I'm probably decently smart, but I'm not rich at all. In fact I'm quite poor by most people's standards.<p>I'm also really happy and work fewer hours per week than anyone I know.<p>If there's one thing I worry about it's that I <i>should</i> be trying to be rich because I probably have the means to make that happen. I might be making 200k/yr if I worked full time. I might be able to start a successful company if I put my mind to it. I've never been able to convince myself that it's worth it.<p>Money just doesn't seem that useful to me. I don't need a car, I'd actually prefer a smaller studio for less money if I could find one. My bills add up to maybe $1400/month. It's trivial to make that much money. I have a fulfilling part time job which I could sleep through and still cover my expenses. Every dollar I earn writing software is a bonus. It constantly surprises me how much money my peers are capable of spending.<p>Fixing things is also really fun. I have $300 dollar headphones, they cost me $0 because I pulled them out of the trash and spent a couple hours overhauling them. The biggest material source of joy in my life is a $280 bicycle, my laptop cost the same, both off craigslist. Going out for a night on the town can cost hundreds of dollars, if I want to indulge in a vice I can buy enough weed to last me 3 months for the same amount of money. I'm always free to spend time with friends doing cool things.<p>The skills I have that I use to earn money are all learned from spending free time messing around doing small projects just for the hell of it. I wouldn't have these skills if I didn't have so much free time to explore whatever strikes my fancy.<p>It really seems like the point at which working harder to earn money hits diminishing returns comes much much earlier that most people think.
Getting rich, at least under our current system, has a lot more to do with luck (mainly being in the right place at the right time) than it does with being smart or even working hard. The reason perseverance (which is related to working hard, but is not quite the same thing) helps is that the more willing you are to keep playing the game without winning the more likely you are to eventually win.<p>(You can see this dynamic at work in the small here on HN. Getting a lot of upvotes has more to do with getting a pithy comment in early enough that it rises to the top where it gets noticed before the story falls off the front page and people stop paying attention. The wisest comment in the world won't get any love if it's submitted after the story drops off the home page. A similar dynamic also plays itself out on the New page. It's even more dramatic there because very few people ever look at the New page. And yet, the more participate, the more likely you are to hit an upvote jackpot.)
Interesting. I'm a 1%er and I have a piece of paper that says I'm pretty smart, but:<p><pre><code> > a personality trait marked by
> diligence, perseverance and
> self-discipline
</code></pre>
I see myself as pretty lazy, impulsive, and slap-dash, and tend to use my brain to brute-force lazy solutions to problems.<p>I am too lazy and don't have the concentration span to pay attention much in meetings, but can generally utter something profound near the end which makes it look like I was paying attention the whole time.<p>I have always assumed I'm just coasting by on a pretty useful brain.
I'm not addressing the claim of this article, just the methods.<p>IQ has a misleading (and factually inaccurate) name. The Q stands for quotient, but an actual IQ is not a quotient at all. IQs are ordinal ONLY. They allow you (to the extent that IQ tests measure intelligence) to rank people, not assign numerical values. It is not possible from IQ scores to say "Alice is x% more intelligent than Bob", only "Alice is more intelligent than Bob".<p>Due to the non-cardinal nature of IQ scores, the correlation with income as reported in the article isn't something that you can really do. To do this, we would need a cardinal measurement of intelligence instead.
Much is luck, yes. But also, much seems to be doing the right thing.<p>I know a bunch of founders of smallish IT companies. If I talk to them, they don't seem too smart. But they did a company, and kept it running for many years. So they learned stuff about running a company.<p>Knowing how to run a company is a rather important skill if you want to get rich. And you can get this skill, even if you aren't smart. You probably won't make millions but more than a senior dev or something.<p>At one point you can even do it with a low skill level. Because you can employ many smart people who keep the company running even if you don't know what's going on anymore.<p>What angers me is that you often need money to get started and almost all people with rich parents I knew did it with their parents money. Yes they failed a few times, but who cared, they were young and their parents would help them out. By the time they were 30, they had 10 years of founding experience.
The actual paper, available on sci-hub, does not agree with this innumerate journalist's interpretation of it.<p><a href="http://www.pnas.org.sci-hub.ac/content/113/47/13354.short?rss=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.pnas.org.sci-hub.ac/content/113/47/13354.short?rs...</a><p>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 personality.<p>The only way you can draw the conclusion that IQ doesn't matter much is if you compare to predictors of the form (IQ, personality, achievement, grades) (and a few similar ones). Shockingly, using achievement to predict achievement yields a more accurate predictor than using (IQ, personality).<p>(I really do not understand this paper's methodology of graphing r^2 values. I don't get how this was published, but lets assume that was a reasonable way to go.)<p>This paper also ignores the fact that IQ, grades, and many personality traits are correlated. Insofar as these metrics are correlated, it completely invalidates this analysis; some of what the authors attribute to personality or grades is actually just the explanatory power of a second IQ measurement.
