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Why a High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart
D1gital_Prob3 writes "How can a 'smart' person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years. He says it applies to more people than you might think. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity — how much information you can hold in mind."
Mensa and testing agencies have been making it clear for a couple decades now that IQ only measures your ability to take tests.
While that's strongly correlated with general intelligence, it means nothing specific for a specific individual.
I can see the fnords!
Come on...everyone knows a high Intelligence score isn't the same as a high Wisdom score!
When the GM at my first AD&D game explained the difference between INT and WIS....
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Any RPGer knows that Prof. Stanovich is attempting to correlate INT scores with WIS scores.
Silly scientist. No bonus priest spells for you.
/2nd Edition devotee
I can see the fnords!
I don't know, I think a fool reading most of the Discworld books would walk away with more sense than he started with.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
As a member of mensa with a rather high IQ (160 on the cattel 3B), I know that my IQ is in at least the top percentile. However, my organisational skills are atrocious, and while I can remember something well short-term, I tend to forget things long-term. This led to my nearly dropping out of university because while I can write a decent essay, I often forgot to do so. Once I understand a mathematical concept I can do it well, but I tend to forget formulae, so I only got a middle-of-the-road grade in maths.
A high IQ means very little, and I'm not saying that because of jealousy; I'd rather be well-organised and "only" average in the more abstract ways of measuring ability.
An 'IQ' is quantitative. The term 'smart' is qualitative. Comparing them at all is like comparing ones 'income' with how 'rich' they are.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Friend of mine, his father is a senior researcher for NIH. One of the smartest fellas you will ever meet, has multiple PhDs, charming and really has his act together professionally.
Came back from a concert one night, there was a note taped to the door. "I owe you a microwave." Inside, the house smells like burning compost, his Dad still forgets he can't microwave food with a fork inside. Has never been able to operate a microwave oven and this is about the tenth time he has done it.
His Dad owns a lot of land in Montgomery County, Maryland. He has made a lot of money off real estate investments. He has had a lot of disasters over the years as well, for things that would have seemed apparent to anyone else. Like not leaving untreated wood lying in pile all winter, not parking a backhoe at the top of a pile of dirt, not purchasing residentail land and trying to have it rezoned for multilevel commercial, etc.
It's not just forgetfulness, he has a hard time processing these realities of life. Without his family, I don't think he could function.
M
For some reason, people have associated high IQs with knowing a lot about everything. Unfortunately, knowledge and IQ is different, as is wisdom and IQ. Sheesh, first year D&D players can tell you this.
Corollary: just because you're smart and know a lot about one subject doesn't mean you're opinion on another subject matters. I'm always astounded by how many smart developers think that because they know ASP inside out that they also know which economic system is better.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
There's usually a woman involved.
Based on no research and absolutely no scientific data I have come to measure a person's intelligence by how creative they are and how open to new ideas (especially ideas in conflict with their own belief system) they are.
I am a conservative, white, heterosexual, Christian male (source of all the world's problems according to many) and yet I understand that there are things I am probably wrong about and there are people who have radically different beliefs than I do and I can definitely learn from them. I consider myself pretty intelligent and yet understanding that I can learn from others is very key to my intelligence growing.
People who have closed their minds to new thoughts/ideas and who do not exercise their creative potential get stupid fast. I have met a LOT of them (in my white, hetero, Christian, male society) and I am the first to admit that my peers tend to be pretty dumb. TFL starts off bashing on George Bush and how his IQ is pretty high yet the author has obviously decided Bush is an idiot (an earned reputation) and he fits right into my category of society.
What I feel is important to note is that in American progressive society MY ethnicity/religion/political views/gender quickly get thrown into a category that I really don't thing I've earned. I try not to complain of racism/sexism/whateverelseism but it gets old some times.
Theres also a reason the ability to schmooze is given its own stat. Where else would all the politicians put their high ability scores?
Just like computers, people are susceptible to the Garbage in, Garbage out phenomenon. If you learn the wrong stuff, you're still smart, but you will make bad decisions.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
A real smart person would've known this and disregarded IQ scores long ago, but some people with high IQ scores may have propped up their self-respect with the results and probably neglected to nurture their smarts...
is "wisdom".
The opposite of "foolish" is not "smart". The opposite of "foolish" is "wise".
See also "book-smart" v. "street-smart", INT v. WIS (in D&D et al.), and the role of irrational thinking in decision processes.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
My brother-in-law is one of the smartest people I know. Earned his PhD in optical physics and does some very high-level work with it. Way above the head of anybody he explains it to. He's written some pretty intense C++ programs to handle neural-network computations of extremely complicated mathematical problems.
But I can't count how many cellphones he's destroyed from accidental drops from his shirt pocket into the toilet. And a few times he lost his keys for a week because he left them hanging in the door lock.
He's a smart guy, but sometimes we wonder about him.
/* No Comment */
They're still smart, but even smart people can do dumb things. That's why it's important to be clear with phrases like "You are dumb" and "That was dumb." (I have finger puppets if the /. editors are confused about this...)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Intelligence is a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently. -Larry Niven
IQ measures raw mental abilities. It's a bit like measuring raw CPU power and memory in a computer.
EQ (Emotional Quotient) measures things like self-motivation abilities (including things like optimism), self-control and inter-personal abilities. They're a bit like measuring the quality of the software that runs in a computer and how well it works together with other programs in the network.
