To get a meaningful answer I think you also have to look at all of the high-IQ people that don’t generate a lot of wealth. What you really should look at is the correlation between IQ and wealth generation on average. My intuition says that there is a correlation but not a super duper strong one. (For instance I doubt having a 180 IQ results in more wealth generation than a 150 IQ.) I think cognitive empathy, or the ability to understand others’ feelings and how they would react in a given circumstance, is just as important for wealth generation, if not more so. There are and have been functional autistic savants with very high IQ but low cognitive empathy that have not generated a lot of wealth.
I believe the ability to delay gratification, or think long-term, or whatever you want to call it, is more important than IQ for self-actualization. If you can’t override your impulses and force yourself to follow your rational conclusions, what good is your reasoning faculty? To put it in Daniel Kahneman’s terms, if you have difficulty getting your System 1 to use or go along with your System 2, it doesn’t matter how powerful your System 2 is. The Marshmellow Test experiment is a good indicator of this. The children that had inherent abilities to delay gratification did better later in life by many different measures, including wealth generation.
Are you just saying that there are also other important things besides IQ, or that those things are anticorrelated with IQ?
I’m asking because it seems to me that people often say the former, but silently imply the latter. For example, having good impulse control is probably more important than the difference between 180 IQ and 150 IQ, but unless there is anticorrelation, it does not change the answer to question whether 180 IQ is better than 150 IQ.
To get a meaningful answer I think you also have to look at all of the high-IQ people that don’t generate a lot of wealth. What you really should look at is the correlation between IQ and wealth generation on average. My intuition says that there is a correlation but not a super duper strong one. (For instance I doubt having a 180 IQ results in more wealth generation than a 150 IQ.) I think cognitive empathy, or the ability to understand others’ feelings and how they would react in a given circumstance, is just as important for wealth generation, if not more so. There are and have been functional autistic savants with very high IQ but low cognitive empathy that have not generated a lot of wealth.
I believe the ability to delay gratification, or think long-term, or whatever you want to call it, is more important than IQ for self-actualization. If you can’t override your impulses and force yourself to follow your rational conclusions, what good is your reasoning faculty? To put it in Daniel Kahneman’s terms, if you have difficulty getting your System 1 to use or go along with your System 2, it doesn’t matter how powerful your System 2 is. The Marshmellow Test experiment is a good indicator of this. The children that had inherent abilities to delay gratification did better later in life by many different measures, including wealth generation.
Are you just saying that there are also other important things besides IQ, or that those things are anticorrelated with IQ?
I’m asking because it seems to me that people often say the former, but silently imply the latter. For example, having good impulse control is probably more important than the difference between 180 IQ and 150 IQ, but unless there is anticorrelation, it does not change the answer to question whether 180 IQ is better than 150 IQ.