I always retell this story when this subject comes up:<p>When I was 17 in 1989 I was desperate for a job in 'computers' as it was all I knew, I was damn good at programming etc, but had the usual experience trap - no experience equalled no job.<p>Being naive I paid attention to one of those adverts in the back of the weekend newspapers. I don't know if they were a UK only thing but they had a puzzle and stated that if you could solve it within 1/2 hour you could be a member of Mensa, which if anybody doesn't know is a club for those with a high IQ.<p>I completed the puzzle then got posted back another one, if I could complete this within an hour I would be invited back to a proper, invigilated exam. Passed both, paid my dues and became a member of the clever club, along with people at the time like Sir Clive Sinclair. My mum was very proud.<p>I went to one of their meetups shortly afterwards in a bad cheap suit hoping to meet some other clever person who'd recognise my skills and give me a big wad of cash and a job.<p>It didn't turn out that way. There were 30~ men at one side of the club all staring at their drinks, with 3 woman at the other side about 20 metres away keeping away from the fellas. One woman came in by mistake to the side with the men at which point they all swarmed her. The only topic of conversation they had went like:<p>"What's your IQ?"<p>"x"<p>"oh, mines <x+10>"<p>When it came to IQ these people were the top of the pile, with social interaction however they were abjectly hopeless. They'd be able to build you a nuclear bomb, but they wouldn't be able to sell or explain it, or even go to the shop to buy the parts for it.<p>This encounter came at a good point for me - it made me relax a bit about being 'clever', and showed the importance of other indicators. I let my membership lapse and wince when I occasionally see 'member of Mensa' on a CV.
I think your parents socioeconomic class has a big influence on your likelihood to be 'successful' (<a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america-no-less-socially-mobile-it-was-generation-ago-mobility-measured" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america...</a>).<p>Social/networking should also play a big role.<p>My anecdotal observation is, having both of the above (from upper class family and good at networking) is the biggest determinant of success. It sort of makes sense, the upper class bit gives you access to other successful/wealthy people (through private school, parents network), and the social skills the ability to leverage this access.<p>Also, having loads of money from family makes it very easy to succeed. In the UK you'd just buy as much real estate as possible, farm off the management to an agency, and just sit on your arse while the assets gain in value.
> The study found that grades and achievement-test results were markedly better predictors of adult success than raw IQ scores. That might seem surprising -- after all, don’t they all measure the same thing? Not quite. Grades reflect not just intelligence but also what Heckman calls “non-cognitive skills,” such as perseverance, good study habits <i>and the ability to collaborate</i> [emphasis by me] -- in other words, conscientiousness.<p>I would consider myself as quite conscientious - but working together with people who have less of this trait always ends/ended in a tragedy. So I would rather assume that there are also reasons for the hypothesis that conscientiousness rather hinders your ability to collaborate.<p>> University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth found that IQ scores also reflected test-takers’ motivation and effort. Diligent, motivated kids will work harder to answer tough questions than equally intelligent but lazier ones.<p>When I was at school I took multiple IQ tests (I don't know what their exact scores were, but they were really high). At that time I found the problems in the IQ test really exciting. A few years ago I had to solve some "logic puzzles" (what image in a 3x3 or 4x4 box with one missing fits by the hidden rules). 15 years ago I would have considered them as really easy (though "formally" they were not). I would say that since I finished studying mathematics, I find these puzzles much harder. Did studying mathematics make me worse in logic? Surely not (quite the opposite). Did studying mathematics make me worse in solving "logic puzzles" in IQ tests? I'm very sure it did.
Most non-exceptional things depend on character. Extreme intelligence only manifests its value in areas of extreme complexity.<p>When I hire programmers for a job I'm looking for characteristics like consistency, patience, memory, organisation skills, attention to detail, a touch of pendantry and a reasonable analytical mind. I don't actively avoid extremely intelligent people, but given the work at hand I certainly don't care if someone is or not.<p>So in the world of non-exceptional development, character is king.<p>Likewise in business, except at times of revolutionary change, character always wins out. Persistence, focus, a dash of greed, people skills...Brains are right at the bottom of your priorities.