[Sorry, no car metaphors]
In real life, even though a large IQ will allow you to solve incredibly complex problems, if you have a low EQ, you might actually be incapable of doing so because, for example:
In the end, a high EQ is much more highly correlated with success than a high IQ.
Simply put, being optimistic means you're more willing to take chances (which might eventually result in a big payout), being self-motivated means that you can keep going even when things are though, having self-control means you can deny yourself a small reward now for a much bigger one later and being good with people means you can more easily find the chances and convince others to work with you.
That said, the good news is that one can change one's own EQ over one's life - most of its component are behavioral traits that can be learned.
"Street stupid" is a cop-out, and common sense has been proven again and again by psychologists to be a very poor decision making tool.
Instead, look at a high IQ as just one of the MANY factors that motivate a person's behavior. Emotions like love, greed and envy, self-esteem, past experiences both good and bad, and rational thought are all factored into the decisions we make every day. So a person can have boatloads of intelligence but is so greedy they fall for a 419 scam, financially ruining themselves. Or they're in love enough to stay in an unhealthy relationship and have a stroke from the stress. Or their self-esteem is so much in the gutter that they compulsively buy shit on QVC and eventually file for bankruptcy.
We're all familiar with Isaac Newton's brilliant accomplishments, but his superstitious beliefs are less well-known. The most interesting one is his fascination with the number seven. (That's why we have ROY G BIV instead of ROYGBV; Newton thought there SHOULD be a seventh color and included it despite the fact that the human eye doesn't see it as particularly distinct from its neighbors.)
My ex-wife had an amazing memory. She could remember names and phone numbers of people she had only met once. She could remember all the SKU numbers when she worked part time at Sears. When she got her RN license, she filled her head with drug information and could spout interactions on request.
... I have a terrible memory but can write code like crazy because I can keep several parts of a program in my head and understand the requirements, interactions, and dependencies. I never memorized math formulas, but the idea behind them.
... there are some battles that just aren't worth fighting. Because even if you win ... you lose.
But she wasn't so good at things like programming a VCR or directions. I noticed that while she had a great memory, she was terrible at spatial type tasks. Where I was just the opposite
Cooking was very telling. I'm a passable cook, but not very inventive. She was a better cook, but had problems when she had to cook more than a couple of items at a time in getting the sequence of the various recipes merged so that everything was ready at the same time. That part, I was very good at.
The telling point came one day when we were talking about taxes. We owed a lot because she had started working part time as an RN and we didn't pay attention to the amount being withheld from her paycheck for taxes. When I did the taxes normally, i.e. married filing jointly, we owed $3,000. She came back to me a few days later and said that if she filed as married, filing separately, she would get $1,000 back. I explained that I always did our taxes both ways and then when we did it that way, she did get $1,000 back, but I ended up owing $5,000. I was never able to get her to understand how the tax brackets worked and why this was the case. So I gave in and took it to HR Block. Guess what, the best way to file was married, filing jointly. For years she thought I was trying to cheat her out of money and refused to increase her withholding to the same percent of income as mine, so I had to withhold even more from mine. Which meant she had to put more into the household account in order to pay bills, so the end result was the same anyway.
As I told my son at the time
I remarried three years ago, and my lovely wife can talk with me about such matters. It's a wonderful thing to find someone that is smart, beautiful, and thinks sex is only dirty when it's done right.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I know a guy in Mensa who was genuinely surprised that I stopped talking to him after he hit on my wife and tried to talk her into divorcing me.
I don't think it's occurred to him yet that she and I actually speak to each other.
I read about this recently, tried it with several of my coworkers, and it really works. Simply lift your keyboard over your head while defocusing your eyes so the G and H keys overlap.
What do you see there?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If the dumb are rich and the smart are poor, why aren't the smart acting dumb to get rich? Are they too dumb to do that? And if they are dumb, then how come they're not rich?
I have a headache now, thanks to you.
It doesn't, however, mean you're observant, grounded, emotionally stable, possess common sense, have even average social skills, or even an interest in using your intelligence for anything of consequence.
TFA references G. W. Bush, stating his IQ is estimated to be at or around 120 but even those close to him had concerns about his decision making skills, and "Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical"." Seems to me this is connected far more to his personality, shaped by his upbringing and experiences. IQ is an indicator of intellectual potential; if someone tests consistently in the 70 - 80 range, no amount of positive thinking or assistance is getting you through medical school; if someone tests in the 160 - 180 range (let's assume an accepted standardized scale, such as Wechsler), this indicates that academically there is nothing they are not capable of understanding if they applied themselves. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to assume someone with that level of intelligence *will* become a doctor or the like, only that if circumstances are right, they *could*.
It is not unusual for people with high IQs to fall short of their potential for myriad reasons, the one I think is most impactful is the significant difference between intellectually gifted (meant generically) and the average person. To qualify for organizations like Mensa, you need to be 2 standard deviations ahead of the average in intelligence, which is the same difference between the average person and someone considered to be retarded. People who are that far removed from the median (on either side of the scale) experience the world in a very different and often times alienating way. Perhaps the perceived "stupidity" of people with high IQs is simply the manifestation of their inability to communicate effectively with "little brains".
While many people with high IQs are perfectly functional and move among us unnoticed as braniacs,(Mensa members must be in the 98% percentile of the population which sounds lofty, but it means that roughly one in every 50 people are smart enough to make the cut, so you probably have a better shot at getting into Mensa than you do of winning a beauty pageant) some people with high IQs may never learn how to interact successfully with those around them... robbing them of the kinds of experiences that teach the very skills TFA suggests smart people don't manifest in a consistent manner.
