Why Geniuses Don't Make Money

[mackthefork]

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(contrast that to the air traffic controllers strike that Reagen busted with slightly inferior replacements.

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How did he find that many people willing to cross a picket line of their peers? Obviously not very smart people themselves allowing politicans to manipulate them.

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You can't find replacements for the smartest 500,000 people on the planet. The next 500,000 have no prayer of duplicating their work).

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Thats a lot of people, 500,000 on strike in any profession would impact severly, say undertakers or refuse collectors. Lets say the smartest 500 people in the world went on strike, we would probably shrug and say oh well, and basically notice no difference.

Regards Mack

[wacki]

Eh... just noticed you said 500,000. I'm in the middle of an all nighter. Seeing double.....

Still, I have my doubts about what you are saying. It doesn't take that much brains to keep a computer working, what takes a lot of brians is designing a faster computer. If the smartest people went on strike, I'm still not sure the dumb/average people would know what they are missing.

To prove my point, the physical, biological, and medical research funding have been slashed recently. The biotech industry has been cut by billions. Do you see this on the news?? Of course not, nobody knows because the dumb/average people don't know what they are missing. It's easy to maintain current technology, it's very difficult to move forward.

[kiddj]

Has anybody read: "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen? I haven't, but was wondering if anyone was using this as a reference in this discussion. Here is a link that discusses some of the findings: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm

I'm not sure if it discusses "genius" IQ/income correlation, but I'd be interested to see that.

They did find a correlation between a nations IQ and it's GDP. However, they stated that low GDP could be the cause of lower IQ scores, while low IQ could cause lower GDP. (A little bit confusing.)

Another site (i forget which one) that discussed the subject, had data that showed that IQ only made up 1/3 of the income-making abilities. The other 2/3 were grouped as Emotional Intelligence (EI). This includes a person's social skills and ambition.

So what the "geniuses don't make money" people are saying is that IQ is inversely related to EI (or EQ) at the high IQ levels.

Daniel Goleman wrote a book called "The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace". (Link to excerpt: http://www.sq.4mg.com/GolemanEI-IQ.htm) The correlation he found between IQ and EI was very low. He states that IQ mainly predicts what profession an individual can hold a job in. Once people are in a given job, role, or profession, EI emerges as a more powerful predictor of who succeeds and who does not.

I stand by my argument: if 1% of the population are geniuses, than about 1% of the people making big money will be geniuses.

[Mark1808]

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You are still committing the same fallacy

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I see your point, smarter people are on average wealthier. Agreed. I was trying to make a point (not on subject) that wealthiest people in the world are not the most knowledgable in their profession. But the original point of this discussion was do geniuses make more money and I would say yes they do.

[purnell]

But I do it all the time. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] Nice post.

edit: My point was that it's a mistake, IMO, to make generalizations based on IQ. Some people whose scores are absurdly high are not financially "successful". Some by choice, others not so much. I am the quintessential underachiever, and I always have been. I am easily bored, and I lack discipline, ergo I am not rich.

I disagree with Warren's point that a "genius" talking to an average person is like an average person talking to a retarded person. For example, it seems every time I have dinner with my Mom, who is of average intelligence, she produces an intuition or insight that, after I've had time to think about it, turns out to have been dead on.

The inferred/implied thing is just a pet peeve. It annoys me. Sorry.

[mackthefork]

Rookie [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Mack

[IronUnkind]

Thanks for pointing that out. I still stand by my comments as they apply to net worth (and not avg. income).

[DcifrThs]

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The average net worth of all Americans who are extremely smart is greater than the average net worth of all Americans who are very smart which is greater than the average net worth of Americans who are somewhat smart. There are two reasons why this isn't obvious but if you fall for them it is YOU who isn't smart.

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Did you pull these nebulous stats from the usual orifice?

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i never thought my dept. of labor work would EVER be useful in common conversation.

using the annual (and monthly) census current population surveys, i constructed variables that flagged for income/net worth/earnings/retirement and other things like benefits.

i then created a mix of variables that broke up education level into catagories such as grade school, middle school, high school, some college, associates degree, college, some grad school, masters, PhD.

i then used age as a control (so as not to bias the study by age) and proved in each CPS i used that education (not a direct measurement of "smartness" but a very good proxy imo) can be used to "hot deck" or very accurately predict the income level. the two variables are directly proportional, although the rate of increase incrementally is very fast from high school to college to grad school, it is very slow from masters to phd and from grade school to middle school (its an S curve).

therefore, it is VERY LIKELY that the smarter you are, the more you make/areworth/have in equity etc...

this is over a random sample of 128000 americans, which, as concluded by the census, is a very good representation of the general population therein.

-Barron

[David Sklansky]

You went to a lot of trouble to prove nothing. I'm talking about smartness, intelligence, the ability to reason out the correct answer to questions or puzzles that do in fact have a clearcut answer. I wasn't talking about education, especially education in subjects that don't require this talent.

EVERY SINGLE student at Bronx High School of Science is at age 16 smarter than EVERY SINGLE Phd in English Literature from Harvard. Period.

[mackthefork]

Now you are just being stupid.

Mack