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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

#91

Post by jononor »

Swizec wrote: post #85
friedman23 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also disregards the type of lottery game that is a part of wealth accumulation. It's not a lottery game, it's a poker game (and in reality, it's much easier than poker because the economy is positive sum and poker is zero sum). If you only consider "wealthy" to be people who have made billions or hundreds of millions then it's a lottery. But someone that consistently makes decisions that maximize expected moneta…

Fun fact: The average American perceives “wealthy” as having just over $2.2million in net worth. https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/605075/are-you-ri... This is very achievable to most HN types. Maybe not in our 30’s, but easily by retirement. Just maxing out your 401k for an entire tech career will get you there.

Interesting. 2.2 million seems to be around the top 10% in the US, and around 20x the median (Federal Reserve data from 2016). It also places one in the global top 1%.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#92

Post by jhp123 »

I think this may be the "George W. effect". People want a leader who is smart and capable but also relatable. A large group gravitates towards leaders who are at about the 80th percentile. Many of the top paying jobs are business leadership.

I think this is rational because it's very hard to tell when someone two sigma more intelligent than you is BSing you. You often can't follow their train of thought, you have to take it on trust.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#93

Post by zeroonetwothree »

silvestrov wrote: post #67
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…

Society pays CEO/music/football stars much better than Stephen Hawking and other good researchers. People like Stephen Hawking likely considers working as a CEO as a really boring job: just a lot of obvious decisions and tons of boring meetings. This kind of people will rather work as a badly paid researcher instead.

hawking probably made a lot of money from his books. As for research I think the fact is that 99% of research is useless and doesn’t matter in the long term. So it makes sense that it’s not rewarded that highly. Meanwhile every LeBron James entertains millions.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#94

Post by onos »

Qem wrote: post #83
Tade0 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that just averages to systematic error. The same mistake has much worse consequences if you don't have wealth.

Nailed it. If you're Elon Musk, do some dumb mistake and lose 200 billion, your life barely changes. If you live on minimum wage, and loses half of it, starvation ensues for your family. The impact of losses is disproportional between rich and poor.

So you’re saying the poor have much more to gain through hard work and shouldn’t be discouraged?

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#95

Post by LouisSayers »

hiwadaocathliqm wrote: post #18
distantsounds wrote: post #2

oddly this doesn't take into account my extremely low IQ friends who mined a bunch of bitcoin early on

You jest, but maybe you can be too smart. If you can see through an unwise scheme you may not invest in it, even though you would be able to offload your investment on someone else later if you had...

or not wise enough to realise that the game you're playing isn't whether the scheme is good, but how likely others are to buy into the scheme.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#97

Post by zeroonetwothree »

psychphysic wrote: post #71

I feel much less sharp once I passed 30. Hangovers also started to last days. Learning new stuff that requires precision also seems harder - like syntax. Even though I feel like I'm much smarter when it comes to fuzzy processes like judging a good idea or programming language. Dementia runs in my family... But I think I'm too young for that and it's just what happens when you're not 25 anymore.

Maybe cut back on the drinking and your cognitive performance will improve

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#98

Post by zeroonetwothree »

hliyan wrote: post #25

This seems to be related to this recent article on luck: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609167 Much like in the universe, it seems as if random fluctuations in an otherwise uniform (playing) field results in the accrual of cumulative advantages that soon become exponential without the need for additional energy input. In other words: to covert $100 into $120 is work; to convert $100 million to $120 million is…

You could say the same about converting $120 million into $100 million

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#99

Post by dangwhy »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #96

Intelligent people are smart enough to realize that money isn’t the most important thing.

Its hard to prove this because money can be measured and compared while fulfillment is nebulous and hard to pin down.

So a person arguing that money is the most important thing will always win the argument because examples and proof are plenty.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#100

Post by dangwhy »

bottled_poe wrote: post #10

Seems aligned with what Maslow pyramid of needs predicts. I.e. above a certain safety net, the individual places more value on internal fulfilment rather than external perception of worth.

> I.e. above a certain safety net

How do you calculate this though. Seems kind of meaningless if no one really knows what that number is for them.

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