Raw brain power isn't enough to guarantee success or even a base level of competence at anything, including living.
and yet for all that you left out what is arguably the most important, wisdom, which again is none of the above.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
Visit a boarding school in Connecticut and then a public school on the south side of Chicago, then try to make the 'same culture' argument.
Apparently you are poor, becuase most of the rich people I know are very intelligent. They earned their money (ie not "Old Money") legitimately (ie not "Celebrity Money") and are not connected with hollywood (ie not actors, directors or writters).
Some rich people are stupid, but so are most of the poor people I know so unless you've got a couple of citations to back up your obviously prejudiced opinions your just a troll.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Well, from what I've seen it seems that the whole "high IQ => fails in the army" thing could be better described as "people who try to think for themselves, are creative and question authority generally have trouble with starting at the bottom of strictly hierarchical organisations where you're expected to just conform and follow orders no matter how stupid the orders may be".
(Most people I've known who started military careers and have risen through the ranks were great at following orders and just doing what others told them to do)
So I doubt it's just an IQ thing, it's more that in the military (any military) you're expected to conform and just do as you're told, someone for whom it comes naturally to try creative "outside the box" solutions to problems or who simply has a higher than average ability to analyze problems and figure out solutions is likely to not fit in, something that is true in any organisation that tries to fit everyone into a Lowest Common Denominator role.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Are you asserting that the rich people you know represent the majority of the rich population? Parent didn't state that all rich people were dumb, only the majority. My life echoes his stance as well. I too know some smart rich people but they are by far in the minority. At least in my experience.
Some rich people are stupid, but so are most of the poor people I know so unless you've got a couple of citations to back up your obviously prejudiced opinions your just a troll.
You're.
This is a common defensive reaction on the part of people who are just kind of all-around dumb. "Well, I may not have all that book-learning, but at least I've got street smarts!" No, sorry, you really don't.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Reminds me of a quote I heard years and years ago, that I never thought was particularly useful, until now.
"Everyone thinks dogs are smarter than cats, until you ask a dog to climb a tree."
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
It's a simple fact (at least in the United States) that MOST millionaires are NOT millionaires through inheritance.
What it takes to become rich is not some sort of global all-around, jack-of-all-trades smartness; it's expertise in a single area.
So it seems quite logical that these wealthy people who have focuses so much on one particular thing are not particularly knowledgeable about other things.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
Experience is nothing if not processed intelligently.
Smarter people learn more from their experience, IMO.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
Perhaps when people who don't have PhDs can't work a remote or leave their keys in their car, you don't notice as much because there's nothing in particular about them that creates the expectation of intelligence? The idea that there's an inverse correlation is a very common defensive reaction on the part of people who don't have much of any kind of intelligence, but there's precious little evidence for it in real life. It's more a matter of selection bias: we notice when smart people do stupid things. When stupid people do stupid things, it's business as usual.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's because it is not what you know but WHO you know.
Rich = well connected.
Smart typically = antisocial loaner.
yes there are some incredibly rare exceptions, but typically the frat party boy that can chat people up will be rich while the quiet hermit with 4X the IQ of the frat boy will discover amazing things quietly and poorly in his basement.
Charisma, being able to bullshit very well, and how to schmooze is how you get rich.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I know a number of rich .com people. They aren't that smart (above average for sure but not super smart), in fact most of the non rich geeks that built their systems are a lot smarter. I'm convinced that intelligence isn't the prime factor, or even in the top 3, of becoming rich. Ability/desire to take risks may be the top factor. Singular unhinged focus on "business" to the exclusion of all kinds of things like their family seems to be another. Both of these are above intelligence as factors determining wealth in my experience.
I also know a lot of really smart people that are just middle class. They have a terrible time functioning in a structured environment and prefer to spend their time pondering whatever whim interests them at the moment. This isn't a recipe for wealth, but it is a recipe for intelligence.
So I have two anecdotes to your one. Does this mean anything?
How can you proven something as arbitrary as common sense is a poor decision making tool?
Do you have any links to these studies?
Common sense is just a term used to describe using the most obvious, sensible solution that may have been overlooked in the face of alternative, more stupid solutions. Quite how you can prove that is a poor decision making tool I'd love to know.
It's not exactly a mystery. You tend to mimic the lifestyle of your parents, and they mimic the lifestyle of their parents and so on. So if your parents placed a high priority on schooling, learning, education etc then you are likely to pass that lifestyle onto your kids. So... you might have many generations which have been too busy putting food on the table with multiple jobs or dealing with gangs or drugs or a dangerous neighbourhood and had more things to worry about than making sure their child focuses on school, gets help with homework and stays out of trouble.
And vice-versa. My parents were big on school so I was very limited in my TV/video game time. I had to read a novel each night for an hour and my homework was priority #1 after school. My sister struggled and they got her a tutor. As a result I did well in school and will pass that on to my kids.
Of course, you can have within individual families a radical shift. One parent decides they want 'a better life' for their child and makes a big shift resulting in that family breaking the cycle. But when you are looking at entire societies or segments of the population that kind of change is much slower.
Race or any other 'trait' has nothing at all to do with it other than historically. The "such and such race is inherently smarter than such and such other race" argument is nonsense, and horrendously hard to test because family and societal factors creep into your study if you are looking at a large enough study group (ie - student performance across a state or country).