The low correlation of IQ and future wage is surprising to me given what I've seen elsewhere. For example <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Sternberg2/publication/228859220_The_predictive_value_of_IQ/links/09e4150d72ed6b102a000000.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Sternberg2/publi...</a> finds that IQ predicts 15% of the variance in income and 25% of the variance in socioeconomic status.<p>Also See <a href="http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...</a> where IQ tests predict future job performance measurements across many studies as well as job interviews and only slightly worse than work sample tests.<p>Although I did look at the original study and that number comes from a linear regression of log wages and IQ percentiles. I'm not convinced that the R^2 number you get out of those two numbers really means much, the correlation is highly significant at least.
It is so nice to see that Money is now the only criteria for success.<p>By that logic J.K Rowling is a more successful author than the Hemingway, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Tolkien and the entire Beat generation plus several others put together.
I have to point out that this question functions as a classical reference to the life of Thales (born 624 BC) - touted as the first philosopher. In the apocryphal story, he proved he could be wealthy if he wanted to and- according to one version - grew rich by predicting that the olive harvest would be good and investing accordingly. Having information others do not has always thus ruled the markets :)<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus</a>
Huh, did the title on HN get changed? It's now "IQ is only a minor factor in success" which doesn't match the Bloomberg article title "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?". It makes some of the comments that were written before the change seem a bit strange.
In the book 'Outliers', M. Gladwell talks about this very subject and suggests that a persons social upbringing has a lot to do with how you can navigate through the world and have it work for you.<p>A high IQ is surely a good thing to have and will make it easier for one to become successful, but if you totally lack the skill of 'getting your way' in the social maze that surrounds our daily lives, it will probably be a lot harder.
There are many parts to this. We're talking about IQ and these same people may not necessarily be emotionally intelligent, for one.<p>A lot of people with high IQs may also be very rational / logical in their approach towards life. They might think objectively, and that's the point. They're right - they don't need the excess wealth at all. They've accounted for everything they needed to - their life, their security, and that of their children, spouse, parents, etc. They're for the most part content with their personal lives, their success, their jobs and most importantly their income. They're I assume, smart enough to know what could make them more money, and how they need to behave and interact. It's not ignorance; it's sheer conscious choices.<p>On the other hand, there are those who aren't smart / wise enough. They'll make much more money, but may not be as nearly satisfied, no matter how much they make.<p>We might be mistaking intelligence / business-sense with wisdom, which is a higher domain - it's got more to it, than just IQ.
In my psych classes they always explained IQ as a measurement of success in western culture. That it didn't really measure intelligence, because it is way to complex to measure that easily. But IQ was shown to correlate with basic success which is why it was useful. So if that is not the case it sounds like IQ is of no value.
> <i>After following some 1,000 New Zealanders for more than 30 years, researchers concluded that tests of language, behavioral skills and cognitive abilities taken when children were just three years old could predict who was most likely to need welfare, commit crimes, or become chronically ill.</i><p>Whether this is true or not, this is going to have huge ramifications as people believe it and try their various notions of pre-crime and their latest "save humanity" scheme.<p>And if it is true, it has the potential to disrupt society as certain groups - by ethnicity, socioeconomic, geographic, religion, etc - tend to fall in or out of this bucket: the idea that "[group X] is always/never on welfare and therefore..."<p>Without even knowing the rest of the "therefore" it's fascinating and scary to consider.
Hmm, I was thinking... being ambitious, maybe a little greedy, should be a great factor for "success" in terms of importance and money.<p>I mean, many intelligent people I know don't care much about this kind of success anyway, so I think it's clear that it's more correlated to personality than IQ. Some personality types will have greater success, simply because they are searching for it.<p>IQ is still correlated simply because, in our society, we came to think that this kind of success is desirable, so many people want it, even if they are not that ambitious. So if you have a high IQ, you will probably have a decent income and moderate success, even if you don't want to be rich or something like that.
In broad terms of course emotional intelligence is very useful when interacting with other humans.<p>to pick at the 1-2% numbers a bit the impact of IQ depends on the individual; physical size/height is only profoundly important for the success of certain people - athletes primarily. however, both also have correlation with success. I'm sure the paper was more careful than this article.<p>IQ is often used as a proxy for intelligence, when in fact it's just a set of standard metrics that nobody thinks is that good beyond a certain point - after all the term comes from early attempts to quantify developmental delay. Leaving that aside for a moment.
