Why a High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart 808
D1gital_Prob3 writes "How can a 'smart' person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years. He says it applies to more people than you might think. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity — how much information you can hold in mind."
This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
Mensa and testing agencies have been making it clear for a couple decades now that IQ only measures your ability to take tests.
While that's strongly correlated with general intelligence, it means nothing specific for a specific individual.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
I read this analogy yesterday, where you can think of level of intelligence like the brightness of a flashlight, what you choose to aim it at is another matter.
Fits rather will with Sagan's candle in the dark illustration.
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not news that it's the case. The article isn't "A High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart", it's "Why a High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart".
This is research into explaining the disparity, not proving or demonstrating that it exists.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mensa and testing agencies have been making it clear for a couple decades now that IQ only measures your ability to take tests.
Some people have even argued that IQ tests are to some degree cultural [gladwell.com]. But yeah, for one thing, taking tests is a skill in itself. There's usually a certain logic to the answers in multiple choice tests, for example, and knowing that logic can allow you to make good guesses even if you have no idea what the answer is. Essay questions are harder to fake, but a lot of times it boils down to giving the answer that the person who's evaluating the answer wants to hear. If you give a very intelligent answer
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Informative)
In most multiple choice tests there are four answers.
Of those answers two are so wrong that if you know anything about the topic you will see that those answers are wrong.
Now you are down to two possible answers. (Statistically you should not ever get less than 50% on a test.)
One of the answers is correct, and the other is usually almost right.
So instead of looking for the right answer look for the wrong answers, and you will almost always get a good score on any multiple choice test you ever take. This has worked for me for the past 25 years or so.
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
No need to insult the superior people just because you were rejected...
It's annoying how Mensa people feel such a strong need to defend themselves against even the smallest accusations of Mensa not being all it's cracked up to be. (I am assuming you are in Mensa since you seem to be defending it for personal reasons.) It's kind of ugly to attack someone like that, and assume they are even interested in joining Mensa, while at the same time referring to yourself as "superior." This is the second time in the last week or so that I have seen such a reaction.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My experience with Mensa people is that they are primarily losers. I quit after my first meeting, I saw how every one of them had a complete 8 foot 4X4 made of oak up each of their asses.
Honestly, it gets' you NOTHING in the real world. It's like wasting your time in the National Honors society, that has NEVER helped me in my career.
I would have been far further ahead by volunteering or getting management positions in various campus groups.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Knowledge is not Intelligence. Otherwise, that means the hard drive in your computer would be more intelligent than you are.
INT vs WIS (Score:5, Funny)
INT vs WIS... vs CHA (Score:4, Funny)
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I knew this 25 years ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
When the GM at my first AD&D game explained the difference between INT and WIS....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wisdom is "applied" knowledge. You can't be wise without some amount of knowledge.
But you can be wise without understanding (or being able to understand) complex math, abstractions, etc.
Re:I knew this 25 years ago... (Score:5, Funny)
well, WIS and INT are both generally lower for non AD&D people, but the difference is the same.
Re:I knew this 25 years ago... (Score:5, Funny)
Though strength, dexterity, and charisma tend to be a lot higher...
Intelligence vs Wisdom (Score:5, Funny)
Any RPGer knows that Prof. Stanovich is attempting to correlate INT scores with WIS scores.
Silly scientist. No bonus priest spells for you.
/2nd Edition devotee
Re:Intelligence vs Wisdom (Score:4, Funny)
Any RPGer knows that Prof. Stanovich is attempting to correlate INT scores with WIS scores.
Silly scientist. No bonus priest spells for you.
We don't need to guess who scored 3 for CHArisma.
I say this with some knowledge on the matter (Score:5, Interesting)
As a member of mensa with a rather high IQ (160 on the cattel 3B), I know that my IQ is in at least the top percentile. However, my organisational skills are atrocious, and while I can remember something well short-term, I tend to forget things long-term. This led to my nearly dropping out of university because while I can write a decent essay, I often forgot to do so. Once I understand a mathematical concept I can do it well, but I tend to forget formulae, so I only got a middle-of-the-road grade in maths.
A high IQ means very little, and I'm not saying that because of jealousy; I'd rather be well-organised and "only" average in the more abstract ways of measuring ability.
