As someone who comes from a family that has a few successful traditional businesses, luck and who you know plays a big part of your success.
It's hard for people who haven't been in business to understand. They have been told that a great product at a fair price with fantastic customer service is what it takes. While that plays a role it is does not even amount to 50% of the formula.
I'd expect that there are a number of factors that help improve your odds, and that being "smart" will be one of them. But so would being born into a wealthy family, or just bing born in a developed country, and be of good health, and any numbers of other factors.
As well as a huge amount of chance - e.g. my first company got funded because one of my co-founders ran into a guy in a bar that happened to be in the country for a week or two. Maybe we'd have found other funding if that didn't happen. Maybe not. We'll never know.
But at what cost? Certainly you could work at a Biglaw firm in NYC (or whatever) and get rich if you're willing to trade your youth and your health. But is that smart?
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.
The person working at a concreting factory for 60 hours a week to try and save is in the exact same position.
My biggest concern isn't that you can work away your youth and health like that, it's that a lot of people of my generation have no idea that's what they are doing and were gently coerced from a young age to imagine the house/car/work triad as the three ticks of success in life.
I think you will find that, in general, it does not. Often it actually detracts from your ability to pursue other goals. People think, "I need money" to do X. They put off X until they "have money". All along the way they intend to do X, but the prerequisite of getting money consumes their time and energy. The funny thing about money is that it's a bit like computer memory. No matter how much you have, you can always find use for more. I'm not going to tell you that nobody needs more than $640, but there is a point at which you have "enough money" and "enough" is usually a lot less than people imagine. Probably you have "enough money" to start now. In that way money is not a short cut -- it's a long cut.
I think for a lot of people, they don't want to compromise. So if you are thinking "I need X so I can live in the wilderness and write books without having to worry about a job", then they put off writing books until they are rich. And by the time it happens (if it ever does -- which is rare), they find that they don't like writing books, and their spouse, who was attracted to them because they are rich, refuses to live in the wilderness.
Compromise is the true short cut. It allows you to start now, with less resources than you would like. It then allows you to build your life so that the thing you wanted is part of it. Even if you need a lot of money to achieve your ultimate goal, remember that it needn't be your money that you spend.
P.S. Even if your dream is to sit on the beach every day and get drunk, I assure you that this is very common amongst the poor ;-)
For most of my twenties, I lived in Hawaii for some years pursuing exactly this agenda. I was very poor, but by the beard of Zeus I had a mighty fine time.
I see money as freedom. My ultimate goal is to save enough so that I don't have to work. Eventually, that will be the case, hopefully not on my deathbed.
If the majority of the population thought that way, we'd have an economic collapse though, so forget what I said.
Not having to work meaning you will stop working or not having to work giving you freedom to stop but you most likely will not? If the former, what is the thing you will do that you cannot start doing today? I am not rich (in the US sense) and my goals when I was young were to not leave anything until 'pension' (as that is kind of what you decribe but probably at a younger age than typical) so I set up everything so I could do all I want (and those things are modest anyway) before I turn 50. By 42 I did mostly all of them without being rich and while working at the same time (which is also a hobby) and while developing other hobbies and side projects.
But I enjoy work. I'm happy that I'm well compensated for the work I do, but even without that I fundamentally enjoy my work.
In fact work is preferable to how I spend a lot of my free time. Would I like to work more flexible hours and get paid the same to work 30 hours instead of 37.5 a week then sure, but otherwise what would money be buying freedom from?
I suppose owning a house out-right would be freedom from worrying about security of housing, and having a large cash reserve in a few currencies would be security from political instability.
Perhaps that I only have to worry about these "big" things means I already qualify as rich from my existing income, but "not working" is definitely not a goal I align to (yet).
Holding cash on purpose is a pretty terrible idea in just about every political environment. Nobody who's rich actually does this, unless is specifically earmarked for an upcoming purchase or an emergency fund. You're better off with stocks and metals.
There's enough of compound effect to make your cash worth a lot less by the time you retire. E.g. here in Norway you'd lose 50% value of your savings over 20 year period.
Cash doesn't grow and is generally devalued through inflation.
A diverse portfolio is better protected against inflation, cash ought to make up some of a diverse portfolio but not a large proportion of it. Bonds are a better way of having cash-denominated assets since they still have returns while not being particularly risky (in the general case).
Cash is still useful however because it is easy to access quickly without losing value to having to sell quickly and doesn't incur fees.
I enjoy work as well. Eventually you will work at a job that was great, but through acquisition or whatever, it turns terrible and you will feel trapped because it pays well but the people you work for are less than ideal for many reasons.
Most of the work we have to do is not life changing or world changing, or even makes the world a slightly better place for anyone other than the ownership.
One day you might want to fully explore a new technology or framework, but your current work environment isn't interested and you aren't well versed enough, or there aren't any jobs in your area related to that technology. Spending time after work is an option, but when you get older and have a family, the harder that is.
To me money is freedom to not have to work, or be able to work on what I want to work on, explore what I want to explore, etc.
A friend of mine told me the same thing. He considers money as freedom, and he will retire next year at the age of 42. I agree that money is freedom, but for the last 15 years or so he worked his ass off getting up at 5am in the morning working for other people. 15 years of your most productive time as an adult is a lot, and there is something to be said for just doing what you want to do during that time instead of earning money for afterwards.
I don't believe economic collapse will yield a better society. If we can get from the consumeristic society we have now to a much less consumeristic one without the economic collapse, perhaps.
this so much. I never cared about aquiring wealth, i want to be able to enjoy most of my life which is usually a different path than the one that brings in most money.
I think that smart or smarts and your definition of wealthy play into it; smart I find being able to do what you set out to do all the time without money holding you back. For some people that means you need to be rich for others (like me) it does not.
Could be the case yeah. For me wealth means just to have enough so i dont have to care. Which IMO is rather easy as software engineer in switzerland, or digital nomad in south east asia.
Money is just a trading medium. There are an awful lot of things that it can be traded for so there's an awful lot of people with different wants and values where "acquire money" is a necessary step. Those things can then make other things, that money couldn't buy directly, easier.
This is a common misconception. Most (balance sheet, not "appear to be") rich people are self made, and first generation rich. Kids of rich parents tend to just blow their inheritance away quickly.
This is a common misconception. Most of the self-made / "first generation" rich came from households that weren't poor to begin with. Bill Gates, for example, had a trust fund from his grandfather that gave him a cushion in case he failed. That gave some freedom for him to take calculated risks.
What you find is that you need the freedom to be able to take a risk and fail. If you come from a household living paycheck to paycheck and just barely scraping by, you start off with a very risk averse mentality and never really escape it. When the big opportunity shows up, if you were risk averse your entire life it is unlikely that you will take the shot.
William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III.[1]
However:
Several writers claim that Maxwell set up a million-dollar trust fund for Gates. A 1993 biographer who interviewed both Gates and his parents (among other sources) found no evidence of this and dismissed it as one of the "fictions" surrounding Gates's fortune. Gates denied the trust fund story in a 1994 interview and indirectly in his 1995 book The Road Ahead.[2]
So I'm inclined to think it's not true, although it does seem a fairly wide-spread story.
But at the same time, Bill Gates did come from a rich family, so he wasn't going to starve if Microsoft didn't work out.
Is the existence of a trust fund actually relevant for the story? Whether there was one or not, as you already said, Gates didn't have to fear failure. I doubt the family would have let him live in poverty on the street if he had failed. I don't think it changes the narrative. But it's bad that - if you are right - the wrong story is out there because it gives a convenient escape to get sidetracked and be able to ignore the actual message.
No single guy with no family to support has to fear failure though. It only becomes a fear once you have a wife and children to support - but that's why it's generally accepted that you first get financial stability before starting a family. Some people choose differently as people are always free to make terrible life choices - but they need to face the consequences then.
Even someone with a $1mil trust fund can make terrible enough choices to end up homeless.
He discussed the whole plan with his family, and they agreed on it. Secondly, he studied in Harvard, so his family had at least decent amount of money by default.
And then, the thing is that family who was struggling the whole time, won't agree on dropping the best university with wonderful perspectives for some kind of crazy (at the moment it was very "crazy").
People are not "just risky" by default, they are influenced heavily by their life, and as someone mentioned here already, a lot of rich guys came from pretty decent living families, who can afford to fallback if something. For instance, a lot of world travellers, who try to live differently, actually have some passive income, property of just loads of cash, just in case something will go wrong.
No, only about 10% of billionaires are self made, as in not having inherited wealth or come from wealthy families. And even this is a record high up from a more typical 3%. (and remarkably, these are numbers that forbes feels excited about)
The article explains that they rank the level of "self-made-ness" out of 10, with 10 being from a poor family with no advantages. Then it says " A total of 34 billionaires, or 8.5%, scored as 10s".
There is a good correlation between the wealth of the parent and the wealth of the children in many countries, including the US.
In economics this is called "social mobility" and it is measured to analyze the success of economic and social policies, whereby, generally, it is considered that having a high social mobility index is a desirable thing in a country. That's because a country with high social mobility is a country where the American dream is happening more often...
Social mobility works both ways: in a country with high social mobility, it is more likely that a child will be much poorer, or much richer than the parents.
I have to point out that this question functions as a classical reference to the life of Thales (born 624 BC) - touted as the first philosopher. In the apocryphal story, he proved he could be wealthy if he wanted to and- according to one version - grew rich by predicting that the olive harvest would be good and investing accordingly. Having information others do not has always thus ruled the markets :)
Similarly, philosophy grads today tend to have higher lifetime earnings than other humanities majors.