Becoming successful in lot of fields appears to be less about <i>doing</i> challenging stuff (where raw intelligence is perhaps most applicable) and perhaps more about scaling an organization to manage other people doing the challenging stuff.<p>Most of the brightest people I know have either no interest in, or an active aversion to, "managing" people in any sense whatsoever.
How much of a factor is mental health in success?<p>Someone could be a 4th standard deviation IQ genius yet be debilitated by anxiety, depression, or some other condition.<p>On the flipside many successful people have credited drugs with some part of their success by boosting ambition, endurance, creativity, confidence, etc. If a Cocaine substitute was discovered that had no negative side effects, could this positively affect scientific progress?<p>Occasionally a mental "disability" can seemingly be related to success. So many great scientists have been on the Autistic spectrum, or suffered from severe OCD. Can the success of the person be separated from the disorder? Could "cures" for Autism and OCD actually negatively affect scientific progress?
I like to think of IQs using a car analogy.<p>You can have someone with an 8000 HP motor for a brain cranking away like a nitromethane dragster. These people don't have a ton of practical utility, but if you point them in the right direction and let 'em rip, they shred through certain problems like chainsaws through logs.<p>Then you've got Jeeps. Much more practical they are. They cover lots of terrain, but they're not as optimized on the street as typical sedans, and not as good on rough terrain as Humvees.<p>If you want to be successful, be a Porsche. Optimize for driving well on the most practical terrain that can take you the most places.
A good lse lecture about the role of luck in success and failure, and how people interpret it asymmetrically
(my success was due to hard work and talent vs I failed due to bad luck/didn't get a break), with some interesting social experiments that showcase this:<p><a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/InternationalInequalities/Videos-Podcasts/Success-and-Luck-good-fortune-and-the-myth-of-meritocracy.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.lse.ac.uk/InternationalInequalities/Videos-Podcas...</a>
If we consider that there are different types of intelligence, say logical/analytical, artistic, physical (dancers, crafters) etc. Then the answer to the question becomes more complex. You may know the answers to most questions, or solutions to most problems, but that doesn't mean you will act on solving those problems, that requires will, passion, commitment, etc. There are a lotta factors that play into making money, including being at the right place at the right time.
Most of the cash-rich people i know are not smart at all. They are just conservative and can withhold themselves from impulse spending, and introverts, so they don't need to spend much to hang out with friends, which allowed them to build decent savings and build passive income (mostly by buying residential and commercial property, while that will be different in developed countries).<p>Most income-rich on the other hand, are smart.
"Don't eat the marshmallow" (willpower / delayed gratification) is more important or at least as important a predictor of success as IQ. It's not always about books smarts, but real life smarts.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...</a>
But is it because we reward (unjustly) those that score well and go to prestigious schools? Society is certainly not a blind test; we cannot conclude that these 'predictors' will actually help an employer choose a high-functioning employee. It only predicts who an employer will pay more. Heck, for the best predictor that, we only need to look in their pants.
IQ is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for success.<p>If you aren't smart, you get through life in a walking haze, as others continually take advantage of you, and you are never truly aware of what is going on.<p>For example, you'll mismanage your money, or forget crucial details, or you'll make the wrong decisions.
If I were to guess I'd bet a low IQ is a stronger predictor for failure than a high IQ is a predictor for success.<p>Presumably, once you have "enough" capability for abstract thinking for what we consider success, then other factors, internal and external, will decide.
High IQ here too.<p>Used an algebra to rotate and combine equations back in school to solve them. Never knew what they were really about until the uni times.<p>Playing puzzles with the rest of the class was quite boring.<p>Discipline however plays the important role for success, I agree, so does the environment and DNA.
But it should be a major factor (assuming motivation is at an acceptable level). It not being relevant is more telling of issues with politics, corruption, favoritism, etc than of intelligence being irrelevant.
Does it not require intelligence to understand how to be fulfilled without wealth?<p>I think most of the smartest people have figured out that there are more important things in life than becoming as rich as possible.
IQ is only a minor factor in intelligence.<p>Hampshire, A., Highfield, R. R., Parkin, B. L., & Owen, A. M. (2012). Fractionating human intelligence. Neuron, 76(6), 1225-1237.
Why measure an "Intelligence Quotient" with methods of examination that have been shown to be a pseudo-science? People should be measuring "Intelligence Potential" using proper scientific methods with less subjectivity involved, and more objective evidence used as a way to get closer to true, justified beliefs.
Willingness to cross the line between crime and honesty appears to be the major factor behind success, to me.<p>Every successful company has a dark side.