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bryanh

Wealth does not necessarily correlate with intelligence.

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Sure it does: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/10/12/the-correlat...

Causation is a bit trickier to show, though.

Yes. "Smart people make more money but don’t end up any wealthier" is the more accurate statement

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/smart-doesnt-...

Wealth accumulation roughly follows the process of "1. Earn money 2. Don't spend it" - It doesn't strain credulity that IQ might be correlated with the former, but not the latter.

I'm curious as to the effect on quality of life - measuring wealth in dollars is easier, but a pretty imprecise measure of the overall effect on someone's life of a few IQ points.

I'm even more curious as to the effects on happiness...

Edit: Not much, apparently: http://www.quora.com/Happiness/Is-it-true-that-less-intellig...

And intelligence does not necessarily correlate to good decision making (or business acumen).

And "business acumen" has nothing to do with good decision making.

Isn't that what business acumen is? The ability to make good business decisions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_acumen

Wealth does correlate with intelligence:

http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-covariance-between-cognitiv...

The phrase "does not necessarily correlate" needs some unpacking. I think anyone would agree that for N=2 that's true, but for higher numbers it would indicate sample error.

From your own link: "Since the statistical results are not distinguishable from zero, this suggests IQ test scores and net worth are not connected." (em. added)

That's a common misinterpretation of the results of statistical tests. You can never conclude from that type of test that two things are not correlated, you can only conclude that the data you have does not suggest a correlation ("fail to reject the null hypothesis").

I'd be willing to bet that self-made wealth from non-politicians correlates strongly with intelligence.

Also perseverance and luck.

Intelligence already likely correlates well with being a stubborn bastard. It helps with the part where you obsessively study topics everyone else thinks are too boring or inaccessible.

Most of the most intelligent people I know are actually pretty bad at monetizing that, though, in part precisely because they're way too distracted by the constant drive to learn new things (rather than picking a few and building a solid market niche), and in part because many seem more interested in the mental challenge of understanding something than the actual profits from monetizing that understanding.

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