Re:I say this with some knowledge on the matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds more like poor organization skills and probably a bad work ethic. This is not evidence of stupidity. My IQ is in the top 0.1%. Yet until mid-20's, I was lazy as hell. Once I turned that around, life has become very easy. If I had to choose between IQ and work ethic, the work ethic would win out every time.
Re:I say this with some knowledge on the matter (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that's pretty messed up. Now that life is easy, you aren't lazy enough to take advantage of that fact...
Re:I say this with some knowledge on the matter (Score:5, Funny)
". My IQ is in the top 0.1%."
doubtful....I've read you other posts.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
doubtful....I've read you other posts. :)
At least make sure you spell correctly when putting down my intelligence
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Re:I say this with some knowledge on the matter (Score:4, Funny)
So your motto is "Work harder, not smarter"? :-)
Re:I say this with some knowledge on the matter (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds more like ADHD than a "bad work ethic" to me. I had problems like that. Put me on stimulants, I'm magically better (until I have heart problems and have to stop taking them). Take me off 'em, I'm flaky again.
My brain is flaky enough that I once had a firecracker go off in my hand because, in the two seconds of sparking and hissing between when I lit it and noticed the fuse lighting, and when it went off, I got distracted and forgot I was holding it. That's not a matter of a work ethic.
Re:I say this with some knowledge on the matter (Score:4, Interesting)
In all seriousness, give me a few days to think on this. I think it is an important question, yet I am not sure how to distill it to words. I promise you a response by weeks' end.
Re:I say this with some knowledge on the matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes when you're smart, and things come easy to you, when you have to do something challenging it seems impossible. Not necessarily because you are incapable of the task, but because you are not used to being challenged. Like having to lift with muscles you've been neglecting.
Apples & Oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
Smartest people I know are morons in some things (Score:5, Interesting)
Friend of mine, his father is a senior researcher for NIH. One of the smartest fellas you will ever meet, has multiple PhDs, charming and really has his act together professionally.
Came back from a concert one night, there was a note taped to the door. "I owe you a microwave." Inside, the house smells like burning compost, his Dad still forgets he can't microwave food with a fork inside. Has never been able to operate a microwave oven and this is about the tenth time he has done it.
His Dad owns a lot of land in Montgomery County, Maryland. He has made a lot of money off real estate investments. He has had a lot of disasters over the years as well, for things that would have seemed apparent to anyone else. Like not leaving untreated wood lying in pile all winter, not parking a backhoe at the top of a pile of dirt, not purchasing residentail land and trying to have it rezoned for multilevel commercial, etc.
It's not just forgetfulness, he has a hard time processing these realities of life. Without his family, I don't think he could function.
M
That's because IQ isn't everything. (Score:4, Insightful)
For some reason, people have associated high IQs with knowing a lot about everything. Unfortunately, knowledge and IQ is different, as is wisdom and IQ. Sheesh, first year D&D players can tell you this.
Corollary: just because you're smart and know a lot about one subject doesn't mean you're opinion on another subject matters. I'm always astounded by how many smart developers think that because they know ASP inside out that they also know which economic system is better.
How can a "smart" person act foolishly? (Score:5, Funny)
There's usually a woman involved.
Openness to ideas and creativity (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a conservative, white, heterosexual, Christian male (source of all the world's problems according to many) and yet I understand that there are things I am probably wrong about and there are people who have radically different beliefs than I do and I can definitely learn from them. I consider myself pretty intelligent and yet understanding that I can learn from others is very key to my intelligence growing.
People who have closed their minds to new thoughts/ideas and who do not exercise their creative potential get stupid fast. I have met a LOT of them (in my white, hetero, Christian, male society) and I am the first to admit that my peers tend to be pretty dumb. TFL starts off bashing on George Bush and how his IQ is pretty high yet the author has obviously decided Bush is an idiot (an earned reputation) and he fits right into my category of society.
What I feel is important to note is that in American progressive society MY ethnicity/religion/political views/gender quickly get thrown into a category that I really don't thing I've earned. I try not to complain of racism/sexism/whateverelseism but it gets old some times.
Re:Openness to ideas and creativity (Score:5, Funny)
Man define intelligence to fit how he behaves, news at 11.
