This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Are you new here? Not only is there a nearly perfect correlation between IQ and income, there is no ceiling. A person with an IQ of 150 will (on average) be wealthier than a mere simpleton with an IQ of 120.
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2023/02/there-is-no-iq-threshold-effect-also-not-for-income/
You can argue about causation all you want, but how could higher IQ not be correlated with higher wealth? That just doesn't even make sense. I mean, seriously read about the 8 billionaires I linked. All are EXTREME outliers in intelligence. At least +3 STD.
Without re-litigating the HBD debate, consider that the academic literature on this subject is extremely compromised and dishonest. Throw it into the dumpster and start from first principles.
If this is going to be a discussion where we're simply hurling academic papers at each other that neither of us are going to read, then I see little point in continuing it.
Read the links provided and your question will likely be answered.
My entire point is that I reject your framing of the matter that IQ spells out an aristocracy as well as the proposition that we live in a meritocracy. My counter-narrative to that is that luck matters more than talent. Since you don't directly deny that outright or do much to address it, I suppose I'll take the concessions. But I'll add further on the matter for anyone who isn't satisfied with a dismissive sneer.
To reiterate again, when it comes to wealth, rich people simply aren’t that much smarter than poor people. Zagorsky pointed out that “people with above-average IQ scores are only 1.2 times as likely as individuals with below-average IQ scores to have a comparatively high net worth,” which means, “relatively large numbers” of people with low IQs are rich. And even to the extent that there are more rich people with high IQs than poor, this is 'entirely' explained by luck, not talent. Rich people are only that 1.2 times more likely to be smarter insofar as they were advantaged to develop more of their potential IQ by the fortunes of their environment (like “growing up rich” for example). Once you control for all that, no correlation remains.
Instead of a 1:1 correspondence, high IQ barely helps and the curve is pretty flat. So yes, there is 'some' correlation, but it’s weak. Zagorsky said “the average income difference between a person with an IQ score in the normal range (100) and someone in the top 2% of society (130) is currently between $6000 and $18,500 per year,” or roughly on average just $12,000. That isn't actually a lot. And he says, “the relationship is not very strong.” There is a stronger correlation at the highest incomes, few are so lucky, and the correlation is only notable for any IQ above average, after which more IQ makes little observable difference. “People with above-average IQ scores (> 100) are three times as likely as below-average IQ individuals to have a high (> $105,000) income,” that describes almost no one (only 10% of individuals earn so much), and all one needs to have so good a chance at that is any above-average IQ.
And so I'll reiterate again. Those who end up at the top will be mediocre or slightly above mediocre; not the best and brightest. Look at Zagorsky’s table. Look at how many high IQ people earn less than $30,000 a year, which is less than the U.S. national median. Look at how many earn less than $40,000, the national median for those holding a full time job. Almost all high-IQ people earn less than $60,000 a year, which is below the U.S. national median household income. And yet see how many low IQ people earn more than these amounts. Again, you'll see that luck matters more than IQ. We even know that skills matter more than intelligence (though even what skills you are taught is largely a function of luck, e.g. what social class you get born into, what schools you get sent to, what learning disabilities you're born with, etc) but when studied we find even skills are overwhelmed by luck in any correlation with success.
Agreed.
This doesn't seem to mesh with the data I've seen from Kirkegaard and others. I simply don't trust academics in the area of IQ research. Nor would I trust Soviet economists.
Looking at the 10 richest Americans, it's clear that all 10 have extreme outlier IQs on the high side. I'd say that all 10 have an IQ of at least 145, but even if we say they are "merely" at 130, the odds that this would happen through luck are less than 1 in a trillion.
I will grant that the presence of career academics might lower the average wage of high IQ people somewhat. This is far outweighed by doctors, lawyers, and software engineers who all (until recently) had to pass through an IQ filter.
In my personal life, I see a clear and obvious relationship between IQ and income. It's going to take a lot of high quality data to convince me to ignore the obvious data in front of my face. You may call that availability bias, I'll call it passing a shit test.
I don't disagree with your point, but arguing that rich people clearly have high IQ without any actual testing data is kinda circular, n'est pas?
