I think there are too many confounding variables to make any conclusions. It's pretty well established that MaxIQ is determined by genetics, but whether you reach your max is determined by the environment you grow up in. So if you have smart, wealthy parents, there is a good chance that your MaxIQ is pretty high and that you will get the environment necessary to reach that max, while also having the advantage of generational wealth. Teasing that apart seems nearly impossible.
That being said, anecdotally all of the wealthy people I know tend to also be some of the smartest people I know, but not all of the smartest people I know are wealthy. It seems like being smart is necessary for building and keeping wealthy, but it isn't sufficient. And also being smart doesn't necessarily cause wealth building.
So in summary, it seems that intelligence is necessary but not sufficient to be wealthy, but intelligence doesn't cause wealthiness.
I've not been following along with this topic, apparently it's been a thing for quite a while. The closing paragraph seems to sum up the point of this pretty well. I don't know enough about this topic to pick a side.
"Overall, the fallacy in Taleb’s reasoning is he assumes that everyone is put in the same box regardless of IQ or individual preferences, and outcomes are determined randomly, when that is not the case. People not only have different preferences but are also competing with each other."
tl;dr: Taleb argues that there is no correlation between wealth and IQ (which the article accepts), but this article argues that this misses the explanation that this is because plenty of high-IQ people don't prioritize being wealthy. If you instead look at people who prioritize being wealthy, high-IQ people do successfully acquire more wealth because their IQ allows them too -- therefore IQ does matter for wealth.
This is fascinating and a really valuable perspective. Amusingly, it's a case of "causation doesn't imply correlation".
So to draw a further conclusion:
If everyone prioritized wealth equally, then the overall statistics would show higher IQ correlating with more wealth.
Does this actually mean that there's a greater tendency among higher-IQ people to not pursue wealth? E.g. perhaps a larger proportion of middle-IQ people prioritize wealth, while a larger proportion of higher-IQ people prioritize academia or the creative arts or just a healthier work-life balance?
>If everyone prioritized wealth equally, then the overall statistics would show higher IQ correlating with more wealth.
This seems like unjustified conjecture. There are so many variables at play in determining the ability to gain wealth; if I'm "high IQ" (rolling my eyes at this term) and want to gain wealth, but I have to care for my ailing mother, or raise four children on my own, will I succeed?
One can make a lot of money on YouTube without needing a formal education, and I struggle to see how you would measure the "IQ" of the successful YouTube stars.
Isn't there a flawed assumption that you need a high paying job that requires high IQ to amass wealth?
If that is Taleb's main point then he is beating a long dead horse. This has been the common understanding, at least in Psychology, forever. Intelligence is much more varied than can be measured with a simple test and IQ more just measures your chances of success within a certain context.
That being said, anecdotally all of the wealthy people I know tend to also be some of the smartest people I know, but not all of the smartest people I know are wealthy. It seems like being smart is necessary for building and keeping wealthy, but it isn't sufficient. And also being smart doesn't necessarily cause wealth building.
So in summary, it seems that intelligence is necessary but not sufficient to be wealthy, but intelligence doesn't cause wealthiness.