Re:Openness to ideas and creativity (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember some comment here on Slashdot a while back (I foget who it was or what the story was about) where somebody was complaining that, as a person in the 99th intelligence percentile, it was simply impossible to be friends with people of mediocre intelligence. The comment struck me as amazingly arrogant and short-sighted. I didn't say anything at the time, but I thought exactly what you are saying. This guy's problem, in my not-so-humble opinion, was that he was letting his score on an IQ test define himself and his potential friends. As long as people who score well on IQ tests go around wearing it like a badge and looking down on everybody else, they are going to be outcasts, because even if you don't say it out loud, people will pick up on it, and then they don't want to be around you. Nobody wants to hang out with the guy who's always subtly reminding everybody of how smart he is. At that point, it's the natural human reaction to soothe your ego by thinking "average people just can't handle being around smart people like me. They're jealous of my vast intelligence." But it's just not true. I have plenty of friends who would probably score lower than I would on an IQ test (I say "would" because the last time I took an IQ test I was around eight years old). I also have friends who would probably score higher. You can be friends with anybody as long as you're mutually willing to accept each other as equals. And when you do that, you find that there's something to learn from everybody. Because I guarantee that even the homeless guy you pass on the street who sleeps on a park bench and pees on himself knows something that you don't. He has acquired some skill, knowledge or wisdom from his life experience that you haven't. As long as we define ourselves and others strictly in terms of a single, nearly meaningless number, we close ourselves off from a wealth of potential knowledge and experience.
Re:Openness to ideas and creativity (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I'm an "intellectual" with a fairly high IQ last time I checked, yet I still get along with most people. It's just that I don't have very strong friendships with people who are mostly "normal" and I tend to drift away from them. And I mean "normal" as in, they don't have any strong opinions or knowledge about anything but recent TV shows and celebrity gossip.
GiGo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GiGo (Score:4, Interesting)
It might be worth suggesting that the only valid measure for intelligence should be whether or not you are capable of determining and willing to determine if the input you are given is garbage by comparing it against other input.
Or whether you are capable of adjusting a belief when you discover inconsistencies between realities and your construction of it which forms the basis for that belief.
If you believe Von Braun invented rocketry, you would be expected to revise that belief when learning of hwacha [wikipedia.org] if you were to be considered intelligent. If you instead denied that it ever happened and clung to your belief, you would by that metric be regarded as less intelligent than average.
See Holocaust deniers, biblical literalist creationists and other individuals who cling to ideas solely by denying the truth of all evidence counter to that belief. If, however, either party had by rational process discounted the relevance of that evidence, while some people might consider them a crank, they would nonetheless at least be exhibiting some measure of intelligence by that proposed metric.
High IQ & being smart (Score:3, Funny)
The word we're looking for here (Score:3, Informative)
is "wisdom".
The opposite of "foolish" is not "smart". The opposite of "foolish" is "wise".
See also "book-smart" v. "street-smart", INT v. WIS (in D&D et al.), and the role of irrational thinking in decision processes [slashdot.org].
It's true (Score:5, Funny)
My brother-in-law is one of the smartest people I know. Earned his PhD in optical physics and does some very high-level work with it. Way above the head of anybody he explains it to. He's written some pretty intense C++ programs to handle neural-network computations of extremely complicated mathematical problems.
But I can't count how many cellphones he's destroyed from accidental drops from his shirt pocket into the toilet. And a few times he lost his keys for a week because he left them hanging in the door lock.
He's a smart guy, but sometimes we wonder about him.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
He is a good table tennis player too, yet has impeded ability:
- Cannot use a tin opener
- Fumbles for upto 30 seconds trying to get a key in a lock
- Must tip a fried egg from the pan, as using
Sigh...editors. (Score:5, Funny)
They're still smart, but even smart people can do dumb things. That's why it's important to be clear with phrases like "You are dumb" and "That was dumb." (I have finger puppets if the /. editors are confused about this...)
One of my favorite quotes... (Score:5, Insightful)
IQ is not the same as EQ (Score:5, Insightful)
IQ measures raw mental abilities. It's a bit like measuring raw CPU power and memory in a computer.
EQ (Emotional Quotient) measures things like self-motivation abilities (including things like optimism), self-control and inter-personal abilities. They're a bit like measuring the quality of the software that runs in a computer and how well it works together with other programs in the network.
[Sorry, no car metaphors]
In real life, even though a large IQ will allow you to solve incredibly complex problems, if you have a low EQ, you might actually be incapable of doing so because, for example:
In the end, a high EQ is much more highly correlated with success than a high IQ.
Simply put, being optimistic means you're more willing to take chances (which might eventually result in a big payout), being self-motivated means that you can keep going even when things are though, having self-control means you can deny yourself a small reward now for a much bigger one later and being good with people means you can more easily find the chances and convince others to work with you.
