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Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

> wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent

Not "more intelligent", just "unusual in some way". People can be wealthier than average for all sorts of reasons unrelated to intelligence (as defined by IQ). Here's a sampling of them:

Being social and good at sales. Most successful real estate agents I've met don't strike me as particularly brilliant.

Working a boring job, living modestly, and investing in index funds for 20 years.

Winning the lottery (either literally, or by accidentally buying something cheaply that turned out to be worth a lot)

Marrying rich and divorcing.

Inheriting wealth.

Being a successful athlete or entertainer.

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A lot of those correlate with intelligence and “grit.”

Being good at selling to people absolutely requires intelligence. So do many entertainment fields, and athletic achievement more than you might expect.

Investing consistently in an index fund over 20 years requires a bit of intelligence and a lot of grit.

I defined intelligence up-front as IQ points. IQ isn't perfect but it's the best single measure of raw cognitive ability we have.

Grit is basically conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is not correlated to intelligence. [1] This is why the stereotype of the dim but methodical plodder exists.

Sales ability is obviously a thing, since there are successful and unsuccessful people. But being able to connect with people (EQ) is crucial to be good at sales. Likeable people make more sales than unlikeable people. Being likeable is orthogonal to IQ.

I'm not denigrating successful entertainers' and athletes' cognitive abilities. They are brilliant in their fields. That's not the necessarily same thing as IQ. I'd expect the IQ distribution among that population be the same as the general population. That means some of them are high-IQ individuals in addition to being world-class singers or swimmers or actors, but most are average IQ.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10416...

> and athletic achievement more than you might expect.

Yeah, it flies in the face of Hollywood's jock/nerd dichotomy, but in my experience there's an awful lot of correlation between honors students and athletic participation. I think the root of it might be good genetics and early life nutrition contributing heavily to both.

Intelligence correlates highly with not having anti-social behaviors.

So a lot of the time, it's not "being smart" that carries you to wealth, its avoiding the "disastrously stupid things" that stops you from being poor.

> Intelligence correlates highly with not having anti-social behaviors.

If we're talking about IQ, then there isn't strong evidence for this.

Looking at all the horrible and macabre weapons of warfare, destruction, and death that humans have created, I find it hard to believe those instruments were imagined, engineered, and developed by unintelligent individuals.

They weren't. Intelligent people can be anti-social too, and usually with terrifying large scale outcomes.

But thankfully, most crime in the aggregate is done by unintelligent people.

If a child shows some sort of exceptional proclivity for academics, then I strongly believe there needs to be an examination for empathy and pro-social behaviors prior to being enrolled in some sort of advanced program.

> most crime in the aggregate is done by unintelligent people.

That is a tough one. For I believe there is more to reality than what data can currently capture. While I do agree that most violent crime is carried out by unintelligent people, there is an untold amount of crimes being committed by individuals that are average to beyond intelligent. So, I would argue the unintelligent ones get caught more frequently and that skews the perception that they commit more crime.

> If a child shows some sort of exceptional proclivity for academics, then I strongly believe there needs to be an examination for empathy and pro-social behaviors prior to being enrolled in some sort of advanced program.

Luckily that is no longer needed, as in capitalism such a person can provide good value to society just via greed. He shouldn't be a leader, but a greedy engineer isn't an issue.

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