
IQ is only a minor factor in success - tempw
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-22/if-you-re-so-smart-why-aren-t-you-rich
======
errantspark
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.

~~~
icelancer
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.

~~~
CYHSM
I am rather curious what type of company you created. You mentioned sports
science? Something in the direction of moneyball?

~~~
smnplk
Email him :) mike dot anon at hotmail

------
lisper
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.)

~~~
whack
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.

~~~
lisper
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.

~~~
whack
> _" 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.

~~~
lisper
Do you have any actual evidence to support that assertion, or are you just
affirming the consequent?
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent))

~~~
whack
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.

~~~
lisper
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.

[http://www.investmentu.com/article/detail/35049/mailbag-
how-...](http://www.investmentu.com/article/detail/35049/mailbag-how-to-know-
if-youre-rich)

~~~
classybull
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.

------
peteretep
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.

~~~
croon
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.

~~~
peteretep
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.

~~~
croon
That's not a hijack, so it's quite alright. I replied simply because I
recognized a similarly typed human :)

------
asher_
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.

~~~
Noseshine
For some more details, I bookmarked this page that explains "IQ", so that I
can post it in forums whenever the subject comes up :-)

[http://www.michna.com/iq.htm](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._

~~~
Noseshine
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??

~~~
chriscool
I think many people here just don't like it when people tell them that IQ is
not as important as they think.

I also got downvoted in the following comment sometime ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7977021](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..."

------
k__
Much is luck, yes. But also, much seems to be doing the right thing.

I know a bunch of founders of smallish IT companies. If I talk to them, they
don't seem too smart. But they did a company, and kept it running for many
years. So they learned stuff about running a company.

Knowing how to run a company is a rather important skill if you want to get
rich. And you can get this skill, even if you aren't smart. You probably won't
make millions but more than a senior dev or something.

At one point you can even do it with a low skill level. Because you can employ
many smart people who keep the company running even if you don't know what's
going on anymore.

What angers me is that you often need money to get started and almost all
people with rich parents I knew did it with their parents money. Yes they
failed a few times, but who cared, they were young and their parents would
help them out. By the time they were 30, they had 10 years of founding
experience.

~~~
collyw
I was thinking when I read the headline "having rich parents is a bigger
factor".

------
yummyfajitas
The actual paper, available on sci-hub, does not agree with this innumerate
journalist's interpretation of it.

[http://www.pnas.org.sci-
hub.ac/content/113/47/13354.short?rs...](http://www.pnas.org.sci-
hub.ac/content/113/47/13354.short?rss=1)

In fact, the paper shows that IQ is a great predictor. Personality is a much
worse predictor on highly g-loaded tasks, and a good predictor on some others
(e.g. wages). But (IQ, personality) pairs are an even better predictor than IQ
or personality.

The only way you can draw the conclusion that IQ doesn't matter much is if you
compare to predictors of the form (IQ, personality, achievement, grades) (and
a few similar ones). Shockingly, using achievement to predict achievement
yields a more accurate predictor than using (IQ, personality).

(I really do not understand this paper's methodology of graphing r^2 values. I
don't get how this was published, but lets assume that was a reasonable way to
go.)

This paper also ignores the fact that IQ, grades, and many personality traits
are correlated. Insofar as these metrics are correlated, it completely
invalidates this analysis; some of what the authors attribute to personality
or grades is actually just the explanatory power of a second IQ measurement.

~~~
hsitz
After reading your comment, I was surprised to take a look at the paper and
find that it does, indeed, appear to support conclusion that IQ is less
important than many people think. Neither the paper nor the linked article
argue that IQ is not a factor. But both say that other factors are more
important, this is clear from both the abstract and the first paragraph of the
article, where it says, "Personality is generally more predictive than IQ on a
variety of important life outcomes."

Of course, personality+IQ will be more predictive than either alone. But the
"innumerate" journalist seems to me to have done a better job of capturing the
gist of the paper than you. (Whether the paper's methodology and analysis are
sound is a different question from whether the journalist reported its
findings correctly.)

~~~
yummyfajitas
I don't know what "less important than many people think" means. It's true
that the article suggests people think 50% of variance is explained by IQ, and
it turns out that literally nothing in this paper explains even 25% of
variance.

On log-wages, IQ explains 30-50% of the _explained variance_ depending on
whether you go by figure 4 or 5. It does a similar job for education and
welfare usage.

So it seems that if people have any misconceptions, it's merely about how much
of the variance in log wages at age 40 is explainable by early life
measurements.

------
sofaofthedamned
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.

~~~
kiiski
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.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
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.

------
walrus1066
I think your parents socioeconomic class has a big influence on your
likelihood to be 'successful' ([http://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21595437-america...](http://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21595437-america-no-less-socially-mobile-it-was-generation-ago-
mobility-measured)).