That said, the good news is that one can change one's own EQ over one's life - most of its component are behavioral traits that can be learned.
Re:IQ is not the same as EQ (Score:5, Funny)
I've always felt EQ and "street smart" was people with average IQ going "Fine! I'll build my own intelligence scale... with blackjack... and hookers!"
People just work differently (Score:4, Interesting)
But she wasn't so good at things like programming a VCR or directions. I noticed that while she had a great memory, she was terrible at spatial type tasks. Where I was just the opposite
Cooking was very telling. I'm a passable cook, but not very inventive. She was a better cook, but had problems when she had to cook more than a couple of items at a time in getting the sequence of the various recipes merged so that everything was ready at the same time. That part, I was very good at.
The telling point came one day when we were talking about taxes. We owed a lot because she had started working part time as an RN and we didn't pay attention to the amount being withheld from her paycheck for taxes. When I did the taxes normally, i.e. married filing jointly, we owed $3,000. She came back to me a few days later and said that if she filed as married, filing separately, she would get $1,000 back. I explained that I always did our taxes both ways and then when we did it that way, she did get $1,000 back, but I ended up owing $5,000. I was never able to get her to understand how the tax brackets worked and why this was the case. So I gave in and took it to HR Block. Guess what, the best way to file was married, filing jointly. For years she thought I was trying to cheat her out of money and refused to increase her withholding to the same percent of income as mine, so I had to withhold even more from mine. Which meant she had to put more into the household account in order to pay bills, so the end result was the same anyway.
As I told my son at the time
I remarried three years ago, and my lovely wife can talk with me about such matters. It's a wonderful thing to find someone that is smart, beautiful, and thinks sex is only dirty when it's done right.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No offense AC, but given that the post starts with "My ex-wife" your powers of observation are yet more evidence for the articles theory.
Amen (Score:5, Funny)
I know a guy in Mensa who was genuinely surprised that I stopped talking to him after he hit on my wife and tried to talk her into divorcing me.
I don't think it's occurred to him yet that she and I actually speak to each other.
Re:Amen (Score:4, Funny)
Meet my wife and try to romance her
The intelegent geek
Didn't think we would speak
In fact he was quite a lot denser
High IQ DOES mean you're smart... (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't, however, mean you're observant, grounded, emotionally stable, possess common sense, have even average social skills, or even an interest in using your intelligence for anything of consequence.
TFA references G. W. Bush, stating his IQ is estimated to be at or around 120 but even those close to him had concerns about his decision making skills, and "Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical"." Seems to me this is connected far more to his personality, shaped by his upbringing and experiences. IQ is an indicator of intellectual potential; if someone tests consistently in the 70 - 80 range, no amount of positive thinking or assistance is getting you through medical school; if someone tests in the 160 - 180 range (let's assume an accepted standardized scale, such as Wechsler), this indicates that academically there is nothing they are not capable of understanding if they applied themselves. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to assume someone with that level of intelligence *will* become a doctor or the like, only that if circumstances are right, they *could*.
It is not unusual for people with high IQs to fall short of their potential for myriad reasons, the one I think is most impactful is the significant difference between intellectually gifted (meant generically) and the average person. To qualify for organizations like Mensa, you need to be 2 standard deviations ahead of the average in intelligence, which is the same difference between the average person and someone considered to be retarded. People who are that far removed from the median (on either side of the scale) experience the world in a very different and often times alienating way. Perhaps the perceived "stupidity" of people with high IQs is simply the manifestation of their inability to communicate effectively with "little brains".
While many people with high IQs are perfectly functional and move among us unnoticed as braniacs,(Mensa members must be in the 98% percentile of the population which sounds lofty, but it means that roughly one in every 50 people are smart enough to make the cut, so you probably have a better shot at getting into Mensa than you do of winning a beauty pageant) some people with high IQs may never learn how to interact successfully with those around them... robbing them of the kinds of experiences that teach the very skills TFA suggests smart people don't manifest in a consistent manner.
Raw brain power isn't enough to guarantee success or even a base level of competence at anything, including living.
Reminds me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminds me of a quote I heard years and years ago, that I never thought was particularly useful, until now.
"Everyone thinks dogs are smarter than cats, until you ask a dog to climb a tree."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Everyone thinks dogs are smarter than cats, until you ask a dog to climb a tree."