If it wasn't for obsessive compulsive people, we'd still be living in the Dark Ages. Take Newton for example. He spent almost 20 years plotting, calculating, and theorizing until he arrived at his Gravitational Laws. It's these kinds of people who find discoveries and enrich human knowledge.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yup. Most rich folks (>$1M worth?) have earned it themselves. You have to have a bit on the ball to make out ahead of average. Besides smarts, you also need drive and people skills. Luck and connections also help
A college buddy of mine is a good example. I was in MIS and he got his degree in construction management. 30 years later, he's now running his own company and is on the board of a local bank. It helps that he's a math wiz and is also very personable. He can get along with drunk construction workers and black tie socialites and seems to have a good time with both.
As for myself, I'm your typical anti-social geek with no people skills and so I'm stilling in a back room remoting in to computers all day long, fixing stuff. Meanwhile, he still calls me for tech help and recommendations. Of course, I'm a lot more laid back (lazy?) than he is so that could be part of it as well.
I drank what? -- Socrates
How can you proven something as arbitrary [...]
Easy. You call yourself a psychologist.
Yeah, and why aren't the flat chested poor acting busty to get rich?
Who is John Cabal?
What? That working class trash (or the poor) like to beat up each other for fun and especially pound on the bookish kids?
This isn't merely limited to the "south side of Chicago".
Nor is the "Connecticut boarding school" experience limited to the children of DAR members.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
1) Because having a lot of money isn't the same as being rich _enough_. You feel rich when you can afford most of the stuff you want. You feel poor when you can't. This is not as highly correlated with the amount of money you have, as many would believe.
:).
2) And a fair number of smart people are more interested in spending their time on other things than spending it on making a lot of money. Life is short after all[1].
Not that having a lot of money is bad - I'd love to have a lot of money too
[1] As for people who believe there's some sort of heaven[2] and eternal life, it would be more logical for them to accumulate good friends (with eternal life) than money.
Eternity is a long time to spend, counting your billions (trillions?) over and over again without any good friends.
[2] But in that heaven somehow the people would have to be made perfect (voluntarily - not against their will) so that they won't get on each other's nerves and make it seem like hell. Eternity is a very long time for the imperfect. Too long.
I will relay a story my scoutmaster told me about a troop of young inner city scouts he led, many, many years ago. They'd never been out of the city, so he took them camping all he could.
One time he took them to a boy scout camp that happened to be next to a girl scout camp. He should have known that would be trouble, because there was one scout who used to go up to every girl he met, and say the same thing: "You wanna fuck?" So the scoutmaster walks into camp, and all the guys are teasing Kid Wannafuck about how his dick is going to shrivel up and fall off, and he realizes his mistake. So he sits them all down and has a long talk about STDs, pregnancy, birth control and condoms, because *these* kids parents aren't going to bother doing it.
One of the many morals of this story is that sometimes persistence counts for more than technique. It really does connect to the whole 419 scam; this kid knew that he had almost no chance with any particular girl, but if he asked *enough* of them sooner or later he'd get lucky.
Getting back to the value of wealth as an indicator of intelligence, I won't argue that intelligence has no instrumental value in becoming wealthy. Obviously it does. But priorities also matter. I know artists -- not quite starving, but not rolling in dough either. If they put the energy and creativity they lavish on art into making money, they'd probably do pretty well. The one thing I've noticed about people who've made fortunes in their lifetimes (sometimes made and lost several) is that they're driven to perform wealth-generating activities. It may be that wealth is the end goal of those activities, or it may be that wealth is a by-product. Personally, I think the people who become wealthy as a by-product seem much happier than people who pursue wealth as its own end. It appears to me there's something puny and pinched in the character of people who are obsessed with wealth as its own end. The difference between wealth and, say, sex is that you can never get enough wealth. But if you are persistent enough in pursuing either of them, sooner or later you'll get some.
I like to think of this thought experiment. Suppose you are a young unattached man with modest prospects, and you have a bit of good fortune above your station: you are about to interview for a job that could mean fame and wealth. As you eat lunch, you strike up this conversation with this amazing woman; she's beautiful, smart and interesting, and as you chat you realize that you're starting to get somewhere with her. You are not quite to the exchange of telephone numbers stage, when you realize for your horror you're about to be late for your interview. You have to leave RIGHT NOW, you don't even have time to say a decent goodbye. What do you go for, the job or the woman?
Well, I can tell you as an older guy who's had both love and money slip through my fingers (then return later), I wouldn't have a microsecond's hesitation. I'd go for the woman. Money is just a proxy for the experiences you can buy with it. And some experiences you just can't buy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The other day I watched this documentary "Race and Intelligence" in which they asked the same question (and also why certain Asian Americans score higher than European Americans). In it they didn't deny that there's a genetic component to IQ (as measured by IQ-tests). Twin studies clearly show that genes play a part. However they argued that the difference was mostly due to sub-cultural differences (like for example blacks might refer reading books as a white thing and thus don't really do it as much as whites). In the documentary they talked about Flynn effect (rise of IQ-test scores over generations) and how African Americans are gaining on European Americans (their scores are rising more). Is this a reflection of black and white American cultures becoming more similar?
Some rich people are stupid
The largest common factors I have noticed between those who are self-made wealthy is this:
The largest common factors I have noticed between those who are poor is this:
Respect the Constitution
Apparently you must be a very successful man then, because you seem to not know the dilemma of the intelligent human:
We can predict every bad outcome that our actions could take. A dozen a minute. Hundreds though the day.
The dumb man just walks up to the hot girl, talking to her, thinking he is the greatest guy on earth. Which funnily draws others, including the girl, into that reality too.