(Though I think it's because the degree eventually confers the wisdom that an advanced degree in a different, marketable field would be a good idea. That's how it worked for me anyway.)
I'm probably decently smart, but I'm not rich at all. In fact I'm quite poor by most people's standards.
I'm also really happy and work fewer hours per week than anyone I know.
If there's one thing I worry about it's that I should be trying to be rich because I probably have the means to make that happen. I might be making 200k/yr if I worked full time. I might be able to start a successful company if I put my mind to it. I've never been able to convince myself that it's worth it.
Money just doesn't seem that useful to me. I don't need a car, I'd actually prefer a smaller studio for less money if I could find one. My bills add up to maybe $1400/month. It's trivial to make that much money. I have a fulfilling part time job which I could sleep through and still cover my expenses. Every dollar I earn writing software is a bonus. It constantly surprises me how much money my peers are capable of spending.
Fixing things is also really fun. I have $300 dollar headphones, they cost me $0 because I pulled them out of the trash and spent a couple hours overhauling them. The biggest material source of joy in my life is a $280 bicycle, my laptop cost the same, both off craigslist. Going out for a night on the town can cost hundreds of dollars, if I want to indulge in a vice I can buy enough weed to last me 3 months for the same amount of money. I'm always free to spend time with friends doing cool things.
The skills I have that I use to earn money are all learned from spending free time messing around doing small projects just for the hell of it. I wouldn't have these skills if I didn't have so much free time to explore whatever strikes my fancy.
It really seems like the point at which working harder to earn money hits diminishing returns comes much much earlier that most people think.
I wanted kids. I believe your statement is still correct. In my case I subjected myself to prison because of biology ruling over my logical processing unit. Humanity goes on as a result of that, I am quite sure of it. :)
I get that, but my friends are starting to have kids and I'm rather looking forward to being their crazy uncle and teaching them how to solder and take things apart etc. I love kids, I just don't want to be the one primarily responsible for them
I cannot fault you. Most days I wonder why I decided to have kids. I realize that I didn't decide it in any sort of logical manner that implies normal decision-making. If I went purely on logic and rational thought, I certainly wouldn't have done it. Alas, that wasn't in the cards. I wouldn't take it back, but I tell everyone who is on the fence about having kids to very strongly reconsider if they want to go through with it.
On its face, it's an incredibly dumb choice. But biology wins out, sometimes..
It depends how big the field you have to plow is. Having many kids helps in keeping and maintaining the field then using it to grow food (for you and your free plowering kids).
I don't really know about your situation and if you are actually doing it now. But based on experience, people who get married usually dismiss friendship with singles and instead look for friendships with people who have families/kids.
You certain thats not bi-directional, or more likely - the other way around? As a single person who can go do fun things at the drop of the hat without having to get permission from someone else, or set up a babysitter, or any other number of roadblocks, trying to set up an outing with married with kids crowd is incredibly irritating, time consuming and often fruitless.
A lot of this is simple scheduling pattern differences.
As an example, my no-kids friends typically schedule things like dinner parties starting at 8:30pm or so. The ones with kids would aim for 5:30 or 6 instead.
Well... in order for you to wonder at how "biology ruled over your logical processing unit" a lot of people had to sacrifice their freedoms, before you. Don't beat yourself over it, it's such an important thing that it is equal to "being alive". And what you lose as a person, your DNA gains as a living system. DNA is such a chump. I never realized how much work it does. Every protein in our bodies is copied from DNA. It does so much copying and processing, it's amazing. And for such a hardworking pal, it's OK to sacrifice yourself. It's busting its ass too, in order for any of the billions of processes in our bodies to happen.
I wrote it in so nice way. I'm usually more harsh to people.
Deciding not to have kids because it's too much of an effort is so selfish act. You're throwing away all the effort your ancestors put in to get to the point of you being alive.
Having kids is a far more selfish act than not. Our species and our planet would be way, way better off if about 9/10 of us elected not to reproduce for a few generations.
You are presumably delighted to know that Europe is in fact dying off with only France having a fertility rate of 2.0 (2014) which is not enough to sustain the population. One wonders who's going to be paying those taxes to fund the pensions of the elderly and the other massive liabilities of the European welfare states.
At < 2 replacement rate, the populations of Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria just won't be around in a few generations. The cultural identity of Europe will disappear on present trends.
Relying on fertility to prop up the welfare state was never a sustainable model to begin with. The adjustment will not be pleasant whoever is left in 200 or so years will be a lot better off because of it. To say nothing of all the non-human species with whom we share the world.
> One wonders who's going to be paying those taxes to fund the pensions of the elderly and the other massive liabilities of the European welfare states.
Let's not get caught up on what dead ancestors may think. The world is already overpopulated. Overpopulation causes depletion of natural resources, degradation of the environment, conflicts and wars caused by such lack of resources, and there being less resources per capita. Adding people when it is causing problems like these is harmful.
However, people having 2 or 3 or thereabouts children isn't something to be worried about too much, so go ahead if you want to. But people who have lots of children has to stop. This is per person, so it includes men who have children with different partners. If it is left too late, then less can be done about it.
In response to your question, have another question. Does a man having a child with woman mean she won't have other children? I don't see any reason it does.
Would a man having a child with 10 women cause huge social problem? It certainly does. Do you want to be a single woman with kids? Doubt it.
Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have? I really don't see any reason for that. There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them because they think they are great and winning life because they have so many children and let other people care for them. Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.
> I'd put this up there with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination.
This is probably the most offensive thing in this thread.
You are allowed to disagree with other people's choices. You are allowed to voice that disagreement, even publicly. People are allowed to think you're stupid for caring whether or not someone else has children.
Nothing about any of that is even remotely "discrimination" and to imply it's anywhere in the same universe as racism or sexism is offensive to real problems everywhere.
Sure. And women and men can both obviously face discrimination over their reproductive choices. The discrimination just disproportionally falls on women. Ie. less likely to be hired because she may have children. Expected behaviours and judgements if she doesn't.
What if you value your consciousness and the here and now more than the idea of your DNA staying alive well after you're dead?
To me, my consciousness is my identity (myself). The body is just a vessel for it, and once it craps out, and takes the consciousness down with it, I couldn't care less about my DNA (a bit of a tautology, but you get the idea).
Yes, I agree, we can value our consciousness more than the idea of DNA survival, but the reason it exists in the first place is to protect the DNA. It's just a mechanism to adapt and accommodate the organism to the changing external conditions.
Kids are great. I have 3 kids and to me it is nothing like a prison sentence. I love watching them grow up, it is taking me back to the happiness and carelessness of my own childhood every day. It also gives me a sense of purpose that I would have never found without kids and what I gave up in freedom is made up in love, affection and just plain fun.
Based on my experience I am 100% convinced that people that can't find joy in the happiness of others should remain single and even more important: never, ever have kids.
Dude. Just because someone is adamantly against having children themselves doesn't mean that they "can't find joy in the happiness of others." My wife and I decided to not have kids. I don't know that I would equate it to "an 18 year prison sentence" but...I wouldn't not call it that. I love all my little nieces and nephews; they're one of the best parts of my life. I also thank the noodly appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster every time I'm with them for more than an hour my wife and I made the choice we did.
It was a snotty thing to say. Even making the judgment that a another person is incapable of enjoying the happiness of others is a really judgmental and overall shitty sentiment. It's doubtful the person you are responding to would have the intimate information needed to make that assessment, further people are ever evolving for the most part. Just a shitty thought all around.
Where do I make that judgement? You're turning it around again. Read my comment, there is no judgement of people whatsoever, only the claim that you should not have kids if you're unable to enjoy the joy of others. Because otherwise, yes, they are likely to make you feel like you're subject to an 18 year prison sentence.
English is not my first language, can anyone explain why people read my comment and reverse the sentence structure?
They do because they see the intent to make that erroneous connection with backup plan of telling you 'only' said it one way and not the other (can't tell my self too). Higher order logic.
Kids can make you happy or tired, or both, too many factors for your parenting to go wrong way. Especially if you aren't rich. Imo, friends and gfs are far easier to get mutual happiness with, because they are self-established. I've lost too many friends to happy families they hate now, so personally I don't get your statement any way around.
> Based on my experience I am 100% convinced that people that can't find joy in the happiness of others should remain single and even more important: never, ever have kids.
As a counterargument, I've seen a few people turn into complete monsters once their kids were born. Their justification was "I have kids now and I'll do literally anything for my family, fuck everyone else and their needs." (paraphrased). It's all fine and dandy until the instinct for survival kicks in.
> In my world view having a kid is similar to an 18 year prison sentence.
Unless something happens to them you have offspring for the rest of your life; not for 18 years. If you're referring to them leaving the house at 18 y.o. The US trend is that 18 y.o. stay living at home. Personally, I expect students to be the exception to that.
My parental units divorced when I was six and my brothers and I grew up essentially feral. I was 16yo when my girlfriend got pregnant. After a few weeks she fessed up, and tests later proved, it wasn't mine... I always wore a rubber, the other dude never did. I had my vasectomy at 17 using my fake ID(easy enough in Cal City circa '87) and continued to practice safe sex, JIC. 30 years later, no regrets. I have lived similar to errantspark's minimalist lifestyle for 30 years, watching friends get married, have kids and drifting away while I ride the feast/famine waves of a single independent contractor. It's not as glorious as some outsiders believe, but for an introvert from an abused childhood it is the optimum life I am able to provide for myself. My only advice for my younger counterparts: always have a savings buffer, the 'famine' cycles become exponentially harder to weather the older you get.