I'd suggest that if there is a change of opinion, it reverts to the original when the cat gets "stuck" in the tree.
Either way, animals have little need or use for logic and abstract reasoning, but instead, devote their energies to learning how best to respond to a world that's filled with irrational behaviour and emotions.
In that sense, having a dog or cat as a pet serves as a reminder that our capacity for thinking and ideas
the old common sense routine (Score:5, Insightful)
When a smart person does something stupid, it's because he lacks common sense. When a stupid person does something stupid, it's because he's stupid.
Re:It reminds me of the old saying (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know, I think a fool reading most of the Discworld books would walk away with more sense than he started with.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Street stupid" is a cop-out, and common sense has been proven again and again by psychologists to be a very poor decision making tool.
Instead, look at a high IQ as just one of the MANY factors that motivate a person's behavior. Emotions like love, greed and envy, self-esteem, past experiences both good and bad, and rational thought are all factored into the decisions we make every day. So a person can have boatloads of intelligence but is so greedy they fall for a 419 scam, financially ruining themselves
Re:It reminds me of the old saying (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you proven something as arbitrary as common sense is a poor decision making tool?
Do you have any links to these studies?
Common sense is just a term used to describe using the most obvious, sensible solution that may have been overlooked in the face of alternative, more stupid solutions. Quite how you can prove that is a poor decision making tool I'd love to know.
Re:It reminds me of the old saying (Score:4, Insightful)
How can you proven something as arbitrary [...]
Easy. You call yourself a psychologist.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a common defensive reaction on the part of people who are just kind of all-around dumb. "Well, I may not have all that book-learning, but at least I've got street smarts!" No, sorry, you really don't.
A quick and accurate intelligence test (Score:4, Insightful)
I read about this recently, tried it with several of my coworkers, and it really works. Simply lift your keyboard over your head while defocusing your eyes so the G and H keys overlap.
What do you see there?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can't see anything! All the keyboard crud fell into my eyes you insensitive clod!
Re:A quick and accurate intelligence test (Score:4, Informative)
What do you see there?
Someone too dumb to cite their source. [xkcd.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Funny)
If the dumb are rich and the smart are poor, why aren't the smart acting dumb to get rich? Are they too dumb to do that? And if they are dumb, then how come they're not rich?
I have a headache now, thanks to you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, and why aren't the flat chested poor acting busty to get rich?
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Insightful)
2) And a fair number of smart people are more interested in spending their time on other things than spending it on making a lot of money. Life is short after all[1].
Not that having a lot of money is bad - I'd love to have a lot of money too
[1] As for people who believe there's some sort of heaven[2] and eternal life, it would be more logical for them to accumulate good friends (with eternal life) than money.
Eternity is a long time to spend, counting your billions (trillions?) over and over again without any good friends.
[2] But in that heaven somehow the people would have to be made perfect (voluntarily - not against their will) so that they won't get on each other's nerves and make it seem like hell. Eternity is a very long time for the imperfect. Too long.
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Interesting)
I will relay a story my scoutmaster told me about a troop of young inner city scouts he led, many, many years ago. They'd never been out of the city, so he took them camping all he could.
One time he took them to a boy scout camp that happened to be next to a girl scout camp. He should have known that would be trouble, because there was one scout who used to go up to every girl he met, and say the same thing: "You wanna fuck?" So the scoutmaster walks into camp, and all the guys are teasing Kid Wannafuck about how his dick is going to shrivel up and fall off, and he realizes his mistake. So he sits them all down and has a long talk about STDs, pregnancy, birth control and condoms, because *these* kids parents aren't going to bother doing it.
One of the many morals of this story is that sometimes persistence counts for more than technique. It really does connect to the whole 419 scam; this kid knew that he had almost no chance with any particular girl, but if he asked *enough* of them sooner or later he'd get lucky.
Getting back to the value of wealth as an indicator of intelligence, I won't argue that intelligence has no instrumental value in becoming wealthy. Obviously it does. But priorities also matter. I know artists -- not quite starving, but not rolling in dough either. If they put the energy and creativity they lavish on art into making money, they'd probably do pretty well. The one thing I've noticed about people who've made fortunes in their lifetimes (sometimes made and lost several) is that they're driven to perform wealth-generating activities. It may be that wealth is the end goal of those activities, or it may be that wealth is a by-product. Personally, I think the people who become wealthy as a by-product seem much happier than people who pursue wealth as its own end. It appears to me there's something puny and pinched in the character of people who are obsessed with wealth as its own end. The difference between wealth and, say, sex is that you can never get enough wealth. But if you are persistent enough in pursuing either of them, sooner or later you'll get some.