While we just stand around, playing through all the horrible ways that it could go wrong. Oh boy, and do we know many of those! ^^
So I congratulate you on your success and bow to you in envy! :P
P.S.:
That's why alcohol is even better for intelligent people. Seriously.
Of course, just assuming you're great (and then automatically trying to live up to that, celebrating the successes, and not getting pulled down by the failures), is much better in the long run.
I recommend this: If you go out to pick up a girl, plan on the first dozen times you talk to a girl going horribly bad. Make jokes about it. Try to make them even worse, just for the fun of it. Until you simply stop caring. It's all just fun anyway. And then suddenly, you will notice, how, because you just want to have fun, and walk up to girls with that idea, and all your glow of having all that fun, you will get very new, much nicer reactions. Before you know it, you're talking to a really hot girl, and she's the one trying to pick up you! ^^ (Of course: Be realistic though. This will not happen the first time you go out. ^^)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Yes and no. It's silly to think that the color of a person's skin has anything at all to do with the development of their brain or their intelligence. I.E. There's no causation. Probably no correlation either.
At the same time, genetic factors will make people physically different in plenty of different ways. You could be taller or shorter, fatter or skinnier, etc. All this is based at least somewhat on genetic factors.
It's entirely possible that genetic factors will make someone inherently "smarter" or "dumber"
Sorry to ruin this party but there is an extremely well known and tested correlation between income and IQ. In fact, it is more correct to say that IQ measures income potential than to say that IQ measures "smartness".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
When a smart person does something stupid, it's because he lacks common sense. When a stupid person does something stupid, it's because he's stupid.
Far from it. Pattern recognition, learning and intelligence are all learned and taught. Sure, there are some genetic aberrations, but a lot of those "smart" people just spent crap loads more time reading books and doing homework and learning new things then the other ones. We are all born with the capability, but smarts don't happen magically. You have to have proper education at a young age to keep minds curious.
Self made rich people act a certain way, it has very little to do with IQ. Society looks at all millionaires as investment bankers, entertainment stars, or trust fund babies. The opposite is actually true. Most millionaires are just hard working people that set a savings goal, put that savings goal at the top of their priorities, and stick to it every month. You can call this whatever you want, pay yourself first, budgeting, whatever, but that's what they do.
Thomas Stanley has some great research into how millionaires, and deca millionaires become wealthy, including IQ, inheritances, living expenses etc. I've read the "Millionaire Next Door", and the "Millionaire Mind", and I'll be reading "Stop Acting Rich: ...And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire" when it drops under 10 bucks.
One of my favorite examples in his books was a millionaire giving his wife a huge pile of stock in the company for a present at the kitchen table. His wife said "thank you, this means a lot to me, it really does" and went back to cutting coupons.
Raw abilities that are studied and trained in one culture and neglected in another.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
I don't know if I would call them intelligent or rich. There was a story in the paper of a guy who fell victim to one of these scams. He didn't have a lot of money, instead he went out and borrowed from the bank, maxed his credit cards, and got money from his family. All in all he put his family out over $50k, and himself out about another $20k or something. These are life savings of blue collar workers we are talking about, not the pocket cash from a wealthy family.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is
full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are
omnipotent. The slogan "Press On" has solved and always will solve the
problems of the human race.
-Calvin Coolidge
Hard work and determination will always beat straight intelligence.
My question is, is being a millionaire enough to make you "rich"?
A million dollars ain't what it used to be.
What about the people who are worth 10 million dollars? What percentage of them are first-generation rich? How about 100 million?
$1 million isn't "rich" anymore.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Absolutely right, they are not the same cultures. One culture promotes hard work, intelligence, and success and the other 'culture', if you can call it that, promotes stupidity, crime and drugs. Hmm.....I wonder why one culture does so much better than the other on IQ tests. That argument is a cop out, if you choose to be a moron then don't complain when you do poorly on an intelligence test.
As I don't have the book in question (and even if I ordered it from Amazon it wouldn't get here before this discussion would get locked) I'll just ask you: Should I take it that the book defines "first generation rich" as "parents weren't millionaires but they may very well have been upper middle class with a few smart investments, $500k in the bank and an extended family with similar finances"? What I'm implying here is that there's a bit of difference between a "self-made man" who's from a family with a total yearly income of $25k, who's the first person in his/her family with a college education etc. and a "self-made man" from a family with a yearly income in excess of $300k who think it's only natural to pay for college for their children (and of course the mandatory "travel in europe for a few months before going to college", paid for by mommy and daddy).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I would have to agree that most millionaires make the money on their own. That being said, a look at the top ten in America shows that half of those people inherited their fortunes (the Waltons).
Gates, William H III
Buffett, Warren Edward
Allen, Paul Gardner
Walton, Helen R
Walton, S Robson
Walton, John T
Walton, Jim C
Walton, Alice L
Ellison, Lawrence Joseph
Ballmer, Steven Anthony
Detailed Forbes List
It is also interesting to note that the top two (Gates and Buffett) are pretty much double anyone even close to them.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I saw TFA yesterday (almost submitted it but submission is borked on my work browser). It answers the question "if you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"
It doesn't, however, answer the question "if you're so rich, why ain't you smart?"
Free Martian Whores!
I have to agree with you.
The Valedictorian of my graduating class was not the smartest person in our class, just the hardest working. I remember a conversation in which she admitted as such. She gave me a list of people that she believed to be smarter than herself, but that didn't apply themselves as much as she did.