Think of kids as cloning yourself, or as close to time travel as your going to get. Your kids let you relive emotions and experiences from your childhood that you forgot about, and you get a chance to guide them through life with benefit of hindsight. I enjoy it. Not to mention free manual labor.
eh, I have kids and don't make that much money, but I think the point is still valid.
My colleague and I were talking about this paper the other day because it led to huge questions about all the assumptions underlying our definitions of "success."
For example, my wife and I's household income was fairly big before we had kids, but not really anything noteworthy. It allowed us to save up enough so that her staying home with them isn't too much of a financial strain. I do worry about the long-term consequences in terms of savings, but I also know that to her, staying home with them at this age means a lot to her, and her going to work to be away from them was miserable when she was doing that. I think she feels lucky.
I could have gone into something more lucrative, and probably could be pulling in more money now, but it would mean less flexibility for me, and more stress, etc. I'd also have about as much independence now at my job as someone could have (for better or worse). Are we not successful? I'm not always sure, because I've thought a lot of changing careers, but one reason I haven't is because I'm not sure it would be worth it on balance. It might be, but it might not be.
To abstract it a bit, think about Donald Trump: is he successful? A lot of people would say yes, but is he a model of who we want to be, or our children to be? Sure, some people would say yes, but more would probably say no. So should income be a marker of success?
One problem with these studies (and I think they're valuable, so I don't mean to suggest otherwise) is that what constitutes success is so variable, and is so detached from income, that I'm not sure how to interpret them.
I mean, sure, all other things being equal, I'd rather have more than less money, but all other things are definitely not equal in life. There's pros and cons to everything. Income is a very weak metric of what an ideal life goal is.
IMO part of my reason not to want kids is the fact that I am doing awfully with money even though I am a programmer in demand (which means I do a lot of things wrong on this platform, which is a fact I became painfully aware of in the last one year)... and thus, any extra expense would literally kill me in the long-term. I barely manage well right now.
That said, I don't think I'll be happy watching my kids wanting a toy, or new boots, or simply a scarf and a hat for the winter, or a cheap gaming console, and me being unable to buy them those. Where's the happiness in seeing your children being miserable? That's the thing that pushes normal peaceful people to attempt robberies!
So your case is anecdotal. Works pretty well for you but I know that for me and many others it won't. So my case is anecdotal as well.
All in all, I do my best not to let hormones or misplaced "duty" principles decide for me, and use my rational thought for my decisions.
I own my own business and the company is worth some millions of dollars, so I am "rich" though by American standards, not really. My salary is rather low for being the founder. My partner has an equally low salary. Some employees make more than me.
I was formerly a data scientist with a salary 2x of what my current one is. I was miserable.
Today, I love work. I create things. I have two kids and a wife and she stays home with them and does actual tough work. I wear clothes from companies we partner with (sports science, so lots of universities give us free stuff) and company-logoed clothes only. I don't have expensive hobbies. My wife gets all of my money and I invest things at home like Blue Apron, a house cleaner, day care, etc, to make family life better.
Having a job I love and a company that fulfills my vision negated all need for tangible things in my life. When I was actually "rich" in regards to salary, liquid money, I was consumed by stuff. It was terrible.
Life's good now. I want for nothing expensive. I make this comment to tell you that you may be able to have both if your work is something that you truly enjoy.
I'd say about a 50/50 split between useless things like: hanging out with friends playing video games, riding my bike in traffic in a semi irresponsible manner, smoking weed, climbing trees; and useful things like reverse engineering/modifying things, exploring programming languages, painting/drawing, doing 3D graphics/art, working on various side projects and building things that come to mind.
Some examples of side recent projects if you're interested: a virtual reality strange attractor explorer, a high resolution bike speedometer/light system and a tool to record and subsequently play images from cassette tapes.
> hanging out with friends playing video games, riding my bike in traffic in a semi irresponsible manner, smoking weed, climbing trees; and useful things like reverse engineering/modifying things, exploring programming languages, painting/drawing, doing 3D graphics/art, working on various side projects and building things that come to mind.
Eerily similar to me, except that I have spent less than 400$ a month for the past 4 years due to where I live. I've traded most every comfort (hot water, air conditioning, possessions in general), which I could not care less about, for the ability to practically never work. I have a laptop, speakers, a table, a chair, a mattress on the floor, two fans, art supplies, sports equipment, and that's about it. I will live like this forever and my only motivation to become very rich is to help other people.
You are like a guru of minimalism and self reliance. Bravo! I feel the same - we don't need so much money because, after fulfilling our basic needs, we have many other sources of fulfillment.
I wish more people saw it this way. Philanthropy is the only thing driving me to amass wealth. I used to be ok with being poor and spending a lot of free time on side projects but more and more I'm becoming disgusted with myself and those around me for living selfishly when so many people around the world are in pain.
I found that there are actually relatively few people with the type of experience most of us here at HN have that work in philanthropy. I mean people with IT background, can-do attitude, consider scaling whatever you build to million or billions of people, entrepreneurial and able to pitch well for investments.
If I work as a reasonably successful IT entrepreneur (I don't think I am going to be Gates, Brinn or Zuckerberg). At most I will be able to give away few million to charity/philanthropy. That is going to have a relatively limited impact. International development funding is $130 billion / year.
Taking my skills and helping spending those $130 billion sensibly, by applying my skills is having a considerably bigger impact, I think.
My team is routinely involved in country level data-to-decision work around things like drinking water supply, sanitation access, food security, agriculture efficiency, climate change adaptation, disaster respons etc. If I add up the population of the countries where we our tools are used for rural drinking water mapping and prioritisation of investments, we end up with about half a billion people.
For me, the best way to use my time I think is helping others by applying my skills to the problem at hand. Working for a faceless shareholder (mine and your pension fund and a bunch of rich people) on something that may be technically interesting, but didn't make a big positive impact on the world and the people in it, just wasn't enough for me anymore. What I do now is more satisfying and has a much bigger positive impact, I think.
I'd love to be involved in something like that. I feel like most helpful innovation is hardware based or science-research based. I'm not a trained weather data scientist, for example, I'm just a boring backend developer. Have you seen much philanthropy positions for backend devs or any suggestions on where to look?
For intelligent people, it can be nice to go to congresses a lot. Or buy computer gear, like a big GPU rig, just to play with (or develop a business from). Just some examples why money can still be nice.
My impression is money gets more important as you get older because your ability to get other people to give it to you for work goes way down and your medical expenses go way up. At least that's what I've seen in my family
The thing is, that you're incredibly successful. You live life the way you want it and have the freedom to decide what you want to spend your time on. This, for me, is success.
I derive a lot of satisfaction from fixing things myself. I watch YouTube clips that show me how to do anything to my Jeep. I recently bought an old farm house that's a constant list of new projects to work on, and a yard to landscape. I feel like Hank Hill sometimes, and my co-workers act like it's not worth their time to do those kind of things (they just buy new cars whenever something little happens to them). But I've been pleasantly surprised by how much fun it is to save money and learn new skills. It's a great feeling when you have the right tool for an important job.
I am gradually travelling from your colleagues' state of mind to yours lately.
In my case though, it's not about "not worth my time". It's just that I am always tired and thus somewhat cranky, unhealthy and have a lot of things to care for -- debts, teeth fixes (and several other health issues), proper TV stand and bedroom floor fixators, get proper kitchenware (like, I have a pan that USED to be teflon for example), you name it -- loads of thigns to care for because they simply aren't where I want them to be. And I am talking things I find basic, not luxuries.
While I am in this drama, I really do find it hard to just screw everything and go fix an old PC or a bike lying around.
I started finding inner peace in tinkering with things but it's an uphill battle against my stress and messed-up life -- and it's gonna take a while for me to fully get there.
No real topic in my comment. Just wanted to offer you another point of view.
>It really seems like the point at which working harder to earn money hits diminishing returns comes much much earlier that most people think.
How old are you? Do you have children? Sick or elderly family to take care of?
I get a kick out of young people in the software industry talking about how easy it is. Of course it is when you're by yourself with very particular interests. But life circumstances can and do change.
What do you plan to do when you're old? Right now it might be simple to earn enough money to pay your bills, but if you don't earn enough to save a significant portion of it you risk not having enough once earning money becomes harder.
Unless he decides to make a one-way hike into the tundra when he can no longer work, the kids other people "selfishly" decided to have will support him (even if indirectly, e.g. by working at the companies that he has equity in as retirement investments).
I suggest you reconsider this. Not necessarily change your answer, but...
Earlier in my career, I chose jobs based on interest, challenge, excitement, and fun. As a result, I had a low salary history.
When I turned 45, I found myself in a position where, in absolute terms, I was making significantly less than the average for my experience and education in my area; relatively, I was making much less than coworkers who were significantly less competent (I make no claims as to my absolute competence) and receiving much less respect. To the extent that I was called in when the sky was falling but was ignored when pointing out that and obviously poor decision would result in the sky falling.
Fortunately, I had a habit of packing money into a brokerage account and a modest inheritance, so I am now happily unemployed and don't have to deal with the horseshit.
I just have to figure out what to do when I'm 75 and broke.
I am 36 and I feel I've been overly passive throughout my career. I only "activate" in emergency mode and during the last 15 months (a stable job) I started reflecting and understanding that I only ever tried hard only NOT to sink, and not a centimeter beyond that.
Your experience is something I fear will share in just several years if I don't get off my ass and invest in my future.