I like to think of this thought experiment. Suppose you are a young unattached man with modest prospects, and you have a bit of good fortune above your station: you are about to interview for a job that could mean fame and wealth. As you eat lunch, you strike up this conversation with this amazing woman; she's beautiful, smart and interesting, and as you chat you realize that you're starting to get somewhere with her. You are not quite to the exchange of telephone numbers stage, when you realize for your horror you're about to be late for your interview. You have to leave RIGHT NOW, you don't even have time to say a decent goodbye. What do you go for, the job or the woman?
Well, I can tell you as an older guy who's had both love and money slip through my fingers (then return later), I wouldn't have a microsecond's hesitation. I'd go for the woman. Money is just a proxy for the experiences you can buy with it. And some experiences you just can't buy.
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Interesting)
Me, I'd communicate to the woman as an equal human being that, hey, I like where this is going but I need to get to a job interview for a job I'd really like to land. "I'd like to resume this conversation when we can; Unfortunately I can't reschedule a job interview the same way."
Why? Because women aren't jobs, they're people. And I wouldn't want to spend my time forging a relationship with another person who doesn't understand that she's not a commodity I'm supposed to win, but a person with whom I'm hoping to share some nice experiences.
But that's just me.
Sorry - I liked the rest of your comment, I just balk at the ease with which people equate women with things or events rather than simply treating them as other people. Nevertheless, I appreciate the point you were making. (Although I'd also nitpick the idea that you can get enough sex. Some people can. Some people can also get enough wealth. Some people are also happy with limited amounts of power. Others can't get enough of any if not all of these.)
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you must be a very successful man then, because you seem to not know the dilemma of the intelligent human:
We can predict every bad outcome that our actions could take. A dozen a minute. Hundreds though the day.
The dumb man just walks up to the hot girl, talking to her, thinking he is the greatest guy on earth. Which funnily draws others, including the girl, into that reality too.
While we just stand around, playing through all the horrible ways that it could go wrong. Oh boy, and do we know many of those! ^^
So I congratulate you on your success and bow to you in envy! :P
P.S.:
That's why alcohol is even better for intelligent people. Seriously.
Of course, just assuming you're great (and then automatically trying to live up to that, celebrating the successes, and not getting pulled down by the failures), is much better in the long run.
I recommend this: If you go out to pick up a girl, plan on the first dozen times you talk to a girl going horribly bad. Make jokes about it. Try to make them even worse, just for the fun of it. Until you simply stop caring. It's all just fun anyway. And then suddenly, you will notice, how, because you just want to have fun, and walk up to girls with that idea, and all your glow of having all that fun, you will get very new, much nicer reactions. Before you know it, you're talking to a really hot girl, and she's the one trying to pick up you! ^^ (Of course: Be realistic though. This will not happen the first time you go out. ^^)
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Funny)
Dating advice on /. ? What IS the world coming to?
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Interesting)
Self made rich people act a certain way, it has very little to do with IQ. Society looks at all millionaires as investment bankers, entertainment stars, or trust fund babies. The opposite is actually true. Most millionaires are just hard working people that set a savings goal, put that savings goal at the top of their priorities, and stick to it every month. You can call this whatever you want, pay yourself first, budgeting, whatever, but that's what they do.
Thomas Stanley has some great research into how millionaires, and deca millionaires become wealthy, including IQ, inheritances, living expenses etc. I've read the "Millionaire Next Door", and the "Millionaire Mind", and I'll be reading "Stop Acting Rich: ...And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire" when it drops under 10 bucks.
One of my favorite examples in his books was a millionaire giving his wife a huge pile of stock in the company for a present at the kitchen table. His wife said "thank you, this means a lot to me, it really does" and went back to cutting coupons.
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Interesting)
I know you're joking, but I didn't feel like responding to the troll. Two things:
1) A big part of the money thing is personality.
a) Some people (personality types) simply don't care about money. With me, for example, money is how I survive from day to day. More money is nice to have, but what really drives me is working on my projects, solving problems, etc. It doesn't even necessarily matter if I finish my projects. It's the pursuit of knowledge that matters to me.
b) Some personality types are more suited to more money-oriented careers, such as business or management. While I get along fine with people and could do those jobs, I generally have no interest in them and am just as happy (or happier) working alone, half inside a machine and covered in grease.