A friend of mine was on that list and he was notorious for not turning in homework assignments, despite being capable of doing the work. She never missed a due date, did all the extra credit she could, and spent far more time studying than anyone else in our grade. That application was the difference between being in the top 20% of our class (as my buddy was) and the top 1%.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I recommend this: If you go out to pick up a girl, plan on the first dozen times you talk to a girl going horribly bad.
I never understood why guys do this with the mentality of picking a girl up. Make conversation with them about anything. You'll know in 5 minutes if your going to hit it off... But going up to them and saying "hey baby! come back to my place!" or something lame usually will get you the evil eye.
I think the hardest part is what to say first...
I suppose you could just have "Come here often?" or "having fun?" or "how's your evening ladies?"
And FFS, introduce yourself and your friends... It seems less creepy that way rather than trying to talk without names.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Me, I'd communicate to the woman as an equal human being that, hey, I like where this is going but I need to get to a job interview for a job I'd really like to land. "I'd like to resume this conversation when we can; Unfortunately I can't reschedule a job interview the same way."
Why? Because women aren't jobs, they're people. And I wouldn't want to spend my time forging a relationship with another person who doesn't understand that she's not a commodity I'm supposed to win, but a person with whom I'm hoping to share some nice experiences.
But that's just me.
Sorry - I liked the rest of your comment, I just balk at the ease with which people equate women with things or events rather than simply treating them as other people. Nevertheless, I appreciate the point you were making. (Although I'd also nitpick the idea that you can get enough sex. Some people can. Some people can also get enough wealth. Some people are also happy with limited amounts of power. Others can't get enough of any if not all of these.)
I know you're joking, but I didn't feel like responding to the troll. Two things:
1) A big part of the money thing is personality.
a) Some people (personality types) simply don't care about money. With me, for example, money is how I survive from day to day. More money is nice to have, but what really drives me is working on my projects, solving problems, etc. It doesn't even necessarily matter if I finish my projects. It's the pursuit of knowledge that matters to me.
b) Some personality types are more suited to more money-oriented careers, such as business or management. While I get along fine with people and could do those jobs, I generally have no interest in them and am just as happy (or happier) working alone, half inside a machine and covered in grease.
2) There are different forms of intelligence. Some people are naturally strong in math and/or sciences. Some people are more language or arts oriented. Still others are good at organizational skills and less so at academic subjects. I'm much more math and science oriented than the others, which drives me to somewhat less money-focused careers.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
Black people are different on the outside, why can't they be different on the inside, too?
Because what makes them different on the outside is such a mind-bogglingly infinitesimal fraction of the entire genetic code. It's simply not likely that there are any broad measures of mental capacity linked to it. About the only things closely linked are discrete details like larger gaps between the condyles in the knee, angle of the upper mandibular ridge, etc. Something as broadly affected as mental capacity is unlikely to have much correlation.
...and if they're different, why is it hard to believe that somebody with an agenda can make a test which shows that difference?
Because if no such differences have even been documented, it's highly unlikely that anyone has had the opportunity to go a step further and tailor a test that exploits them.
Intelligence is part heredity, and part random. Smart people tend to have smart kids, and sometimes even dumb people come up with the occasional poindexter. Skin color simply isn't ever going to be a predictor. Skin color is still highly correlated to poverty, though, and poverty is known to result in a poor learning environment. The difficulty with IQ tests is that they always presume some base level of literacy, and weight based on age. Subsequently, IQ tests are not accurate when literacy levels and ages are varied. That's whey we repeatedly get to hear about that fraud Marilyn vos Savant and her supposed IQ of 228... when the only IQ test she's taken that showed that was one at 10 years old. When they say that IQ measurements at the high end are somewhat inaccurate, they're not just whistling dixie. Any time you evaluate the outliers in any test population you're going to be reduced to pretty much wild-ass guessing, because the entire system is based on fixing 100 as the dead center.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Apparently you are poor, becuase most of the rich people I know are very intelligent. They earned their money (ie not "Old Money") legitimately (ie not "Celebrity Money") and are not connected with hollywood (ie not actors, directors or writters).
That is still anecdotal and it depends on what you mean by intelligent.
Often more than not, an person intelligent in one field may not be intelligent in others...
Like a wealthy day trader who specializes in short sales may not know how to fix their car and his mechanic doesn't understand terminology such as calls, puts, longs, and shorts.
Or a wealthy construction manager who runs his own business may be very intelligent in how to manage his employees and contracts but god help you if he has to figure out how to install an antivirus on his computer.
That said... I know some wealthy people who, while not stupid, did not earn their money through their intelligence. They were simply either a victim of circumstance or had rather wealthy relatives.
Or in some case only are wealthy because they were able to leverage their wealth to earn more wealth whereas had them been middle class or poor, would not have been able to do so.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Who cares about the "millionaires" - it's the "billionaires" who got it through inheritance that own most of the wealth in the U.S. I couldn't care less about the millionaires. How many of them - the multi-generationally wealthy - do you all know?
Many on this thread need to read a book on the subject or something, cause there are a lot of myths here.
Try "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell and see what really adds up to success. It isn't almost anything that the people on this thread have been shouting, that's for damn sure.
http://www.unfocus.com/
"Perhaps the perceived "stupidity" of people with high IQs is simply the manifestation of their inability to communicate effectively with 'little brains'".
Reminds me of a line from the doctor in Idiocracy:
"Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're fucked up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded."