To be fair, I had a plethora of pretty valid reasons which I'll not list here. I grew to realize they gradually devolved in mere excuses however in my mind. They were valid for 5-6 years (between 19 and 25, let's say, and even that's a lot of time). Beyond those I just kind of loved the slack they were giving me.
TL;DR: I am stressed, tired and realizing that if I don't start getting much more things done, I'll face a VERY GRIM future.
So, no family to care for?
What level of savings security do you have?
What happens to you if you get cancer, or break a leg?
What will sustain you in retirement?
If you live outside the US in some country where human basic needs are guaranteed, your approach would make more sense to me!
Getting rich, at least under our current system, has a lot more to do with luck (mainly being in the right place at the right time) than it does with being smart or even working hard. The reason perseverance (which is related to working hard, but is not quite the same thing) helps is that the more willing you are to keep playing the game without winning the more likely you are to eventually win.
(You can see this dynamic at work in the small here on HN. Getting a lot of upvotes has more to do with getting a pithy comment in early enough that it rises to the top where it gets noticed before the story falls off the front page and people stop paying attention. The wisest comment in the world won't get any love if it's submitted after the story drops off the home page. A similar dynamic also plays itself out on the New page. It's even more dramatic there because very few people ever look at the New page. And yet, the more participate, the more likely you are to hit an upvote jackpot.)
no, being rich is having. in order to get rich, you must do.
many smart people overthink, constantly, and to a fault. it usually manifests in the form of 'what if something goes wrong???' and spirals from there.
any rich person will tell you, things go wrong constantly, and at the worst possible time. the only important thing is your confidence in your ability to fix things when they break.
> it usually manifests in the form of 'what if something goes wrong???' and spirals from there.
That is because we compare to the successful rich only, not all those who tried to become rich and utterly failed.
This is just masculine vs feminine thinking. Or VC versus slow growth. Or the way we nurture children in the West vs cats, or in Africa. Or quality vs quantity.
You never hear about all the times people prayed to $diety and it didn't help. You never hear about all those people who went to Stanford and didn't graduate. You never hear about all those people who made a startup and failed. OK, you do (on the latter, here), but it takes courage, shame, and selfishness.
PS: You might wanna use some capital letters at the start of a sentence.
i swear all you trolls read from the same exact playbook. "nobody hears about the failures"?
really? i hear about plenty of failures all around me. i see restaurants shutting down left and right. i see people having mental breakdowns, public freakouts, people drop out of school. marriages fall apart, houses get repossessed, stock markets crash, people go bankrupt, even commit suicide.
startups failing and people not getting rich is honestly the least, most insignificant of all of life's failures.
but so what? so just do nothing with your life? never try anything? grow up.
> so just do nothing with your life? never try anything?
That's not the point. The point is that many fail, the success / failure ratio is low. Period. No need to be judgmental past that. Or resort to namecalling.
If you think someone is trolling. Don't reply. Ignore them. Heck, report them.
No, unfortunately it's not. I know this from first hand experience. I've been doing my whole life, but the most money I ever made (by a huge margin) came from a stroke of dumb luck.
I can add that academia is generally equally part of the same order. The game gets quite annoying after a while, since you realize one is basically doing the same x + delta thing and calling it the next great coming.
I've noticed that a lot of successful people got there by doing things that, on the surface, don't seem to need a lot of brainpower. But, when you get to know them more, you find that they're smart. I think that very often, being smart leads someone to succeed but invisibly, so it's easy for others who don't know the whole story to attribute it to luck.
Being smart helps stack the deck in your favor, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient. Ben Carson and Steve Harvey are both rich, but I wouldn't consider either of them particularly smart.
>Spend time with a person who is very successful in some field or pursuit; it doesn't matter what.
After a few minutes you'll probably think, "Wait, this guy isn't any smarter than me."
After a few more minutes you'll probably think, "Hey, I'm actually smarter than he is."
Success doesn't require a high IQ or some special intangible quality that you don't have. Successful people only become "special" after they succeed; before they put in all that time and effort they were just like everyone else.
Spend time with a few successful people and you will realize you are just as capable of achieving great things.
I disagree with some of this, as above.
There's some of each, some lucky and some skilled. But I think skill plays a bigger role in the variance of similarly situated people. Luck in the sense of where you're born, how privileged your family is, etc play a larger role than luck later in life, I think.
That's the conventional wisdom, but is it really true? Or do they just have above average mechanical skills?
I followed Carson closely during the presidential campaign and I saw no evidence that he's particularly smart (and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary).
I have a relative who is a TV news reporter. I have personal acquaintances who have done live TV interviews, and I have done a couple of those myself (on Fox News). Does that count?
And what exactly is it about Carson's background that makes you rate his performance as "amazing"? He seemed amazingly bad to me. I've even watched some of Carson's performances as a motivational speaker before he got into politics and he still seemed to me like (how shall I put this?) not the brightest light in the firmament.
I know a couple of people who went through medical school. It is not easy. Being smart certainly makes it easier (to get in as well as getting through all of it), so doctors are selected for intelligence, as well as hard working.
AFAICT getting through med school mainly requires the ability to memorize a ton of random facts and a willingness to defer to authority and put up with a boat load of bullshit. The ability to actually think critically (which is part of my definition of "smart") is not only not a requirement, it can be a distinct disadvantage.
What can I say? There are exceptions to every rule, and I see very little direct evidence of critical thinking skills in Ben Carson. Geez, the man is a YEC. That's about as far from rationality as you can get without being locked up.
Like I said, there are exceptions to every rule. There might be smart YEC's, but to me it's a very strong counterindication. Also, that's far from the only evidence there is with regards to Ben Carson. Try searching for "stupid things Ben Carson has said" some time.
People have beliefs and goal functions (religious - obey God; love / protect spouse and family; acquire money and power; maintain health and increase status, and positive image of self.)
A powerful brain is like an engine with more horsepower and torque - like a fast car, if you're going the wrong way it will just get you there even faster.
It's very human to be unwilling to admit error or change your mind. The smarter you are, the more tools you have at your disposal to reason out complicated methods by which you may be correct. Of course, if your position is untenable enough, even these methods will appear ludicrous from the outside.
You can, therefore, be an excellent doctor and even develop new methods for brain surgery while being simultaneously unwilling to drop absurd beliefs inculcated into you during childhood. Yes, you sound stupid to everyone else, but if you've extended and reinforced these beliefs over your entire lifetime you may be so unwilling to drop them that ridicule isn't enough of a push.
It depends on what you mean by "rich". If your goal is to be a billionaire, then yes, luck plays a major role. But if you simply want to get to the 99th percentile of income/wealth, that can be achieved in a pretty replicable manner. Study hard in HS -> Go to a good college -> Work your ass off for a good GPA -> go do a MBA/JD/MD/CS degree at an elite university -> get a six figure job and work your ass off. Not much luck involved there.
Interestingly, you don't need to have mensa-level IQ to achieve the above either. Hard work and grit is far more important, which is what the article is saying as well.
There cannot possibly be a reliable process to get you to the 99th percentile, because by definition 99% of people won't get there. Hard work will reliably get you to the 99th percentile only in a world where only 1% of people work hard.
> "Hard work will reliably get you to the 99th percentile only in a world where only 1% of people work hard."
Yes, and that's exactly the world we live in today. Most people don't work hard enough in their teenage-years/20s to become high paying doctors/lawyers/bankers.
I'm making an assertion based on my own personal experiences, just like I'm assuming you're doing as well. I've yet to meet someone who studied/worked all the time during their high-school/college/career, and still failed to secure a six figure income.
(Assuming US differs and jobs here)
A six figure income is way below 99%. It's below 90% for most six figure earners in the US. You need seven figures to get to the top 1%.
I know smart people who worked very hard in high school and university who aren't even in the 90%.
In fact, you are very unlikely to get into the 1% based on things you learn in college. You mostly have to be in finance or run a successful business to get there, or be quite lucky.
The top 1% in the US is around $500k/year, but that's not actually what you care about for measuring wealth. Many members of the top 1% are only there for 1 year, and of those who make it multiple years, even fewer manage 10+.
The number you should care about is net-worth. High net worth from a lifetime of careful financial decisions is much more indicative of success than being in the 1% for a year or two. It requires hard work, planning, and life-long frugality. This is in line with OPs assertion that working hard and planning for the future is uncommon and will get you far.
A six-figure income does not put you in the top 1%. $100k/yr doesn't even get you into the top 20%. To get into the top 1% you have to make more than $500k/yr.
You're comparing two different metrics. Your source talks about household income, which is generally a measure of two primary incomes. You're comparing a single income to two incomes.
whatsmypercent.com utilizes some good datasets to build out income percentiles. They suggest that $100k/year puts in the the 96% percentile. The 80% percentile starts around $42k/year.
That being said, it is kind of a long tail situation, due to the effects of wealth inequality in this country. The 99% percentile starts at $193k/year.
"only in a world where only 1% of people work hard." -- AND choose the steps that are reproducible. I'm very smart, but I got an English Degree thinking I would be a writer taught english for pennies and almost went into philosophy before thinking I didn't want to be poor and went into development (already had taught myself programming in highschool). Not all paths that can be worked hard on produce wealth.
>replicable manner. Study hard in HS -> Go to a good college -> Work your ass off for a good GPA -> go do a MBA/JD/MD/CS degree at an elite university -> get a six figure job and work your ass off. Not much luck involved there.
>Not much luck involved there.
Except being born in a white rich household with access to food, water, shelter, support system, good high school so you can go to an elite college. Do you think everyone born in Africa/China (just to name a few countries) have the option to take this route you describe?