2) There are different forms of intelligence. Some people are naturally strong in math and/or sciences. Some people are more language or arts oriented. Still others are good at organizational skills and less so at academic subjects. I'm much more math and science oriented than the others, which drives me to somewhat less money-focused careers.
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Insightful)
Some rich people are stupid, but so are most of the poor people I know so unless you've got a couple of citations to back up your obviously prejudiced opinions your just a troll.
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a simple fact (at least in the United States) that MOST millionaires are NOT millionaires through inheritance.
What it takes to become rich is not some sort of global all-around, jack-of-all-trades smartness; it's expertise in a single area.
So it seems quite logical that these wealthy people who have focuses so much on one particular thing are not particularly knowledgeable about other things.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yup. Most rich folks (>$1M worth?) have earned it themselves. You have to have a bit on the ball to make out ahead of average. Besides smarts, you also need drive and people skills. Luck and connections also help
A college buddy of mine is a good example. I was in MIS and he got his degree in construction management. 30 years later, he's now running his own company and is on the board of a local bank. It helps that he's a math wiz and is also very personable. He can get along with drunk construction worke
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to ruin this party but there is an extremely well known and tested correlation between income and IQ. In fact, it is more correct to say that IQ measures income potential than to say that IQ measures "smartness".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient [wikipedia.org]
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Informative)
Only because you (we) set up "smartness" as something vague and unmeasurable... :-/
The correlation between IQ and income is highly non-traditional (i.e. it's not bivariate normal-distributed, so it requires a more in-depth description than one correlation coefficient; for example, a so-called "copula"). To quote your link: "Some researchers claim that `in economic terms it appears that the IQ score measures something with decreasing marginal value. It is important to have enough of it, but having lots and lots does not buy you that much.'" This contradicts what is usually meant by correlation.
As Warren Buffett said, to get rich all you need IQ-wise is to be about 2 sigmas above the mean (and keep in mind, Mr. Buffett probably has a fairly august standard for "rich"; by commoner-standards, probably 1-1.5 sigmas is enough). The rest comes from personality, &c.
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Informative)
Gates, William H III
Buffett, Warren Edward
Allen, Paul Gardner
Walton, Helen R
Walton, S Robson
Walton, John T
Walton, Jim C
Walton, Alice L
Ellison, Lawrence Joseph
Ballmer, Steven Anthony
Detailed Forbes List [forbes.com]
It is also interesting to note that the top two (Gates and Buffett) are pretty much double anyone even close to them.
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Informative)
Who cares about the "millionaires" - it's the "billionaires" who got it through inheritance that own most of the wealth in the U.S. I couldn't care less about the millionaires. How many of them - the multi-generationally wealthy - do you all know?
Many on this thread need to read a book on the subject or something, cause there are a lot of myths here.
Try "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell and see what really adds up to success. It isn't almost anything that the people on this thread have been shouting, that's for damn sure.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's because it is not what you know but WHO you know.
Rich = well connected.
Smart typically = antisocial loaner.
yes there are some incredibly rare exceptions, but typically the frat party boy that can chat people up will be rich while the quiet hermit with 4X the IQ of the frat boy will discover amazing things quietly and poorly in his basement.
Charisma, being able to bullshit very well, and how to schmooze is how you get rich.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Interesting)
Some rich people are stupid
The largest common factors I have noticed between those who are self-made wealthy is this:
The largest common factors I have noticed between those who are poor is this:
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife and I are living on less than a third of that and raising a child. I could probably pay off most of my debt in a 2 years if I had your salary and continued living with the budget I have now.
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Insightful)
As I don't have the book in question (and even if I ordered it from Amazon it wouldn't get here before this discussion would get locked) I'll just ask you: Should I take it that the book defines "first generation rich" as "parents weren't millionaires but they may very well have been upper middle class with a few smart investments, $500k in the bank and an extended family with similar finances"? What I'm implying here is that there's a bit of difference between a "self-made man" who's from a family with a total yearly income of $25k, who's the first person in his/her family with a college education etc. and a "self-made man" from a family with a yearly income in excess of $300k who think it's only natural to pay for college for their children (and of course the mandatory "travel in europe for a few months before going to college", paid for by mommy and daddy).
