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IQ is only a minor factor in success

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Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#291

Post by pc86 »

pitay wrote: post #198
pc86 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in terms of numbers isn't a man having a single child each with 10 women better than 10 couples each having two kids?

In response to your question, have another question. Does a man having a child with woman mean she won't have other children? I don't see any reason it does. Would a man having a child with 10 women cause huge social problem? It certainly does. Do you want to be a single woman with kids? Doubt it. Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have? I really don't see any reason for tha…

> Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have?

I never said they should.

> There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them

What in the world does that have to do with anything?

> Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.

What are you talking about? I never said anything about any sort of limit.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#292

Post by therealdrag0 »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #132
kakarot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish more people saw it this way. Philanthropy is the only thing driving me to amass wealth. I used to be ok with being poor and spending a lot of free time on side projects but more and more I'm becoming disgusted with myself and those around me for living selfishly when so many people around the world are in pain.

I found that there are actually relatively few people with the type of experience most of us here at HN have that work in philanthropy. I mean people with IT background, can-do attitude, consider scaling whatever you build to million or billions of people, entrepreneurial and able to pitch well for investments. If I work as a reasonably successful IT entrepreneur (I don't think I am going to be Gates, Brinn or Zucker…

I'd love to be involved in something like that. I feel like most helpful innovation is hardware based or science-research based. I'm not a trained weather data scientist, for example, I'm just a boring backend developer. Have you seen much philanthropy positions for backend devs or any suggestions on where to look?

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#293

Post by therealdrag0 »

lisper wrote: post #228
whack wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you mean by "rich". If your goal is to be a billionaire, then yes, luck plays a major role. But if you simply want to get to the 99th percentile of income/wealth, that can be achieved in a pretty replicable manner. Study hard in HS -> Go to a good college -> Work your ass off for a good GPA -> go do a MBA/JD/MD/CS degree at an elite university -> get a six figure job and work your ass off. Not much…

There cannot possibly be a reliable process to get you to the 99th percentile, because by definition 99% of people won't get there. Hard work will reliably get you to the 99th percentile only in a world where only 1% of people work hard.

"only in a world where only 1% of people work hard." -- AND choose the steps that are reproducible. I'm very smart, but I got an English Degree thinking I would be a writer taught english for pennies and almost went into philosophy before thinking I didn't want to be poor and went into development (already had taught myself programming in highschool). Not all paths that can be worked hard on produce wealth.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#294

Post by [deleted] »

kakarot wrote: post #86
jacalata wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diminishing returns for your personal enjoyment, sure. But there are plenty of ways any extra money you had could be spent to make a huge impact for other people: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/#approa...

I wish more people saw it this way. Philanthropy is the only thing driving me to amass wealth. I used to be ok with being poor and spending a lot of free time on side projects but more and more I'm becoming disgusted with myself and those around me for living selfishly when so many people around the world are in pain.

[deleted]

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#295

Post by gwern »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #164

The actual paper, available on sci-hub, does not agree with this innumerate journalist's interpretation of it. http://www.pnas.org.sci-hub.ac/content/113/47/13354.short?rs... In fact, the paper shows that IQ is a great predictor. Personality is a much worse predictor on highly g-loaded tasks, and a good predictor on some others (e.g. wages). But (IQ, personality) pairs are an even better predictor than IQ or personal…

I would add that the procedure of using a plain multivariate regression to draw quasi-causal conclusions is definitely wrong because of the fallacy of controlling for intermediate variables (IQ causes education, so an estimate of the form log(wages) ~ IQ + education is not estimating what you think it is estimating and a small estimate for IQ is expected), and they seem to be very casual about the measurement error though they know it's driving a lot of the results:

"For example, in the NLSY79, IQ is a better predictor of log wages than personality, but in the BCS and the MIDUS data, personality measures are better predictors. The better and more comprehensive personality measures in the BCS and the MIDUS data compared with those available in the NLSY data likely explain why personality is more predictive of outcomes in those data."

Not to mention that correlations with income tend to increase when you look at multi-year averages and unbin & untruncate the single-year income data to boot.

If they did a more meaningful SEM (like Education ~ IQ, Wages ~ IQ + Education), with correction for all the measurement error, I would expect that, in line with the rest of the literature (I have collected some links on the topic in http://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection#iqincome-bibliograph... ), they would find that IQ outpredicts the rest of the variables, followed by whatever corresponds to Conscientiousness.

Re: IQ is only a minor factor in success

#296

Post by pier25 »

hyperbovine wrote: post #153
babuskov wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote it in so nice way. I'm usually more harsh to people. Deciding not to have kids because it's too much of an effort is so selfish act. You're throwing away all the effort your ancestors put in to get to the point of you being alive.

Having kids is a far more selfish act than not. Our species and our planet would be way, way better off if about 9/10 of us elected not to reproduce for a few generations.

Couldn't agree more.

That's one of the reasons we decided to not have kids. There are too many humans consuming too many resources in an unsustainable lifestyle.

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