I was making my comment in the context of developed nations where everyone has access to public schooling and college loans/financial-aid. It certainly doesn't apply to those in developing nations.
the real question every american should ask themselves is why are they poor
is it because free mason oligarchs like Trump or Klinton or Bush or Soros or Rockfelers or Rotshields made them poor on purpose to turn them into stomach that will do nothing
In the book 'Outliers', M. Gladwell talks about this very subject and suggests that a persons social upbringing has a lot to do with how you can navigate through the world and have it work for you.
A high IQ is surely a good thing to have and will make it easier for one to become successful, but if you totally lack the skill of 'getting your way' in the social maze that surrounds our daily lives, it will probably be a lot harder.
Interesting. I'm a 1%er and I have a piece of paper that says I'm pretty smart, but:
> a personality trait marked by
> diligence, perseverance and
> self-discipline
I see myself as pretty lazy, impulsive, and slap-dash, and tend to use my brain to brute-force lazy solutions to problems.
I am too lazy and don't have the concentration span to pay attention much in meetings, but can generally utter something profound near the end which makes it look like I was paying attention the whole time.
I have always assumed I'm just coasting by on a pretty useful brain.
I can definitely relate. I'm not rich, but I do alright. I have a high IQ (according to "official" tests available), but I don't feel I'm smarter than anyone.
I however do feel that I'm lazy, and have "cheated" my way through life by cunning rather than legitimately solving problems the way they're "supposed" to. I guess that's a skill in its own right, but it's made it harder for me to actually learn new stuff because my brain wants to get by with as little work as possible.
Hate to hijack the thread, but a lot of that speaks to me.
> I have a high IQ, but I don't
> feel I'm smarter than anyone.
Quite. My recently acquired particular piece of paper puts it beyond any shred of doubt, objectively, but it's only recently I've really acknowledged it. I suspect this has been immensely annoying for people around me.
> it's made it harder for me to
> actually learn new stuff
> because my brain wants to get
> by with as little work as
> possible
Yes! A related symptom for me was assuming that people who were good at stuff I'd never bothered to learn were a lot smarter than me.
Are you self-made or did you inherit it? No offense intended either way, I just mean that anyone can be "lazy, impulsive" etc. and be a 1%er if they have a trust fund. If you're self-made, odds are that you see yourself this way but actually aren't (similar to supermodels that call themselves fat or ugly), or you got this way after you made the money and now have the freedom to act any way you choose.
Self-made. Father was an expat civil servant so very expensive secondary education was paid for, though.
> odds are that you see
> yourself this way but
> actually aren't
Certainly possible. I just see such a gigantic gap between how hard I could be working and how hard I actually am. I'm not sure how it relates to other people.
The difference is that some people are lazy to do, some are lazy to think, some to interact socially, .. I'm yet to know a person that is not lazy. By observation, I consider that people tend to be lazy in areas where they are not naturally good.
It is possible for you to overcome your laziness and impulsiveness and direct your attention toward things that help your long-term goals. There are a lot of little pieces to doing this. One of them that I'm doing right now is reading "The Willpower Instinct" and trying out the stuff in it. If you want a more expensive, harder to ignore way to do this, you could try going to a CFAR camp.
I'm not affiliated with CFAR or anything, this is an option I am seriously considering though.
I have looked at CFAR before, and have inhaled any amount of self development literature.
The only thing I don't struggle to find intrinsic motivation for is programming. I am yet to find a long term goal that resonates at all. All success so far in my life feels entirely attributable to getting bored and saying "what else is there?" and/or seeking external validation. I earn just enough to fly business class whenever I fly because I enjoy the comfort aspect and the external validation that comes with it. The next financial jump is likely to come from wanting to fly private, because why not?
It seems self evident to me that this is deeply unhealthy, but ironically I'm yet to find a solution.
Oh, alright. This is a bit different from my experience. I've pretty consistently had long-term desires but been pretty bad at enacting them.
Earlier when I didn't really want anything I thought it would be nice to make a bunch of money so that my future self who had a better idea about what he wanted would have that. This turned out ok, currently a lot of what I want is to know that I won't have to work if I don't want to.
Huh, did the title on HN get changed? It's now "IQ is only a minor factor in success" which doesn't match the Bloomberg article title "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?". It makes some of the comments that were written before the change seem a bit strange.
There are many parts to this. We're talking about IQ and these same people may not necessarily be emotionally intelligent, for one.
A lot of people with high IQs may also be very rational / logical in their approach towards life. They might think objectively, and that's the point. They're right - they don't need the excess wealth at all. They've accounted for everything they needed to - their life, their security, and that of their children, spouse, parents, etc. They're for the most part content with their personal lives, their success, their jobs and most importantly their income. They're I assume, smart enough to know what could make them more money, and how they need to behave and interact. It's not ignorance; it's sheer conscious choices.
On the other hand, there are those who aren't smart / wise enough. They'll make much more money, but may not be as nearly satisfied, no matter how much they make.
We might be mistaking intelligence / business-sense with wisdom, which is a higher domain - it's got more to it, than just IQ.
I'm not addressing the claim of this article, just the methods.
IQ has a misleading (and factually inaccurate) name. The Q stands for quotient, but an actual IQ is not a quotient at all. IQs are ordinal ONLY. They allow you (to the extent that IQ tests measure intelligence) to rank people, not assign numerical values. It is not possible from IQ scores to say "Alice is x% more intelligent than Bob", only "Alice is more intelligent than Bob".
Due to the non-cardinal nature of IQ scores, the correlation with income as reported in the article isn't something that you can really do. To do this, we would need a cardinal measurement of intelligence instead.
Misconception: The IQ is a direct measure of brain performance. For example, somebody with an IQ of 120 can do 20% more mental work in the same amount of time than somebody with an IQ of 100.
In truth the IQ is a purely statistical measure. It has no direct relation to brain performance, is not proportional to it, and doesn't even have any linear or otherwise straightforward relation to it. The only thing you can say is that somebody with a higher IQ will show higher scores on most other brain performance tests as well, but the IQ doesn't say how much higher.
To clarify: My comment is in support of the parent. Could the downvoters please explain what they think is wrong that I add MORE information and a link to an extended explanation??
Also, IQ tests become less accurate in the outer deviations. Just about impossible to test for a difference between 140 to 150 IQ, or 60 to 70. How much sleep a person got and their diet can change a brain's plasticity by more than that number of points.
IQ tests aren't a great measure of plasticity in the first place - they're just the best thing we have to measure on a wide scale. Plasticity is a far more personal attribute. Many IQ tests just repeat the same problems, and a person can improve their score without really learning anything but how to take an IQ test.
Throw someone something entirely new and you may get real insight into their mental plasticity.
If we consider that there are different types of intelligence, say logical/analytical, artistic, physical (dancers, crafters) etc. Then the answer to the question becomes more complex. You may know the answers to most questions, or solutions to most problems, but that doesn't mean you will act on solving those problems, that requires will, passion, commitment, etc. There are a lotta factors that play into making money, including being at the right place at the right time.
In my psych classes they always explained IQ as a measurement of success in western culture. That it didn't really measure intelligence, because it is way to complex to measure that easily. But IQ was shown to correlate with basic success which is why it was useful. So if that is not the case it sounds like IQ is of no value.
Most non-exceptional things depend on character. Extreme intelligence only manifests its value in areas of extreme complexity.
When I hire programmers for a job I'm looking for characteristics like consistency, patience, memory, organisation skills, attention to detail, a touch of pendantry and a reasonable analytical mind. I don't actively avoid extremely intelligent people, but given the work at hand I certainly don't care if someone is or not.
So in the world of non-exceptional development, character is king.
Likewise in business, except at times of revolutionary change, character always wins out. Persistence, focus, a dash of greed, people skills...Brains are right at the bottom of your priorities.
I always retell this story when this subject comes up:
When I was 17 in 1989 I was desperate for a job in 'computers' as it was all I knew, I was damn good at programming etc, but had the usual experience trap - no experience equalled no job.
Being naive I paid attention to one of those adverts in the back of the weekend newspapers. I don't know if they were a UK only thing but they had a puzzle and stated that if you could solve it within 1/2 hour you could be a member of Mensa, which if anybody doesn't know is a club for those with a high IQ.
I completed the puzzle then got posted back another one, if I could complete this within an hour I would be invited back to a proper, invigilated exam. Passed both, paid my dues and became a member of the clever club, along with people at the time like Sir Clive Sinclair. My mum was very proud.
I went to one of their meetups shortly afterwards in a bad cheap suit hoping to meet some other clever person who'd recognise my skills and give me a big wad of cash and a job.
It didn't turn out that way. There were 30~ men at one side of the club all staring at their drinks, with 3 woman at the other side about 20 metres away keeping away from the fellas. One woman came in by mistake to the side with the men at which point they all swarmed her. The only topic of conversation they had went like:
"What's your IQ?"
"x"
"oh, mines <x+10>"
When it came to IQ these people were the top of the pile, with social interaction however they were abjectly hopeless. They'd be able to build you a nuclear bomb, but they wouldn't be able to sell or explain it, or even go to the shop to buy the parts for it.
This encounter came at a good point for me - it made me relax a bit about being 'clever', and showed the importance of other indicators. I let my membership lapse and wince when I occasionally see 'member of Mensa' on a CV.
One of the members of our team is in charge of a Mensa group in our city, and he always tells us how difficult is to agree on basic organizational issues, just like in a condo.
