Have you read The Millionaire Next Door? The book is about people of very ordinary intelligence who are more rational about money than many smarter people.
I haven’t read it but I don’t think this kind of example talks directly to the question of whether rationality is a strongly heritable trait independent of IQ. My current hypothesis (not strongly held or supported by large amounts of evidence) is that rationality is more a learned skill or habit of thinking which will tend to correlate with IQ (because higher IQ people will learn it easier/faster and apply it better) but that some high IQ people have failed to learn it and some lower IQ people have become quite good at it.
Examples of lower IQ people who are more rational than higher IQ people do not on their own help to distinguish whether rationality is a separately heritable trait from IQ or a learned habit of thinking.
I would not be hugely surprised if certain big 5 personality traits or other potentially heritable personality traits made people more inclined to learn rational thinking which might provide an indirect basis for heritability of rationality.
They invested conservatively, not aggressively. I expect they’re better off than people who got heavily into debt, but probably not as well off as some people who were insiders enough to not lose too much when they made bad investments for other people.
I meant aggressively in the sense of well-diversified and stock-heavy (hence the “long-term” bit). If they got rich off of bond interest, well, it wasn’t investment acumen that explains their success, but a) raw earning power, and b) not spending it all.
Unfortunately, exactly what they invested in wasn’t something I was very sensitive to, and I don’t remember it.
Generally, they had fairly ordinary incomes, and they invested in things which were considered low-risk at the time. A fair number of them had real estate in the sense of owning car dealerships (used car lots?), with the land under the business being a large part of their wealth.
They disliked spending money. It was common for them to be men whose wives made a full-time job of running the household cheaply. (There was a later book called The Millionaire Woman Next Door.)
Have you read The Millionaire Next Door? The book is about people of very ordinary intelligence who are more rational about money than many smarter people.
I haven’t read it but I don’t think this kind of example talks directly to the question of whether rationality is a strongly heritable trait independent of IQ. My current hypothesis (not strongly held or supported by large amounts of evidence) is that rationality is more a learned skill or habit of thinking which will tend to correlate with IQ (because higher IQ people will learn it easier/faster and apply it better) but that some high IQ people have failed to learn it and some lower IQ people have become quite good at it.
Examples of lower IQ people who are more rational than higher IQ people do not on their own help to distinguish whether rationality is a separately heritable trait from IQ or a learned habit of thinking.
I would not be hugely surprised if certain big 5 personality traits or other potentially heritable personality traits made people more inclined to learn rational thinking which might provide an indirect basis for heritability of rationality.
I wasn’t reading carefully, so I just offered evidence that rationality is somewhat independent of IQ.
Didn’t the people in that book get rich by saving a lot and investing aggressively for the long term?
How’s that strategy working out?
I don’t know of any follow-ups.
They invested conservatively, not aggressively. I expect they’re better off than people who got heavily into debt, but probably not as well off as some people who were insiders enough to not lose too much when they made bad investments for other people.
I meant aggressively in the sense of well-diversified and stock-heavy (hence the “long-term” bit). If they got rich off of bond interest, well, it wasn’t investment acumen that explains their success, but a) raw earning power, and b) not spending it all.
“Assume a high income” is not all that helpful.
Unfortunately, exactly what they invested in wasn’t something I was very sensitive to, and I don’t remember it.
Generally, they had fairly ordinary incomes, and they invested in things which were considered low-risk at the time. A fair number of them had real estate in the sense of owning car dealerships (used car lots?), with the land under the business being a large part of their wealth.
They disliked spending money. It was common for them to be men whose wives made a full-time job of running the household cheaply. (There was a later book called The Millionaire Woman Next Door.)