The point of the thought experiment isn't realism. It's priorities. If you prefer, imagine a choice between two doors: behind door A is the job of your dreams, behind door B is the woman of your dreams. There isn't a right answer.
Your point about "enough" is well taken. Being able to get "enough" of something is probably a sign of psychological health. But there are only 24 hours in a day; there's no limit to how much money you can accrue on a balance sheet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Which is the cart, and which is the horse? Being dumb, or being poor?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
has at one point been confronted with a brilliant idiot. The kind of guy who wants to spend 2 weeks to make all dialog boxes come up 1/5 of a second faster, by coding his own dialog boxes, from scratch, which would require that everyone use his, and only his dialog boxes, and that the existing 2000 or so dialogs be converted.
Not that he couldn't code it, but... (ahem).
You know him. You've dealt with him. He is everywhere.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
What it takes to become rich is not some sort of global all-around, jack-of-all-trades smartness; it's expertise in a single area.
That's not enough to get rich. No matter how smart or talented you are, you need lots of luck. Had my uncle not been lucky enough to be born intelliget with a lot of creativity, had he not been lucky enough to have been born with excellent eye-hand coordination (it runs in the family, like the intelligence does), and had he not been lucky enough to have his ship bombed (WWII), and lucky enough to be injured yet survive, and had he not been lucky enough to be in the same hospital with his future business partner, who was a born salesman who had just lost a leg, it's doubtful he would have ever gotten rich.
Those commercials for Donald Trump's "How to get rich" book crack me up. The man was born into wealth, what would he know about getting rich?
Free Martian Whores!
That, or US voters. How can such a highly educated, technologically advanced citizenry lose all sense when it steps into the voting booth?
I agree. Why else would they elect democrats constantly, who basically piss the budget down the drain and do no good?
Why, there you have your answer, GP. A lack of long term memory. How lucky for the politicians that the populace always forgets how badly their party screwed everybody over last time, and come election time are always convinced the non-incumbent party will fix everything. It's like we're all just suffering from an undiagnosed but widespread Stockholm Syndrome.
That is because as I've said for years there is a difference between "book smarts" and "street smarts". I have known guys with a half dozen degrees after their names that were dumb as a stump when it came to common sense, and I've known guys that dropped out of HS that could run rings around somebody with a degree. It all comes down to having that right combo of book AND street smarts.
As you said the 419s prove that having too much of one and not enough of the other is just as bad as being a total dumbass, probably worse, as the "book smart" think that their book smarts will get them through any situation, which of course they don't.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
While I think that the argument that black people are intrinsically dumber than the rest of us is silly, I should point out that your counter-argument is just as silly.
There was an article recently describing the development of a "smart(er) rat" by the change of a single gene. Which pretty much refutes the notion that it requires much larger genetic changes to "think different" than to "look different".
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Some jokers modded you 5 so I actually read your long rambling post, going here and going there and ending up nowhere.
Was the point that you shouldn't post on slashdot after a liquid lunch?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Depends entirely on your view of morality.
The puritans (I'm from MA so they come first to mind) believed in predestination and the favor of God. Essentially God is so powerful that he knows exactly what kind of person you are and whether you are destined for heaven or hell at birth. As a result those that are successful are so because they have the favor of God. He is allowing them to be successful because they are Good and destined for Heaven. Conversely, those who are poor and destitute are born sinners and are being punished by God for their own moral inadequacies.
Now, I don't ascribe to that world view and don't know any major religion that encourages it anymore, but it is illustrative. Ultimately, all morality is subjective. Many still believe that hard work is character building, and I'm a firm believer that you appreciate something less if it is given to you as opposed to you earning it. Now, that doesn't excuse the failure of many to help those incapable of helping themselves, but it is a judgement call in many cases to decide whether the needy person in front of you is there because of genuine need or because they simply don't want it enough.
I'm not trying to be combative, but I'd like to know your take on the philanthropy of the Gates Foundation. On one hand, they are probably the single largest philanthropic organization around and AFAIK, the money is coming exclusively from Bill and Melinda. OTOH, Bill is STILL the richest man in the world by a hefty margin, so he could definitely afford to give more than he already has. Where do you draw the line and say that "This person has done their fare share, but that person still needs to give more"?
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Heh! Reminds me of a conversation I had with a guy in college. I always thought this was some kind of ladies man and must have been a smooth talker as he was rather a short guy, and nothing special in the looks department (or so I thought anyway) yet he always picked up at the bar, and had a different girl any night he wanted.
One day he set me straight as to what his Modus operandi was. Basically you need to have patience and be able to handle rejection well. If he wanted to get laid that night, he would just chat up any girl he felt like, the usual BS type of stuff and then ask her to go home with him. The key is he would never spend more then 10min on any one girl. He said if he couldn't convince her to go with him in 10min the odds that she would after that point were infinitesimal and to abandon her and just move on the the next. He said it might take a few tries, and didn't always work, but in the end he would generally find someone willing.
Anyway you can debate if this is ethical, healthy, or whatever, but he bottom line is that it worked.
If you prefer, imagine a choice between two doors: behind door A is the job of your dreams, behind door B is the woman of your dreams. There isn't a right answer.
The woman in my dreams is always rich ... therefore no need to even consider door A.
Dating advice on /. ? What IS the world coming to?
