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Comment by kyleschiller | Hacker News Reader

In the original student, Karen Arnold went to great lengths to highlight this counter-intuitive phenomenon as a gendered issue [0] in which women, who tended to get better grades then men [0], would still end up less successful. It's seriously regrettable that her point got lost in this rehashing.

On a side note, I don't have the data, but would expect a similar effect with Asian-Americans, who tend to excel academically, but through socialization and institutional barriers, may fail to hit the "highest levels of success metrics" mentioned in this video. [1]

[0] https://archives.library.illinois.edu/erec/University%20Arch... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2016/01/20/how-asian-...

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I would say that having high grades has no correlation with business success. The required traits and skills for the two things are vastly different. (Think Tesla vs Edison, and Wozniak vs Jobs).

Sure, if you measure it across the entire population, it might appear that there's some correlation between academic success and being a millionaire, but if you measure it within the people who are already smart enough to get into universities, the correlation is probably non-existent, or might even be negative.

Why anyone confuses what it takes for academic success with what it takes for financial success baffles me. It's like there's One True system for success and it requires good grades.

I know very wealthy guys (real estate investors) who can't log into their home wifi. They're just good with people, and can do basic math.

Hell, I'm a high school dropout and I billed my clients over $300k last year.

> It's like there's One True system for success and it requires good grades.

There is one thing that is required for success and it can be measured: IQ. If you don't have enough of it, you will struggle with a lot of things.

But having it alone doesn't tell you what kind of field you can succeed in.

I bet the wealthy real estate investors do have IQs that are well above average. (Not knowing how to use certain technologies is not a good indicator of IQ).

IQ is a very narrow measure of intelligence.

Grades aren't a useful measure of IQ.

> I would say that having high grades has no correlation with business success.

Maybe it should. The fact that so many people is business successful while being uninformed and mostly incompetent is a problem. The current USA's president is a really good example on this. A general immoral behavior, and lack of knowledge allows him to accumulate wealth. And that's bad for a society, as it means that it is rewarding the wrong behaviors.

In a lot smaller scale I have seen this make business fail. In one company sales people were getting money on every sale, so they had their long time customers (company customers really) and had to do nothing to keep earning a big salary. The company changed this policy to bigger bonuses but just associated with new customers. This was a game changer. If you reward the correct behavior, you get it.

While we reward lobby creation, abuse of the legal system, etc. that's what makes rich people and that's what we get.

"end up less successful"

If you mean end up less successful at being old millionaires with big houses and flashy cars, that's true. Is it important for males and females to become that in equal numbers? Do we need old millionaires driving around with flashy cars and big houses at all?

What about parents raising children who are upright, have morals, and contribute to wellbeing of society? Are they less successful?

Are you suggesting that there isn't something fundamentally inequitable about large segments of society having a harder time obtaining material wealth?

I agree with what I assume is your position that material wealth shouldn't be the sole metric of success, but I also think the fact that women and minorities struggle relative to white men to obtain material wealth is a problem we should try to solve. Those positions are not contradictory.

If fewer people accumulate material wealth, can you conclude that they had a harder time doing it? I mean, I'm not ruling it out, but it also seems plausible the group wasn't trying to do that as much.

Is that what we are? Biological-chemical constructions who accumulate metrics of successes? Will people become more fulfilled in their lives because we give them all material wealth?

Why not have a world where people don't think of excessive material wealth as a metric of success at all, where people care about what fulfils their own and other's lives? In this world people don't accumulate wealth for the sake of accumulating it in the first place, and the distribution of wealth will also be more equal.

Your position would work directly against this vision, as an example.

You're talking about changing human behavior, across the entire species. And if that's the end goal, there are many more critical issues to resolve than (material) wealth judgement.

It seems to me that you are trying to achieve equality of outcome, or you assume that all people are fundamentally the same so that any disparity in outcome must be a result of a fundamental inequality in society.

One of the GP comments mentions Asians. I don't think Asians in North America (or anywhere else for that matter) have a hard time obtaining enough material wealth to live comfortable lives and raise families.

Meric (to whom you're replying) does have a point -- if you can effectively bar women from economic activity they're much more likely to stay home or do community and volunteer work. There are certain advantages to forcing segments of society to do work that is poorly paid or not respected, especially if you can get them to do it for free. Exploitation of women and minorities has been phenomenally successful in history exactly because you can cheaply get the best of these particular demographic groups doing jobs they wouldn't do if they had more opportunity.

It is obvious that this is fundamentally inequitable, but equity isn't everyone's highest value.

If you do not respect work that don't bring money, like parenting, spending time with children, preparing a family gathering, that's your prerogative. Don't project your disdain for these activities on me.

You define traditionally feminine activities as disrespected, poorly paid, cheap, and then put traditionally masculine activities on a pedestal by calling it a metric of success then tell everyone who is doing the former they are prevented from doing the latter. Who is creating the inequity here?

And is equal material wealth your highest value? What about love?

And I am unequivocally against barring women or minorities from economic activity. Just in case, you thought I am.

Big houses and flashy cars are usually a sign of debt, not wealth.

> Do we need old millionaires driving around with flashy cars and big houses at all?

> What about parents raising children who are upright, have morals, and contribute to wellbeing of society?

I've met plenty of very successful, wealthy people that raise great kids. It's none of my business or anyone else's how these people spend their money but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume "old" means "old money" which means "never worked a day to get wealthy". In which case, yes, I think they often can raise garbage kids, but I'm unsure how one could go about "fixing" that.

I don't think material wealth is worthy enough as a metric of success for society to care about giving equal access to it to everyone - mere sufficient access ought to be enough, and focus on what's more important than material wealth, of which good parenting is one example. Which is a more pressing problem: the top paid individuals of group X earns less than the top paid individuals of group Y, or the fact that so many in society are focused on the wrong things when they think about what makes them content and happy?

> Which is a more pressing problem: the top paid individuals of group X earns less than the top paid individuals of group Y, or the fact that so many in society are focused on the wrong things when they think about what makes them content and happy?

Great question! I'll risk to assert the latter simply because problem 1 would fix itself in my mind. There were times when no American went without...

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