/Mikael
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What? That working class trash (or the poor) like to beat up each other for fun and especially pound on the bookish kids?
This isn't merely limited to the "south side of Chicago".
Nor is the "Connecticut boarding school" experience limited to the children of DAR members.
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Informative)
Re:419 Scams (Score:4, Informative)
There was something that was vitally different from your experience to your brothers: you had your brother as a sibling, and your brother had you as a sibling.
Depending on the family dynamics involved, siblings can often take very opposite interests to each other, either to distinguish themselves from each other or in response to parents who, themselves, characterize their children differently. Birth order also has an effect (oldest children and only children tend to perform better in IQ tests, partially because they have more uninterrupted adult attention during crucial developmental years. This means, of course, that cultures and social groups that tend to smaller family sizes will show a higher average IQ than those with larger ones.)
Re:419 Scams (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not exactly a mystery. You tend to mimic the lifestyle of your parents, and they mimic the lifestyle of their parents and so on. So if your parents placed a high priority on schooling, learning, education etc then you are likely to pass that lifestyle onto your kids. So... you might have many generations which have been too busy putting food on the table with multiple jobs or dealing with gangs or drugs or a dangerous neighbourhood and had more things to worry about than making sure their child focuses on school, gets help with homework and stays out of trouble.
And vice-versa. My parents were big on school so I was very limited in my TV/video game time. I had to read a novel each night for an hour and my homework was priority #1 after school. My sister struggled and they got her a tutor. As a result I did well in school and will pass that on to my kids.
Of course, you can have within individual families a radical shift. One parent decides they want 'a better life' for their child and makes a big shift resulting in that family breaking the cycle. But when you are looking at entire societies or segments of the population that kind of change is much slower.
Race or any other 'trait' has nothing at all to do with it other than historically. The "such and such race is inherently smarter than such and such other race" argument is nonsense, and horrendously hard to test because family and societal factors creep into your study if you are looking at a large enough study group (ie - student performance across a state or country).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and no. It's silly to think that the color of a person's skin has anything at all to do with the development of their brain or their intelligence. I.E. There's no causation. Probably no correlation either.
At the same time, genetic factors will make people physically different in plenty of different ways. You could be taller or shorter, fatter or skinnier, etc. All this is based at least somewhat on genetic factors.
It's entirely possible that genetic factors will make someone inherently "smarter" or
Re:I don't see why that's "important". (Score:4, Insightful)
While I think that the argument that black people are intrinsically dumber than the rest of us is silly, I should point out that your counter-argument is just as silly.
There was an article recently describing the development of a "smart(er) rat" by the change of a single gene. Which pretty much refutes the notion that it requires much larger genetic changes to "think different" than to "look different".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and yet for all that you left out what is arguably the most important, wisdom, which again is none of the above.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Experience is nothing if not processed intelligently.
Smarter people learn more from their experience, IMO.
Re:major difference (Score:5, Insightful)
If it wasn't for obsessive compulsive people, we'd still be living in the Dark Ages. Take Newton for example. He spent almost 20 years plotting, calculating, and theorizing until he arrived at his Gravitational Laws. It's these kinds of people who find discoveries and enrich human knowledge.
Re:IQ doesn't measure common sense. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, from what I've seen it seems that the whole "high IQ => fails in the army" thing could be better described as "people who try to think for themselves, are creative and question authority generally have trouble with starting at the bottom of strictly hierarchical organisations where you're expected to just conform and follow orders no matter how stupid the orders may be".
(Most people I've known who started military careers and have risen through the ranks were great at following orders and just doing what others told them to do)
So I doubt it's just an IQ thing, it's more that in the military (any military) you're expected to conform and just do as you're told, someone for whom it comes naturally to try creative "outside the box" solutions to problems or who simply has a higher than average ability to analyze problems and figure out solutions is likely to not fit in, something that is true in any organisation that tries to fit everyone into a Lowest Common Denominator role.
/Mikael
Re:Inverse Correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps when people who don't have PhDs can't work a remote or leave their keys in their car, you don't notice as much because there's nothing in particular about them that creates the expectation of intelligence? The idea that there's an inverse correlation is a very common defensive reaction on the part of people who don't have much of any kind of intelligence, but there's precious little evidence for it in real life. It's more a matter of selection bias: we notice when smart people do stupid things. When stupid people do stupid things, it's business as usual.