Social/networking should also play a big role.

My anecdotal observation is, having both of the above (from upper class family
and good at networking) is the biggest determinant of success. It sort of
makes sense, the upper class bit gives you access to other successful/wealthy
people (through private school, parents network), and the social skills the
ability to leverage this access.

Also, having loads of money from family makes it very easy to succeed. In the
UK you'd just buy as much real estate as possible, farm off the management to
an agency, and just sit on your arse while the assets gain in value.

------
wolfgke
> The study found that grades and achievement-test results were markedly
> better predictors of adult success than raw IQ scores. That might seem
> surprising -- after all, don’t they all measure the same thing? Not quite.
> Grades reflect not just intelligence but also what Heckman calls “non-
> cognitive skills,” such as perseverance, good study habits _and the ability
> to collaborate_ [emphasis by me] -- in other words, conscientiousness.

I would consider myself as quite conscientious - but working together with
people who have less of this trait always ends/ended in a tragedy. So I would
rather assume that there are also reasons for the hypothesis that
conscientiousness rather hinders your ability to collaborate.

> University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth found that IQ
> scores also reflected test-takers’ motivation and effort. Diligent,
> motivated kids will work harder to answer tough questions than equally
> intelligent but lazier ones.

When I was at school I took multiple IQ tests (I don't know what their exact
scores were, but they were really high). At that time I found the problems in
the IQ test really exciting. A few years ago I had to solve some "logic
puzzles" (what image in a 3x3 or 4x4 box with one missing fits by the hidden
rules). 15 years ago I would have considered them as really easy (though
"formally" they were not). I would say that since I finished studying
mathematics, I find these puzzles much harder. Did studying mathematics make
me worse in logic? Surely not (quite the opposite). Did studying mathematics
make me worse in solving "logic puzzles" in IQ tests? I'm very sure it did.

~~~
lgessler
> but working together with people who have less of this trait always
> ends/ended in a tragedy.

If by that you mean you were then unable to collaborate with them, perhaps you
have less of this than you imagined?

~~~
wolfgke
> If by that you mean you were then unable to collaborate with them, perhaps
> you have less of this than you imagined?

I am not an English native speaker, so perhaps I misunderstand some subtleties
that exist in the English language, but not in the German translation of the
word "conscientiousness". The dictionary translates "conscientiousness" to
German "Gewissenhaftigkeit" and "Pflichtbewusstsein". I tend to work hard -
thus I am conscientious. But I also expect other people to do so - so I don't
tolerate loafing on my behalf; again a trait of "conscientiousness", but
exactly what leads to difficulties working together with other people who are
less conscientious.

------
gozur88
The assumption here is that everyone sees the accumulation of wealth as the
most important goal in life. I don't think that's accurate.

~~~
Clubber
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.

~~~
eterm
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).

~~~
zeroer
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.

~~~
cryptarch
How is holding large amounts of cash bad? I don't understand, could you
elaborate on that?

~~~
varjag
You are losing them to inflation.

~~~
forgetsusername
At a very slow rate, at very low risk. There are always tradeoffs. I think bad
about cash.

~~~
varjag
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.

~~~
forgetsusername
If you stuff the cash in a mattress and sit around for 20 years. But if you do
that, inflation isn't your biggest risk.

------
scandox
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.

~~~
PlugTunin
Pedantry, not pendantry.

~~~
scandox
You're hired

------
exolymph
I can answer the headline question very easily: because being smart isn't all
that's required.

~~~
hourislate
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.

~~~
dpc59
In my experience business luck and knowing the right people can at least
partially be the result of hard work.

------
trishume
The low correlation of IQ and future wage is surprising to me given what I've
seen elsewhere. For example
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Sternberg2/publi...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Sternberg2/publication/228859220_The_predictive_value_of_IQ/links/09e4150d72ed6b102a000000.pdf)
finds that IQ predicts 15% of the variance in income and 25% of the variance
in socioeconomic status.

Also See
[http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf)
where IQ tests predict future job performance measurements across many studies
as well as job interviews and only slightly worse than work sample tests.

Although I did look at the original study and that number comes from a linear
regression of log wages and IQ percentiles. I'm not convinced that the R^2
number you get out of those two numbers really means much, the correlation is
highly significant at least.

~~~
rch
Why do these studies primarily look at wages? Personal autonomy might be a
better metric, just more difficult to quantify.

~~~
trishume
Perhaps that study looks at wages because I specifically looked for another
study that also measured IQ-wage correlation. There are studies measuring
other things, I was just looking for something to compare to the study the
article mentions.

