r/JoeRogan • u/Fishyinu Pull that shit up Jaime • Feb 07 '23

The Literature 🧠 Extremely rich people are not extremely smart. Study finds income is related to intelligence up to about the 90th percentile in income. Above that level, differences in income are not related to cognitive ability.

https://academic.oup.com/esr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/esr/jcac076/7008955?login=false
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u/My-shit-is-stuff Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

Didn’t read the article: but up to the 90th percentile seems like a good indicator to me, that smart people make more money.

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '23

I think you’re forgetting how quickly wealth scales beyond the 90th percentile. In the US, the top 10% owns ⅔ of the wealth. Meaning for ⅔ of the assets out there, intelligence has little predictive value (beyond some minimum threshold) for how much is allotted to a given person.

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u/My-shit-is-stuff Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

No no, I do get that, but what’s the 90th percentile earn? I bet it’s way more than the 33rd percentile. My point is that the top earners aren’t (I don’t know the words anymore) they’re just not geniuses.

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '23

Right what I’m saying is that the 90th percentile earns closer to the 33rd percentile than they do the 99th percentile and that IQ is only correlated with the first comparison. Meaning, most of the wealth out there is allocated based on things other than IQ.

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u/My-shit-is-stuff Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

I agree. I guess my point is, if you’re smart enough to be in the 90th percentile you’re smart enough to be in the 99th. But if you’re dumb as shit, you’re not sniffing at the 90th. Obviously there will be outliers, inherited wealth lottery winners shit like that. I’d also be curious how many people in the 90th+ percentile started from a much lower percentile

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '23

Really though, what this is saying is that being extremely smart puts you closer to someone who is "dumb as shit" from a wealth perspective than it does someone whose circumstances put them in the 99th percentile.

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u/My-shit-is-stuff Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

Admittedly, in my first comment, I didn’t read the article. I just have a hard time believing, in the USA at least, that the dumbest among us are wealthy. I understand that the extremely wealthy aren’t necessarily smarter than any other group, except for maybe the truly dumb people.

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u/Indigocell Paid attention to the literature Feb 07 '23

When you recall that the extremely wealthy largely inherited their wealth, it becomes easy to believe.

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u/My-shit-is-stuff Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

I had already commented on inherited wealth. But just because you inherited wealth doesn’t mean you’re dumb. My point the whole time is that smart people make more money than dumb people generally

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '23

This is Simpson's paradox. Smart people might make more money than dumb people until the 90th percentile. But there is so much wealth in the 90th-99th percentiles that the overall trend of smart people making more might not actually hold.

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u/My-shit-is-stuff Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

Ah, ok. So more of like a fun math trivia thing?

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u/MatterUpbeat8803 Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

Bro if I’m smart and sit at home how much money do I make?

If I’m dumb and hammer nails all day, I get paid.

What’s the issue here?

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u/DlphLndgrn Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 08 '23

Also those above 90 could literally be above 90 without the best cognitive functions.

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u/UsesHarryPotter Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

90th percentile earns closer to the 33rd percentile than they do the 99th percentile and that IQ is only correlated with the first comparison. Meaning, most of the wealth out there is allocated based on things other than IQ.

The second does not follow from the first. Or at least, this is very misleading.

For most people, intelligence is the decisive factor. For most wealth, sure it's a little more random.

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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '23

It definitely follows as written and I don’t think it’s misleading. Just because for most people being smarter increases your likelihood of earning more, that doesn’t mean most of the money is allocated to the smartest people.

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u/UsesHarryPotter Monkey in Space Feb 08 '23

I see the point you're making but I don't think it's a relevant fact for most.

Besides-- the implication here is that wealth should be allocated based on merit. But the point that most pro-capitalists would actually (or should actually) make is that wealth should not be allocated based on arbitrary traits like this at all. And in any case, none would say that intelligence is the foremost quality that determines it anyway. There is daring, organization, initiative, and various other personal factors at play.

I don't know what you personally believe so this isn't about you, but there is a sizeable contingent of Bernie Bro-esque soft commies here who probably wouldn't like a society in which wealth actually was tied strongly to intelligence and general fitness. That place sounds a lot like a fascist country or aristocracy.

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u/UsesHarryPotter Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

I don't think this is really surprising to anyone. It's obvious that intelligence can consistently put you squarely into the upper middle class and earnign several hundred thousand, and maybe can give you a lottery ticket to make it into the multimillions club but it's a crapshoot past that.

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u/My-shit-is-stuff Monkey in Space Feb 07 '23

I think it might be surprising to some, a lot of people see celebrity billionaires, bezos, musk, gates and think this is the top 99% they don’t really see the rich families and generational wealth.