Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

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You're making several very large assumptions.

1) That you have to trade your health. I wonder if lawyers at Biglaw live longer than the bottom 75% of income earners. My opinion is that they very likely do.

2) Smart isn't applicable to the context you set up. It's dependent on what you want out of life, these are personal life choices. If I prioritize money over life expectancy, and I get rich but die at 63 years of age (due to the work lifestyle I undertook to get rich), that was my subjective choice - smart doesn't enter into it.

3) Most people with careers trade their youth for work to some substantial degree. The exceptions are extremely few, and extremely far between. Just working 35 to 60 hours per week, from the age of 20 to 67 (the soon to be social security retirement age), is heavily trading your youth for work.

1) You very much do in some jobs. You can't work 70 or 80 hours every week for long stretches and maintain your physical and mental well being. People really do that, and the ones that can maintain the pace for a few years make boatloads of money. A guy I knew like that was able to afford the best medical care when he had his first heart attack at 43. He may in fact live longer than the bottom 75% of income earners. I doubt it.

2) The article makes the assumption that because wealth doesn't correlate to IQ very strongly it must mean IQ doesn't help you become rich. My point is that doesn't necessarily follow and it may be that smart does enter into it - maybe nearly every smart person could get rich and decides there are better ways to live.

3) There's trading your youth and then there's trading your youth. I would say a guy who works 40 hours a week and has other interests does a lot less of it than a guy who works 60-70 hours a week and does nothing else.

Your point 2) is not correct, I think. The article does not really say that: it says that high IQ is one of the drivers of wealth, but it is not a sufficient condition to determine wealth, because other factors are at play in a meaningful way.

Yes, the article says that, but offers no evidence.

There is a difference between healthiness and life expectancy.

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