I was a member about 5 years ago. I also left the club soon, but my experience was pretty different from yours. I never went to the "official" meetings, but I did go to two of the "Mensa youth" (I was around 20, others there seemed to be 25-35) weekend gatherings in the countryside.
The gender ratio was around 60/40 men/women. I don't think anyone even mentioned the term "IQ". It was mostly like a student group outing with people drinking, talking, playing board games, going to sauna (this was in Finland), swimming, flying around in a inflatable boat someone had converted to an ultralight floatplane and such.
Interesting. My experience was a while ago as I said, 1989, so maybe it was just different then as it just seemed like a club for middle-aged socially men really.
But it should be a major factor (assuming motivation is at an acceptable level). It not being relevant is more telling of issues with politics, corruption, favoritism, etc than of intelligence being irrelevant.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadIt's hard for people who haven't been in business to understand. They have been told that a great product at a fair price with fantastic customer service is what it takes. While that plays a role it is does not even amount to 50% of the formula.
As well as a huge amount of chance - e.g. my first company got funded because one of my co-founders ran into a guy in a bar that happened to be in the country for a week or two. Maybe we'd have found other funding if that didn't happen. Maybe not. We'll never know.
> Both IQ and personality remain as important predictors in wage equations when both are included in a regression
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.
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.
My biggest concern isn't that you can work away your youth and health like that, it's that a lot of people of my generation have no idea that's what they are doing and were gently coerced from a young age to imagine the house/car/work triad as the three ticks of success in life.
I think for a lot of people, they don't want to compromise. So if you are thinking "I need X so I can live in the wilderness and write books without having to worry about a job", then they put off writing books until they are rich. And by the time it happens (if it ever does -- which is rare), they find that they don't like writing books, and their spouse, who was attracted to them because they are rich, refuses to live in the wilderness.
Compromise is the true short cut. It allows you to start now, with less resources than you would like. It then allows you to build your life so that the thing you wanted is part of it. Even if you need a lot of money to achieve your ultimate goal, remember that it needn't be your money that you spend.
P.S. Even if your dream is to sit on the beach every day and get drunk, I assure you that this is very common amongst the poor ;-)
If the majority of the population thought that way, we'd have an economic collapse though, so forget what I said.
In fact work is preferable to how I spend a lot of my free time. Would I like to work more flexible hours and get paid the same to work 30 hours instead of 37.5 a week then sure, but otherwise what would money be buying freedom from?
I suppose owning a house out-right would be freedom from worrying about security of housing, and having a large cash reserve in a few currencies would be security from political instability.
Perhaps that I only have to worry about these "big" things means I already qualify as rich from my existing income, but "not working" is definitely not a goal I align to (yet).
A diverse portfolio is better protected against inflation, cash ought to make up some of a diverse portfolio but not a large proportion of it. Bonds are a better way of having cash-denominated assets since they still have returns while not being particularly risky (in the general case).
Cash is still useful however because it is easy to access quickly without losing value to having to sell quickly and doesn't incur fees.
Most of the work we have to do is not life changing or world changing, or even makes the world a slightly better place for anyone other than the ownership.
One day you might want to fully explore a new technology or framework, but your current work environment isn't interested and you aren't well versed enough, or there aren't any jobs in your area related to that technology. Spending time after work is an option, but when you get older and have a family, the harder that is.
To me money is freedom to not have to work, or be able to work on what I want to work on, explore what I want to explore, etc.
...or a much better society.
Please elaborate!
What you find is that you need the freedom to be able to take a risk and fail. If you come from a household living paycheck to paycheck and just barely scraping by, you start off with a very risk averse mentality and never really escape it. When the big opportunity shows up, if you were risk averse your entire life it is unlikely that you will take the shot.
https://despair.com/products/overconfidence sums it up best: "Before you attempt to beat the odds, be sure you could survive the odds beating you".
Do you happen to have a source? I'd not heard this and was curious as to the amount.
However:
Several writers claim that Maxwell set up a million-dollar trust fund for Gates. A 1993 biographer who interviewed both Gates and his parents (among other sources) found no evidence of this and dismissed it as one of the "fictions" surrounding Gates's fortune. Gates denied the trust fund story in a 1994 interview and indirectly in his 1995 book The Road Ahead.[2]
So I'm inclined to think it's not true, although it does seem a fairly wide-spread story.
But at the same time, Bill Gates did come from a rich family, so he wasn't going to starve if Microsoft didn't work out.
[1] http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
[2] https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/link-suggestion/wpcd_2008-09...
Even someone with a $1mil trust fund can make terrible enough choices to end up homeless.
And then, the thing is that family who was struggling the whole time, won't agree on dropping the best university with wonderful perspectives for some kind of crazy (at the moment it was very "crazy").
People are not "just risky" by default, they are influenced heavily by their life, and as someone mentioned here already, a lot of rich guys came from pretty decent living families, who can afford to fallback if something. For instance, a lot of world travellers, who try to live differently, actually have some passive income, property of just loads of cash, just in case something will go wrong.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-a...
Quote from your own source...
In economics this is called "social mobility" and it is measured to analyze the success of economic and social policies, whereby, generally, it is considered that having a high social mobility index is a desirable thing in a country. That's because a country with high social mobility is a country where the American dream is happening more often...
Social mobility works both ways: in a country with high social mobility, it is more likely that a child will be much poorer, or much richer than the parents.
There is a paper by the OECD analyzing by how much different factors (family wealth, education, etc.) affect wealth of children across different countries: http://www.oecd.org/centrodemexico/medios/44582910.pdf
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus
(Though I think it's because the degree eventually confers the wisdom that an advanced degree in a different, marketable field would be a good idea. That's how it worked for me anyway.)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/11/20/surpri...
I'm also really happy and work fewer hours per week than anyone I know.
If there's one thing I worry about it's that I should be trying to be rich because I probably have the means to make that happen. I might be making 200k/yr if I worked full time. I might be able to start a successful company if I put my mind to it. I've never been able to convince myself that it's worth it.
Money just doesn't seem that useful to me. I don't need a car, I'd actually prefer a smaller studio for less money if I could find one. My bills add up to maybe $1400/month. It's trivial to make that much money. I have a fulfilling part time job which I could sleep through and still cover my expenses. Every dollar I earn writing software is a bonus. It constantly surprises me how much money my peers are capable of spending.
Fixing things is also really fun. I have $300 dollar headphones, they cost me $0 because I pulled them out of the trash and spent a couple hours overhauling them. The biggest material source of joy in my life is a $280 bicycle, my laptop cost the same, both off craigslist. Going out for a night on the town can cost hundreds of dollars, if I want to indulge in a vice I can buy enough weed to last me 3 months for the same amount of money. I'm always free to spend time with friends doing cool things.
The skills I have that I use to earn money are all learned from spending free time messing around doing small projects just for the hell of it. I wouldn't have these skills if I didn't have so much free time to explore whatever strikes my fancy.
It really seems like the point at which working harder to earn money hits diminishing returns comes much much earlier that most people think.
On its face, it's an incredibly dumb choice. But biology wins out, sometimes..
Some kind of bootstrap if you will.
As an example, my no-kids friends typically schedule things like dinner parties starting at 8:30pm or so. The ones with kids would aim for 5:30 or 6 instead.
Deciding not to have kids because it's too much of an effort is so selfish act. You're throwing away all the effort your ancestors put in to get to the point of you being alive.
At < 2 replacement rate, the populations of Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria just won't be around in a few generations. The cultural identity of Europe will disappear on present trends.
Can't pay for it. It's all gonna collapse =)
That's one of the reasons we decided to not have kids. There are too many humans consuming too many resources in an unsustainable lifestyle.
However, people having 2 or 3 or thereabouts children isn't something to be worried about too much, so go ahead if you want to. But people who have lots of children has to stop. This is per person, so it includes men who have children with different partners. If it is left too late, then less can be done about it.
Would a man having a child with 10 women cause huge social problem? It certainly does. Do you want to be a single woman with kids? Doubt it.
Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have? I really don't see any reason for that. There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them because they think they are great and winning life because they have so many children and let other people care for them. Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.
I never said they should.
> There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them
What in the world does that have to do with anything?
> Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.
What are you talking about? I never said anything about any sort of limit.
You do realize just how offensive you are being? Whether other people have children is not for you to decide or deride.
This is probably the most offensive thing in this thread.
You are allowed to disagree with other people's choices. You are allowed to voice that disagreement, even publicly. People are allowed to think you're stupid for caring whether or not someone else has children.
Nothing about any of that is even remotely "discrimination" and to imply it's anywhere in the same universe as racism or sexism is offensive to real problems everywhere.
Discrimination has a variety of forms.
It amazes me how shallow has people's attention on HN become. Not even bothering to read the whole sentence. I feel like I'm on Reddit.
How many children must one have before one is morally absolved of this sin?
I have two kids and whether or not they have kids makes no difference at all to me. Likewise, my parents never pressured me to have kids.
If you think about it for a moment they can't nearly have been as noble as they're made out to be, by far.
Reproduction is not a virtue in and of itself. There will come a moment when the next generation will not forgive us for this overpopulated earth.
But of course I never tell my friends what I really think when they tell me the happy news of their expectancy ...
To me, my consciousness is my identity (myself). The body is just a vessel for it, and once it craps out, and takes the consciousness down with it, I couldn't care less about my DNA (a bit of a tautology, but you get the idea).
Based on my experience I am 100% convinced that people that can't find joy in the happiness of others should remain single and even more important: never, ever have kids.
English is not my first language, can anyone explain why people read my comment and reverse the sentence structure?