And I would argue that personal autonomy is just another proxy. If you're
trying to measure if IQ is helpful, perhaps what you really want to look at is
life satisfaction.

------
therealpeal
A truly smart person will have a very impressive, convincing answer to this
question.

~~~
Clubber
Having a rich daddy is probably the largest influence in someone's chances of
being rich themselves, at least in the US.

~~~
spajus
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.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
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.

[https://despair.com/products/overconfidence](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".

~~~
tjfl
> Bill Gates, for example, had a trust fund from his grandfather that gave him
> a cushion in case he failed.

Do you happen to have a source? I'd not heard this and was curious as to the
amount.

~~~
nl
_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.

[1] [http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/](http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/)

[2] [https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/link-
suggestion/wpcd_2008-09...](https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/link-
suggestion/wpcd_2008-09_augmented/wp/b/Bill_Gates.htm)

~~~
Noseshine
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.

~~~
RyanZAG
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.

~~~
Noseshine
You are very, _very_ confused about what is likely vs. what is merely
possible.

------
amorphid
It's "easy" to make money if you aren't super concerned with the means through
which you acquire it.

~~~
dmichulke
Like cooking meth and such? :-)

Please elaborate!

------
qazpot
It is so nice to see that Money is now the only criteria for success.

By that logic J.K Rowling is a more successful author than the Hemingway,
Eliot, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Tolkien and the entire Beat generation plus several
others put together.

~~~
nolemurs
I know right? We jump from

> how much of the difference between people’s incomes can be tied to IQ

to

> So if IQ is only a minor factor in success, what is it that separates the
> low earners from the high ones?

The second doesn't follow at all. Lots of evidence suggests that beyond a
certain baseline, income is almost uncorrelated to happiness, and I wouldn't
be at all surprised to learn that the highest income earners are _less_ happy
for the life they've chosen. I would not categorize that as success. If you're
smart, and not crazy, your goal isn't to maximize your income.

------
fsloth
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 :)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus)

~~~
brownbat
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.)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/11/20/surpri...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/11/20/surprise-
humanities-degrees-provide-great-return-on-investment/#4c8a4f0994a9)

------
SyneRyder
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.

~~~
acqq
And isn't the current title an editorializing of the article's title, against
HN guidelines? I don't find the original too linkbaity.

Moreover, it appears to me that the paper

[http://www.pnas.org/content/113/47/13354.short?rss=1](http://www.pnas.org/content/113/47/13354.short?rss=1)

was already discussed here?

------
supercon
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.

~~~
VladKovac
Stopped reading this comment after "Gladwell".

