wrote: post #26

metacritic12 wrote: post #4

It'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…

There's a lot of truth in this. Some of the most classically brilliant people I went to school with ended up being homeless drug addicts or shut-ins. Meanwhile, the unassuming Ukrainian guy who built my deck is a secret multi-millionaire from his house flipping business. You can walk around the neighborhood and pick out the houses he's remodeled and modernized because they look so much better than the ones on either…

Post by mannykannot » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

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…

Post by adverbly » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

tropsis wrote: post #44

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.

Post by ShamelessC » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:48 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #55

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…

When you say, in your first sentence, that there are implicit presumptions, who is making them? I don't think the study itself is predicated on those premises. Maybe people who find the result surprising had such presumptions built into their preconceptions.