Kids can make you happy or tired, or both, too many factors for your parenting to go wrong way. Especially if you aren't rich. Imo, friends and gfs are far easier to get mutual happiness with, because they are self-established. I've lost too many friends to happy families they hate now, so personally I don't get your statement any way around.
As a counterargument, I've seen a few people turn into complete monsters once their kids were born. Their justification was "I have kids now and I'll do literally anything for my family, fuck everyone else and their needs." (paraphrased). It's all fine and dandy until the instinct for survival kicks in.
Unless something happens to them you have offspring for the rest of your life; not for 18 years. If you're referring to them leaving the house at 18 y.o. The US trend is that 18 y.o. stay living at home. Personally, I expect students to be the exception to that.
My colleague and I were talking about this paper the other day because it led to huge questions about all the assumptions underlying our definitions of "success."
For example, my wife and I's household income was fairly big before we had kids, but not really anything noteworthy. It allowed us to save up enough so that her staying home with them isn't too much of a financial strain. I do worry about the long-term consequences in terms of savings, but I also know that to her, staying home with them at this age means a lot to her, and her going to work to be away from them was miserable when she was doing that. I think she feels lucky.
I could have gone into something more lucrative, and probably could be pulling in more money now, but it would mean less flexibility for me, and more stress, etc. I'd also have about as much independence now at my job as someone could have (for better or worse). Are we not successful? I'm not always sure, because I've thought a lot of changing careers, but one reason I haven't is because I'm not sure it would be worth it on balance. It might be, but it might not be.
To abstract it a bit, think about Donald Trump: is he successful? A lot of people would say yes, but is he a model of who we want to be, or our children to be? Sure, some people would say yes, but more would probably say no. So should income be a marker of success?
One problem with these studies (and I think they're valuable, so I don't mean to suggest otherwise) is that what constitutes success is so variable, and is so detached from income, that I'm not sure how to interpret them.
I mean, sure, all other things being equal, I'd rather have more than less money, but all other things are definitely not equal in life. There's pros and cons to everything. Income is a very weak metric of what an ideal life goal is.
IMO part of my reason not to want kids is the fact that I am doing awfully with money even though I am a programmer in demand (which means I do a lot of things wrong on this platform, which is a fact I became painfully aware of in the last one year)... and thus, any extra expense would literally kill me in the long-term. I barely manage well right now.
That said, I don't think I'll be happy watching my kids wanting a toy, or new boots, or simply a scarf and a hat for the winter, or a cheap gaming console, and me being unable to buy them those. Where's the happiness in seeing your children being miserable? That's the thing that pushes normal peaceful people to attempt robberies!
So your case is anecdotal. Works pretty well for you but I know that for me and many others it won't. So my case is anecdotal as well.
All in all, I do my best not to let hormones or misplaced "duty" principles decide for me, and use my rational thought for my decisions.
I was formerly a data scientist with a salary 2x of what my current one is. I was miserable.
Today, I love work. I create things. I have two kids and a wife and she stays home with them and does actual tough work. I wear clothes from companies we partner with (sports science, so lots of universities give us free stuff) and company-logoed clothes only. I don't have expensive hobbies. My wife gets all of my money and I invest things at home like Blue Apron, a house cleaner, day care, etc, to make family life better.
Having a job I love and a company that fulfills my vision negated all need for tangible things in my life. When I was actually "rich" in regards to salary, liquid money, I was consumed by stuff. It was terrible.
Life's good now. I want for nothing expensive. I make this comment to tell you that you may be able to have both if your work is something that you truly enjoy.
I'm intrigued... would you mind sharing a bit more about your business?
Some examples of side recent projects if you're interested: a virtual reality strange attractor explorer, a high resolution bike speedometer/light system and a tool to record and subsequently play images from cassette tapes.
Eerily similar to me, except that I have spent less than 400$ a month for the past 4 years due to where I live. I've traded most every comfort (hot water, air conditioning, possessions in general), which I could not care less about, for the ability to practically never work. I have a laptop, speakers, a table, a chair, a mattress on the floor, two fans, art supplies, sports equipment, and that's about it. I will live like this forever and my only motivation to become very rich is to help other people.
If I work as a reasonably successful IT entrepreneur (I don't think I am going to be Gates, Brinn or Zuckerberg). At most I will be able to give away few million to charity/philanthropy. That is going to have a relatively limited impact. International development funding is $130 billion / year.
Taking my skills and helping spending those $130 billion sensibly, by applying my skills is having a considerably bigger impact, I think.
My team is routinely involved in country level data-to-decision work around things like drinking water supply, sanitation access, food security, agriculture efficiency, climate change adaptation, disaster respons etc. If I add up the population of the countries where we our tools are used for rural drinking water mapping and prioritisation of investments, we end up with about half a billion people.
For me, the best way to use my time I think is helping others by applying my skills to the problem at hand. Working for a faceless shareholder (mine and your pension fund and a bunch of rich people) on something that may be technically interesting, but didn't make a big positive impact on the world and the people in it, just wasn't enough for me anymore. What I do now is more satisfying and has a much bigger positive impact, I think.
edit: haha I'm dumb, just checked your profile.
But I've been poor (poorer than you appear to be), and I'd be pretty happy to never, ever go back.
Money is a lubricant for so many things.
In my case though, it's not about "not worth my time". It's just that I am always tired and thus somewhat cranky, unhealthy and have a lot of things to care for -- debts, teeth fixes (and several other health issues), proper TV stand and bedroom floor fixators, get proper kitchenware (like, I have a pan that USED to be teflon for example), you name it -- loads of thigns to care for because they simply aren't where I want them to be. And I am talking things I find basic, not luxuries.
While I am in this drama, I really do find it hard to just screw everything and go fix an old PC or a bike lying around.
I started finding inner peace in tinkering with things but it's an uphill battle against my stress and messed-up life -- and it's gonna take a while for me to fully get there.
No real topic in my comment. Just wanted to offer you another point of view.
How old are you? Do you have children? Sick or elderly family to take care of?
I get a kick out of young people in the software industry talking about how easy it is. Of course it is when you're by yourself with very particular interests. But life circumstances can and do change.
Earlier in my career, I chose jobs based on interest, challenge, excitement, and fun. As a result, I had a low salary history.
When I turned 45, I found myself in a position where, in absolute terms, I was making significantly less than the average for my experience and education in my area; relatively, I was making much less than coworkers who were significantly less competent (I make no claims as to my absolute competence) and receiving much less respect. To the extent that I was called in when the sky was falling but was ignored when pointing out that and obviously poor decision would result in the sky falling.
Fortunately, I had a habit of packing money into a brokerage account and a modest inheritance, so I am now happily unemployed and don't have to deal with the horseshit.
I just have to figure out what to do when I'm 75 and broke.
Your experience is something I fear will share in just several years if I don't get off my ass and invest in my future.
To be fair, I had a plethora of pretty valid reasons which I'll not list here. I grew to realize they gradually devolved in mere excuses however in my mind. They were valid for 5-6 years (between 19 and 25, let's say, and even that's a lot of time). Beyond those I just kind of loved the slack they were giving me.
TL;DR: I am stressed, tired and realizing that if I don't start getting much more things done, I'll face a VERY GRIM future.
If you live outside the US in some country where human basic needs are guaranteed, your approach would make more sense to me!
(You can see this dynamic at work in the small here on HN. Getting a lot of upvotes has more to do with getting a pithy comment in early enough that it rises to the top where it gets noticed before the story falls off the front page and people stop paying attention. The wisest comment in the world won't get any love if it's submitted after the story drops off the home page. A similar dynamic also plays itself out on the New page. It's even more dramatic there because very few people ever look at the New page. And yet, the more participate, the more likely you are to hit an upvote jackpot.)
Smart people tend to overthink to much.
many smart people overthink, constantly, and to a fault. it usually manifests in the form of 'what if something goes wrong???' and spirals from there.
any rich person will tell you, things go wrong constantly, and at the worst possible time. the only important thing is your confidence in your ability to fix things when they break.
That is because we compare to the successful rich only, not all those who tried to become rich and utterly failed.
This is just masculine vs feminine thinking. Or VC versus slow growth. Or the way we nurture children in the West vs cats, or in Africa. Or quality vs quantity.
You never hear about all the times people prayed to $diety and it didn't help. You never hear about all those people who went to Stanford and didn't graduate. You never hear about all those people who made a startup and failed. OK, you do (on the latter, here), but it takes courage, shame, and selfishness.
PS: You might wanna use some capital letters at the start of a sentence.
really? i hear about plenty of failures all around me. i see restaurants shutting down left and right. i see people having mental breakdowns, public freakouts, people drop out of school. marriages fall apart, houses get repossessed, stock markets crash, people go bankrupt, even commit suicide.
startups failing and people not getting rich is honestly the least, most insignificant of all of life's failures.
but so what? so just do nothing with your life? never try anything? grow up.
That's not the point. The point is that many fail, the success / failure ratio is low. Period. No need to be judgmental past that. Or resort to namecalling.
If you think someone is trolling. Don't reply. Ignore them. Heck, report them.
http://www.shenlanguage.org/lambdassociates/htdocs/blog/bipo...
I can add that academia is generally equally part of the same order. The game gets quite annoying after a while, since you realize one is basically doing the same x + delta thing and calling it the next great coming.
I don't know much about Harvey, but ironically I found this article http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/steve-harvey-success-series-ki...
>Spend time with a person who is very successful in some field or pursuit; it doesn't matter what.