Only because you (we) set up "smartness" as something vague and unmeasurable... :-/
The correlation between IQ and income is highly non-traditional (i.e. it's not bivariate normal-distributed, so it requires a more in-depth description than one correlation coefficient; for example, a so-called "copula"). To quote your link: "Some researchers claim that `in economic terms it appears that the IQ score measures something with decreasing marginal value. It is important to have enough of it, but having lots and lots does not buy you that much.'" This contradicts what is usually meant by correlation.
As Warren Buffett said, to get rich all you need IQ-wise is to be about 2 sigmas above the mean (and keep in mind, Mr. Buffett probably has a fairly august standard for "rich"; by commoner-standards, probably 1-1.5 sigmas is enough). The rest comes from personality, &c.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
That is a common argument... but just because a test is not "culture free" doesn't mean it's worthless. If we measure the IQ of the son of an immigrant Kalahari bushman and it's, say, 79, that is an important measure despite being "ethnocentric" (and quite frankly not everything that is specific to one culture is bad). It is still useful information when you want to know things like how well the boy will do in an American school system.
Does it mean he's stupid? Not at all... A skill set valued in the desert (let's say, fast reaction time and a concrete approach to problem solving) is simply undervalued in the school system here. Should we redefine the tests to suit his cultural background, where in all likelihood he will score higher, just to assuage whatever bad feelings we have? I think that would be pointless--whereas knowing that the child is NOT using those skills that we value in our society, those skills that tend to go along with good grades and a good job, is a useful thing indeed.
So yeah, if the ultimate goal of IQ tests is to put value judgments on people you're absolutely right. It is not fair to label the kid. But if the goal is to devise teaching interventions to help him succeed in our schools and in our culture it is kind of nice to be able to see where he is deviating from the norm.
If you can't live on $120k/year then you are/were financially irresponsible. Don't worry though, most Americans seem to be the same way these days.
My wife and I are living on less than a third of that and raising a child. I could probably pay off most of my debt in a 2 years if I had your salary and continued living with the budget I have now.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Either they inherit their parents' genes (and in this case intelligence or whatever you want to call it) or they don't. You can't have it both ways, buddy.
I don't find it too far fetched to think that a certain sub-set of a population for a period of time had a different evolutionary path than another sub-set. And if this evolutionary path was somehow caused or forced by their skin colour, then voila you've just explained the whole thing.
Too bad anyone saying anything along these lines is quickly labeled racist. Not once in this post have I said that a certain race of people is dumber or has less intelligence. And if you think it does, then you've got some seriously media-force-fed bias in your eyes.
Camping on quad since 1996.
It's a simple fact (at least in the United States) that MOST millionaires are NOT millionaires through inheritance.
That's a nice theory. Let's try applying facts to it. This obviously isn't representative of all millionaries, but if your theory is correct it should have *more* "earners" than an average sample, as these are the top folk:
America's top 20 Richest people:
That's 9 of the top 20 who inherited fortunes. A bare minority, I'll grant you, but not really much to hang your rhetorical hat on. Someone looking over this could be forgiven for thinking that the only way to get that kind of money in America is to either strike it rich in computers somehow, invest in those who do, or inherit it.
Below this level, I'd expect to see far more inheritance babies, as the very top is where the fortunes should still be fresh and undiluted. If the balance comes out with a majority "earned", I'd be suprised.
There was something that was vitally different from your experience to your brothers: you had your brother as a sibling, and your brother had you as a sibling.
Depending on the family dynamics involved, siblings can often take very opposite interests to each other, either to distinguish themselves from each other or in response to parents who, themselves, characterize their children differently. Birth order also has an effect (oldest children and only children tend to perform better in IQ tests, partially because they have more uninterrupted adult attention during crucial developmental years. This means, of course, that cultures and social groups that tend to smaller family sizes will show a higher average IQ than those with larger ones.)
It also depends where you live. 120k in Montana will get you a lot further than 120k in New York.
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
The other answer is just to not care enough about failure. Just talk to the girl about whatever you want to talk about and have no other goal or agenda. There will be plenty of other girls to talk to later, and eventually you will be more relaxed about the situation when you think it matters.
How can a 'smart' person act foolishly?
Because being smart doesn't make you wise.
You just got troll'd!
If it floats, flies, or f***s, rent it.
Actually, you would be surprised at how certain things go. Personally, I don't think it is WHAT you say, so much as the DELIVERY of the statement.
I will qualify and say that I hang out in a lot of rave/techno clubs, but let me tell you this little story. One night me and a mate were working back late, and to pass the time, we were coming up with the lamest, corniest and all round worst pickup lines we could think of. One of the ones Dave said made me laugh so much, I decided to get it printed on a t-shirt. I wore this t-shirt out clubbing, and on the first night out was utterly AMAZED at how many girls saw it, laughed, then came up and struck up a conversation. The worst line delivered correctly can still be an awesome icebreaker.
Oh, the shirt slogan you ask?
Nice shoes...
Wanna fuck?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
From a very smart person, I give you Why Nerds are Unpopular. Short version: because it's unimportant. Smart people are - surprise! - smart enough to figure out what is really important, and it's not social skills or any of the other humdrum that makes up everyday life. Also very succinctly and eloquently paraphrased in this comment.
Nathan's blog
Or: you tend to inherit intelligence from your parents, and they inherited intelligence from their parents, and so on.
Or: if your parents were intelligent, then you are likely to pass intelligence onto your kids.
And some people will do just fine while spending significantly less time on schoolwork than others. I probably spent less than an hour a week doing homework/reading for high school.
It makes people feel better to believe this is nonsense, but there is evidence that certain races do have different abilities. It is a result of evolution.