------
cyberjunkie
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.

~~~
whenwillitstop
This is a narrative, it's not what happens in reality.

------
mistercow
I don't understand why people so often say "success" when they mean "income".
Those are different concepts.

------
eikenberry
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.

------
caseysoftware
> _After following some 1,000 New Zealanders for more than 30 years,
> researchers concluded that tests of language, behavioral skills and
> cognitive abilities taken when children were just three years old could
> predict who was most likely to need welfare, commit crimes, or become
> chronically ill._

Whether this is true or not, this is going to have huge ramifications as
people believe it and try their various notions of pre-crime and their latest
"save humanity" scheme.

And if it is true, it has the potential to disrupt society as certain groups -
by ethnicity, socioeconomic, geographic, religion, etc - tend to fall in or
out of this bucket: the idea that "[group X] is always/never on welfare and
therefore..."

Without even knowing the rest of the "therefore" it's fascinating and scary to
consider.

------
Sohakes
Hmm, I was thinking... being ambitious, maybe a little greedy, should be a
great factor for "success" in terms of importance and money.

I mean, many intelligent people I know don't care much about this kind of
success anyway, so I think it's clear that it's more correlated to personality
than IQ. Some personality types will have greater success, simply because they
are searching for it.

IQ is still correlated simply because, in our society, we came to think that
this kind of success is desirable, so many people want it, even if they are
not that ambitious. So if you have a high IQ, you will probably have a decent
income and moderate success, even if you don't want to be rich or something
like that.

------
keefe
In broad terms of course emotional intelligence is very useful when
interacting with other humans.

to pick at the 1-2% numbers a bit the impact of IQ depends on the individual;
physical size/height is only profoundly important for the success of certain
people - athletes primarily. however, both also have correlation with success.
I'm sure the paper was more careful than this article.

IQ is often used as a proxy for intelligence, when in fact it's just a set of
standard metrics that nobody thinks is that good beyond a certain point -
after all the term comes from early attempts to quantify developmental delay.
Leaving that aside for a moment.

------
arethuza
Becoming successful in lot of fields appears to be less about _doing_
challenging stuff (where raw intelligence is perhaps most applicable) and
perhaps more about scaling an organization to manage other people doing the
challenging stuff.

Most of the brightest people I know have either no interest in, or an active
aversion to, "managing" people in any sense whatsoever.

------
WhitneyLand
How much of a factor is mental health in success?

Someone could be a 4th standard deviation IQ genius yet be debilitated by
anxiety, depression, or some other condition.

On the flipside many successful people have credited drugs with some part of
their success by boosting ambition, endurance, creativity, confidence, etc. If
a Cocaine substitute was discovered that had no negative side effects, could
this positively affect scientific progress?

Occasionally a mental "disability" can seemingly be related to success. So
many great scientists have been on the Autistic spectrum, or suffered from
severe OCD. Can the success of the person be separated from the disorder?
Could "cures" for Autism and OCD actually negatively affect scientific
progress?

------
johnwheeler
I like to think of IQs using a car analogy.

You can have someone with an 8000 HP motor for a brain cranking away like a
nitromethane dragster. These people don't have a ton of practical utility, but
if you point them in the right direction and let 'em rip, they shred through
certain problems like chainsaws through logs.

Then you've got Jeeps. Much more practical they are. They cover lots of
terrain, but they're not as optimized on the street as typical sedans, and not
as good on rough terrain as Humvees.

If you want to be successful, be a Porsche. Optimize for driving well on the
most practical terrain that can take you the most places.

------
VladKovac
Contentiousness is a ~50% heritable personality trait, only slightly less than
IQ.

------
walrus1066
A good lse lecture about the role of luck in success and failure, and how
people interpret it asymmetrically (my success was due to hard work and talent
vs I failed due to bad luck/didn't get a break), with some interesting social
experiments that showcase this:

[http://www.lse.ac.uk/InternationalInequalities/Videos-
Podcas...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/InternationalInequalities/Videos-
Podcasts/Success-and-Luck-good-fortune-and-the-myth-of-meritocracy.aspx)

------
pacomerh
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.

------
anovikov
Most of the cash-rich people i know are not smart at all. They are just
conservative and can withhold themselves from impulse spending, and
introverts, so they don't need to spend much to hang out with friends, which
allowed them to build decent savings and build passive income (mostly by
buying residential and commercial property, while that will be different in
developed countries).

Most income-rich on the other hand, are smart.

------
visarga
"Don't eat the marshmallow" (willpower / delayed gratification) is more
important or at least as important a predictor of success as IQ. It's not
always about books smarts, but real life smarts.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment)

------
JoeAltmaier
But is it because we reward (unjustly) those that score well and go to
prestigious schools? Society is certainly not a blind test; we cannot conclude
that these 'predictors' will actually help an employer choose a high-
functioning employee. It only predicts who an employer will pay more. Heck,
for the best predictor that, we only need to look in their pants.

------
hintingonwhoiam
So, the takeaway is... hard work > IQ in influence. Sounds like shitty science
wrapped up in nice language... booooooo

------
Hydraulix989
IQ is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for success.

If you aren't smart, you get through life in a walking haze, as others
continually take advantage of you, and you are never truly aware of what is
going on.

For example, you'll mismanage your money, or forget crucial details, or you'll
make the wrong decisions.

------
setra
IQ and education level are well correlated. It would be odd if that did not
also correlate with success.

------
alkonaut
If I were to guess I'd bet a low IQ is a stronger predictor for failure than a
high IQ is a predictor for success.

Presumably, once you have "enough" capability for abstract thinking for what
we consider success, then other factors, internal and external, will decide.

------
enterx
High IQ here too.

Used an algebra to rotate and combine equations back in school to solve them.
Never knew what they were really about until the uni times.

Playing puzzles with the rest of the class was quite boring.

Discipline however plays the important role for success, I agree, so does the
environment and DNA.

------
baccheion
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.

------
ken47
Does it not require intelligence to understand how to be fulfilled without
wealth?

I think most of the smartest people have figured out that there are more
important things in life than becoming as rich as possible.

------
plg
IQ is only a minor factor in intelligence.

Hampshire, A., Highfield, R. R., Parkin, B. L., & Owen, A. M. (2012).
Fractionating human intelligence. Neuron, 76(6), 1225-1237.

------
gerby
Why measure an "Intelligence Quotient" with methods of examination that have
been shown to be a pseudo-science? People should be measuring "Intelligence
Potential" using proper scientific methods with less subjectivity involved,
and more objective evidence used as a way to get closer to true, justified
beliefs.

------
DoodleBuggy
Mostly, it's about perseverance, and luck.

------
NotThe1Pct
Willingness to cross the line between crime and honesty appears to be the
major factor behind success, to me.

Every successful company has a dark side.

------
faragon
TL;DR: correlation vs causation.

------
bryanrasmussen
as an idiot I support this.