After a few minutes you'll probably think, "Wait, this guy isn't any smarter than me."
After a few more minutes you'll probably think, "Hey, I'm actually smarter than he is."
Success doesn't require a high IQ or some special intangible quality that you don't have. Successful people only become "special" after they succeed; before they put in all that time and effort they were just like everyone else.
Spend time with a few successful people and you will realize you are just as capable of achieving great things.
I disagree with some of this, as above.
There's some of each, some lucky and some skilled. But I think skill plays a bigger role in the variance of similarly situated people. Luck in the sense of where you're born, how privileged your family is, etc play a larger role than luck later in life, I think.
I also consider brains a luck factor as well.
That's the conventional wisdom, but is it really true? Or do they just have above average mechanical skills?
I followed Carson closely during the presidential campaign and I saw no evidence that he's particularly smart (and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary).
And what exactly is it about Carson's background that makes you rate his performance as "amazing"? He seemed amazingly bad to me. I've even watched some of Carson's performances as a motivational speaker before he got into politics and he still seemed to me like (how shall I put this?) not the brightest light in the firmament.
I'd even put "willingness to put up with BS for an eventual reward" in that category, see marshmallow studies and e.g. http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20080910/delayed-gratificati...
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/seven-nobe... might change your mind on whether there are smart YECs. Apparently the inventor of the MRI machine was one.
A powerful brain is like an engine with more horsepower and torque - like a fast car, if you're going the wrong way it will just get you there even faster.
It's very human to be unwilling to admit error or change your mind. The smarter you are, the more tools you have at your disposal to reason out complicated methods by which you may be correct. Of course, if your position is untenable enough, even these methods will appear ludicrous from the outside.
You can, therefore, be an excellent doctor and even develop new methods for brain surgery while being simultaneously unwilling to drop absurd beliefs inculcated into you during childhood. Yes, you sound stupid to everyone else, but if you've extended and reinforced these beliefs over your entire lifetime you may be so unwilling to drop them that ridicule isn't enough of a push.
Interestingly, you don't need to have mensa-level IQ to achieve the above either. Hard work and grit is far more important, which is what the article is saying as well.
Yes, and that's exactly the world we live in today. Most people don't work hard enough in their teenage-years/20s to become high paying doctors/lawyers/bankers.
The number you should care about is net-worth. High net worth from a lifetime of careful financial decisions is much more indicative of success than being in the 1% for a year or two. It requires hard work, planning, and life-long frugality. This is in line with OPs assertion that working hard and planning for the future is uncommon and will get you far.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/07/news/economy/top-1/index.htm...
http://www.investmentu.com/article/detail/35049/mailbag-how-...
whatsmypercent.com utilizes some good datasets to build out income percentiles. They suggest that $100k/year puts in the the 96% percentile. The 80% percentile starts around $42k/year.
That being said, it is kind of a long tail situation, due to the effects of wealth inequality in this country. The 99% percentile starts at $193k/year.
>Not much luck involved there.
Except being born in a white rich household with access to food, water, shelter, support system, good high school so you can go to an elite college. Do you think everyone born in Africa/China (just to name a few countries) have the option to take this route you describe?
A high IQ is surely a good thing to have and will make it easier for one to become successful, but if you totally lack the skill of 'getting your way' in the social maze that surrounds our daily lives, it will probably be a lot harder.
I am too lazy and don't have the concentration span to pay attention much in meetings, but can generally utter something profound near the end which makes it look like I was paying attention the whole time.
I have always assumed I'm just coasting by on a pretty useful brain.
I however do feel that I'm lazy, and have "cheated" my way through life by cunning rather than legitimately solving problems the way they're "supposed" to. I guess that's a skill in its own right, but it's made it harder for me to actually learn new stuff because my brain wants to get by with as little work as possible.
Are you self-made or did you inherit it? No offense intended either way, I just mean that anyone can be "lazy, impulsive" etc. and be a 1%er if they have a trust fund. If you're self-made, odds are that you see yourself this way but actually aren't (similar to supermodels that call themselves fat or ugly), or you got this way after you made the money and now have the freedom to act any way you choose.
The difference is that some people are lazy to do, some are lazy to think, some to interact socially, .. I'm yet to know a person that is not lazy. By observation, I consider that people tend to be lazy in areas where they are not naturally good.
I'm not affiliated with CFAR or anything, this is an option I am seriously considering though.
The only thing I don't struggle to find intrinsic motivation for is programming. I am yet to find a long term goal that resonates at all. All success so far in my life feels entirely attributable to getting bored and saying "what else is there?" and/or seeking external validation. I earn just enough to fly business class whenever I fly because I enjoy the comfort aspect and the external validation that comes with it. The next financial jump is likely to come from wanting to fly private, because why not?
It seems self evident to me that this is deeply unhealthy, but ironically I'm yet to find a solution.
Earlier when I didn't really want anything I thought it would be nice to make a bunch of money so that my future self who had a better idea about what he wanted would have that. This turned out ok, currently a lot of what I want is to know that I won't have to work if I don't want to.
I think most of the smartest people have figured out that there are more important things in life than becoming as rich as possible.
Moreover, it appears to me that the paper
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/47/13354.short?rss=1
was already discussed here?
Every successful company has a dark side.
A lot of people with high IQs may also be very rational / logical in their approach towards life. They might think objectively, and that's the point. They're right - they don't need the excess wealth at all. They've accounted for everything they needed to - their life, their security, and that of their children, spouse, parents, etc. They're for the most part content with their personal lives, their success, their jobs and most importantly their income. They're I assume, smart enough to know what could make them more money, and how they need to behave and interact. It's not ignorance; it's sheer conscious choices.
On the other hand, there are those who aren't smart / wise enough. They'll make much more money, but may not be as nearly satisfied, no matter how much they make.
We might be mistaking intelligence / business-sense with wisdom, which is a higher domain - it's got more to it, than just IQ.
IQ has a misleading (and factually inaccurate) name. The Q stands for quotient, but an actual IQ is not a quotient at all. IQs are ordinal ONLY. They allow you (to the extent that IQ tests measure intelligence) to rank people, not assign numerical values. It is not possible from IQ scores to say "Alice is x% more intelligent than Bob", only "Alice is more intelligent than Bob".
Due to the non-cardinal nature of IQ scores, the correlation with income as reported in the article isn't something that you can really do. To do this, we would need a cardinal measurement of intelligence instead.
http://www.michna.com/iq.htm
Relevant paragraph quoted:
Misconception: The IQ is a direct measure of brain performance. For example, somebody with an IQ of 120 can do 20% more mental work in the same amount of time than somebody with an IQ of 100.
In truth the IQ is a purely statistical measure. It has no direct relation to brain performance, is not proportional to it, and doesn't even have any linear or otherwise straightforward relation to it. The only thing you can say is that somebody with a higher IQ will show higher scores on most other brain performance tests as well, but the IQ doesn't say how much higher.
I also got downvoted in the following comment sometime ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7977021
where I quoted researchers saying basically that creativity tests are the "...best childhood predictors we have of future real-world achievements..."
IQ tests aren't a great measure of plasticity in the first place - they're just the best thing we have to measure on a wide scale. Plasticity is a far more personal attribute. Many IQ tests just repeat the same problems, and a person can improve their score without really learning anything but how to take an IQ test.
Throw someone something entirely new and you may get real insight into their mental plasticity.
When I hire programmers for a job I'm looking for characteristics like consistency, patience, memory, organisation skills, attention to detail, a touch of pendantry and a reasonable analytical mind. I don't actively avoid extremely intelligent people, but given the work at hand I certainly don't care if someone is or not.
So in the world of non-exceptional development, character is king.
Likewise in business, except at times of revolutionary change, character always wins out. Persistence, focus, a dash of greed, people skills...Brains are right at the bottom of your priorities.
When I was 17 in 1989 I was desperate for a job in 'computers' as it was all I knew, I was damn good at programming etc, but had the usual experience trap - no experience equalled no job.
Being naive I paid attention to one of those adverts in the back of the weekend newspapers. I don't know if they were a UK only thing but they had a puzzle and stated that if you could solve it within 1/2 hour you could be a member of Mensa, which if anybody doesn't know is a club for those with a high IQ.
I completed the puzzle then got posted back another one, if I could complete this within an hour I would be invited back to a proper, invigilated exam. Passed both, paid my dues and became a member of the clever club, along with people at the time like Sir Clive Sinclair. My mum was very proud.
I went to one of their meetups shortly afterwards in a bad cheap suit hoping to meet some other clever person who'd recognise my skills and give me a big wad of cash and a job.
It didn't turn out that way. There were 30~ men at one side of the club all staring at their drinks, with 3 woman at the other side about 20 metres away keeping away from the fellas. One woman came in by mistake to the side with the men at which point they all swarmed her. The only topic of conversation they had went like:
"What's your IQ?"
"x"
"oh, mines <x+10>"
When it came to IQ these people were the top of the pile, with social interaction however they were abjectly hopeless. They'd be able to build you a nuclear bomb, but they wouldn't be able to sell or explain it, or even go to the shop to buy the parts for it.
This encounter came at a good point for me - it made me relax a bit about being 'clever', and showed the importance of other indicators. I let my membership lapse and wince when I occasionally see 'member of Mensa' on a CV.
The gender ratio was around 60/40 men/women. I don't think anyone even mentioned the term "IQ". It was mostly like a student group outing with people drinking, talking, playing board games, going to sauna (this was in Finland), swimming, flying around in a inflatable boat someone had converted to an ultralight floatplane and such.