Theme: Productivity

IQ AND WHY SMART PEOPLE AREN’T OFTEN RICH

(from elsewhere)(archive) (or “wealth is a middle class occupation”)

I think Molyneux did a pretty good job.

Here is what I said in response to Taleb:

—(a) g measures what we attempt to measure (b) chance of success corresponds to a distribution of traits, (c) plus the utility of those traits, in service of the population under the bell curve within 1 SD.—

Which is the only answer that matters, and is something we have known for decades – it’s covered in the Millionaire Mind books and related research.

But to an economists it’s fairly obvious. Smart folk don’t amass money that often because we already HAVE an asset. Smart people don’t need anything else to compete. They don’t need anything else to signal with. (I mean, ask andy how easy it is to intimidate, humiliate, or shut down the average person (idiot)) In fact, if you are very intelligent the skill we must learn is now NOT to make people feel stupid, humiliated, or shut down.

So a little more color on the subject:

People most likely to gain wealth are in the middle and upper middle classes. People least likely to gain wealth are in the lower classes. Our ‘aristocracy’ today tends to consist of relatively invisible academic financial and political families, rather than wealth for this reason. We live in a middle class VISIBLE world but with an INVISIBLE aristocracy.

Why? Because you need to (a) be interested in (and not bored by) something (b) there are some number of people interested in, and (c) most people that you can serve are in the middle 2/3 of the curve. So knowing those OPERATIONAL RULES we would expect shortage at the bottom, a steep climb to 2/3, and shortage at the top. Which is what Taleb’s chart shows us. I mean, smart people have MANY, MANY Possible ways of being ‘successful’ (subjectively).

For example: I can tell fairly easily that Andy Curzon and Noam Chomsky, or that category of people who can read anything and speak nine or ten languages – all have higher IQ’s than I do. And I can enumerate what each can do that is superior.

My particular thing is that I don’t make mistakes, at the cost of limited lateral associations. I remember pretty much everything at the cost of short term memory. And I have trouble with more than one project at a time. But I will absolutely figure out any problem period, … given time to figure it out on my terms. These are not positive academic traits (rate of learning unrelated things, making one an exceptional manager, executive in every field), they are very positive lifetime traits (getting comparative advantage ‘right’ in high risk propositions.)

So, for example, as Higgs (Higgs boson) said “I would never get hired by a university today because I work slowly”. And we are creating a large number of ‘sufficiently successful’ college graduates that find safety in jobs that are extra market (which is why you used to go to college – to find income outside of market forces – particularly government, law, medicine, and teaching).

***So Taleb’s observation is statistically truth and operationally false.***

Which is pretty much what I try to teach people: any claim that cannot be stated in operational language, is an act of fraud.

So for example, no matter what I did,assuming we both invested in it, Andy would defeat me at chess (permutations of states), and Chomsky can give a long running detailed explanation of phenomenon without hesitation in search of words or phrasing (depth (or durability of short term memory) of ‘narrator, observer, searcher’ abilities – which is something that fascinates me).

Because while I can undrestand it and imagine doing it I can’t do it – at least for any length of time – long enough time to complete with people like Andy, Chomsky, and say Stephen Fry is someone who comes to mind because of his lateral thinking ability.

But here is the thing. Smart people (and I know very many of them) EXIT THE MARKET and live ‘normie lives’ because everything they can possibly want is obtainable under ‘normie’ conditions, an they can devote their spare time to their interests.