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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

I don’t really understand the point of the article. It seems to be challenging an assumption that being “smart” has something to do with being financially successful. But why would we start with that assumption? Why would we conflate being “intelligent” with being good at making money?

To me, this seems as preposterous as asking “if you’re so smart, why are you so bad at playing the violin, or why aren’t you a Hollywood movie star, or why can’t you run a 4 minute mile, or why don’t you have a million Twitter followers?”

Even if we make the questionable assumption that the very concept of general intelligence (something like what an IQ test purports to show) is sensible, why would we assume that it correlates positively with success in any conceivable discipline?

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Nah it just means too many people think they are "smart" while not applying their supposed edge to get any practical thing done better.

Money is just one example. The baseline is "if you are so smart why how come you don't have a better life", this can be more money, a better job, more time for your children, a hotter wife for some.

If you don't like the materialistic versions, My personal version of it is "if you are so smart why are you complaining so much instead of fixing your problems"..

love your personal version

The article doesn't really use a strict equality between being "intelligent" and being good at making money. It's more an implication, that being good at making money implies being probably something like "intelligent".

Now having this established, your examples of playing the violin and Hollywood stars doesn't make any sense. They are reading the relation backwards. The implication holds the other way round.

The implication you are pointing at still an assumption.

If we can't assume that Hollywood stars or concert violinists are intelligent (even if not all intelligent people can be those things), then why would it naturally be so with financially successful people?

The examples still make sense under the premise that the assumption is off.

Sure, it's an assumption.

But saying that all concert violinists are intelligent is something different than saying that everybody, who is intelligent, is a concert violinist.

Speaking only for myself, I strongly held the idea that being "smart" was the most important thing. It's only in the last 5 years that I've really come to regret that view. (For context I'm in my late 30's) Ideas are cheap, getting things done is valuable.

I remember the thought I had when I did this same belief-flip: ideas alone aren't worth the paper they're written on.

I thought there was a correlation between intelligence and income?

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