I worry when we start getting into iq correlates with verbal indicators of intelligence which correlate with success academically which correlate with success professionally. It gets a little bit like front squat correlates with vertical jump correlates with volleyball talent so a 400lb front squat qualifies you for volleyball. You start to create errors.
Sure and I’ve seen data that strongly contradicts the claim that IQ is unrelated to income/wealth. I just don’t want to play the “here’s a study” game in a field that is deeply ideological and corrupt. So I revert to the evidence that is directly in front of my face.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's probably worth looking at the purported data, to convince yourself that you aren't being fooled by availability bias. Zagorsky is doing his sleight-of-hand pretty much out in the open. I've mentioned a few things in other comments. He also has a table with a range of less than +/- 2SD.
The claim "Almost all high-IQ people earn less than $60,000 a year, which is below the U.S. national median household income" doesn't appear in the study; it's misleading in two obvious ways. One, it's comparing per-capita income to household income. Two, the income figures are for 2004; median household income in 2004 was $44,000. And a less obvious joker -- the per-capita incomes are not individual incomes, but household incomes for single people and half that for married people.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
IQ is a bell curve, which means there's a lot more people in the middle than the ends. So that figure is greatly influenced by the mass of people near the center of the bell curve; that is, a randomly selected person is most likely (by a factor of more than 2:1) to be within 1SD of the median. It speaks to the strength of the correlation that, even considering that, a randomly selected person in the top half is 20% more likely to have high net worth than a randomly selected person in the bottom half.
$12,000 is indeed a lot, if the median is $40,000.
10% is not "almost no-one" and that claim does not mean "all one needs to have so good a chance at that is any above-average IQ"; that is, it does not mean that someone with an IQ of 101 is as likely to have a > $105,000 income than someone with an IQ of 120. And further, note that these graphs left off the "very rich".
More options
Context Copy link
Have you met many rich people? They're smart! Some are dumb but there's a clear and obvious connection between intellect and wealth! How many stupid people are on 500K comp packages in big tech companies? Some, presumably... but not many. Doctors, lawyers, tech people, entrepreneurs and high finance are pretty clever.
Statistics are all well and good but past a certain point, if they contradict obvious common sense... away with them! Ten thousand papers saying that intelligence has nothing to do with wealth wouldn't make it so.
Domain expertise can be taught to almost anyone. You have to be smart to be a doctor, but that doesn't mean you have to be a genius. Or even exceptional. Having worked in healthcare, I've met some incredibly stupid doctors, when you catch them outside their field of expertise. "Dumb" is not synonymous with "retarded," and "smart" is not synonymous with "genius."
And it's actually quite funny that you mention tech. Because that's the side of healthcare I'm directly engaged in. You couldn't imagine how many idiots proliferate in our field. Far from being the exception, most of us who work in it know first hand that it's the rule.
Many of cheap manufacturing jobs are sourced to Asia. Africa can't offer even that.
More options
Context Copy link
These examples of stupidity are so rareified, it's surreal. I also do some cybersecurity. Yes, cross-site scripting is a serious problem, there are all kinds of vulnerabilities floating around, people are negligent and complacent... But stupid people don't understand these kinds of highly abstract issues AT ALL. They fall for basic, bottom of the barrel scams. Many of them cannot spell or put a sentence together. Think about boomer facebook comments. Think about the stuff that happens on tiktok:
The Benadryl challenge, the blackout challenge, the cha cha slide challenge, the penny challenge, the skullbreaker challenge, the NyQuil chicken challenge... It goes on and on. There's a huge difference between people being lazy and self-serving to advance their career at the cost of the company and people driving into traffic or poisoning themselves because of a tiktok challenge. People self-sort, we surround ourselves in bubbles of people who all understand algebra or per-capita. We assume everyone is capable of spelling and can deal with basic computer issues. Many can't.
You're splitting hairs at this point. It fundamentally doesn't make any relevant difference to the point if a smart but lazy person is indistinguishable from an motivated idiot. Many extremely intelligent people lack basic social skills. I'd say they're pretty stupid as far as acting out their plans go. Nikola Tesla gave us the modern world and couldn't get laid at the same time. He was pretty stupid as far as evolution goes. I think your objection is still a facile and misleading one at best.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link