9 ms·

"In this case, our studies affirmed that a person’s intelligence and socioeconomic background were the most powerful factors in explaining his or her success"

by kartan 10y ago

"In this case, our studies affirmed that a person’s intelligence and socioeconomic background were the most powerful factors in explaining his or her success" If success is defined from an economic point of view in absolutes it makes sense. As the best predictor of your wealth is your parents wealth. "Intelligence" is harder to add to the equation as it is more difficult to measure than parents wealth and there are known bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect) that makes people think that they are smarter/more competent that they really are. So it is even possible that a superiority complex or insecurity are relevant even when the participants in the survey don't think so. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triple_Package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triple_Package) This results show the consequence of a diminishing socio-economic mobility. The same traits and skills in a high mobility society are going to have a big weight in "success" achievement. In an stagnated society where the system is rigged to make poor stay poor and rich stay rich "success" becomes an inherited trait making "socioeconomic background" the only and best predictor.

PeterWhittaker 10y ago
Why is this down voted? It is quite insightful. Is HN that much of an echo chamber for the self-made-person myth? A shame that our collective intelligence would harbour this blind spot.
- themartorana 10y ago
  I have no idea. I don't fit the mold - doing well, grew up poorer than many, so my success wasn't dictated by my parents, but that doesn't mean GP's post is wrong at all. I upvoted it. Edit: while I'm sure I'm smart (who isn't sure the are?), luck has a lot to do with any success I've had.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    > luck has a lot to do with any success I've had. Does anyone expect that by sitting around doing nothing they'll get lucky and become successful? Do one's choices mean nothing?
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      "Fortune favors the bold."
      - drauh 10y ago
        "But the world remembers only bold successes, aka history is written by the victors." --me
      - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
        Fortune favours the fortunate - and sends out journalists to interview some of them.
      - DrScump 10y ago
        Only the successful bold are remembered by history.
      - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
        More like "misfortune filters the bold." As in "There are bold bikers, there are old bikers, but there are no old, bold bikers."
    - peteretep 10y ago
      I'm more successful than most people I know. I put this down mostly to phenotype, education, and and general social background. None of this is anything to feel proud about, I didn't choose any of this. I know (and admire) many many less successful people who work a lot harder than me, who display most of the traits that are meant to make people successful, but the halo effect, being white and male, getting easily bored, and being brought up in an environment where suggesting I could be the Prime Minister one day was met not with derision but with book suggestions were surely the keys to my success, and also the basis for all my choices. The key belief - in my experience - between the Left and the Right is that the Right doesn't believe in luck, good or bad.
      - marcoperaza 10y ago
        There's plenty of hardworking people who never get lucky and hit jackpot, but who nonetheless build happy fulfilled lives and can give their children many opportunities.
- pystack 10y ago
  Facebook, Walmart, and Ford Motor Company were built through hard work and perseverance, not through their founders' socioeconomic background. Building a successful business is so difficult, that the founders' socioeconomic background is an infinitely smaller obstacle to overcome. The self-made person is real, but there's so few of them that they are lost in the noise of this study's data.
  - Bahamut 10y ago
    Don't know enough about the latter two, but Facebook had the benefit of Zuckerberg being from an upper middle class family in a county famed for being filled with old money (& Wall Street money), Westchester County. Hard work obviously came into play as well, but these factors break the point for that example.
    - vixen99 10y ago
      Always helps to be able to test out an idea on one of the most privileged set of class mates in the world.
    - adotjdotr 10y ago
      Its funny a lot of people discount this but Zucks father wrote him a $100k cheque that a lot of people miss. I'm looking at my FB friends list, counts well over 600 people, the bulk are from well to-do families all privately educated, top unis, top careers. I don't think any, would have their parents allow them to drop out of Uni irrespective of whether it was the next FB they were building and write them a $100k cheque to get going. This is an example of luck that many ignore in the narrative. However major kudos to Zuck his ad product has basically guaranteed me a career for the rest of my life. For that alone I'm grateful for FB being invented.
  - Throwaway23412 10y ago
    >Facebook No one denies that Facebook was built through hard work and perseverance, but how many people have doctor parents, a software engineer for a private tutor in middle school, admittance to the richest private boarding school in the country, a (former) best friend whose father is a wealthy industrialist, and a number of other untold privileges? Using Zuckerberg as an example of a self-made person really hurts your argument.
marcoperaza 10y ago
>If success is defined from an economic point of view in absolutes it makes sense. As the best predictor of your wealth is your parents wealth. It's not the wealth. It's all of the cultural things that correlate strongly with wealth. Case in point: Two million Cuban-Americans came to the US with nothing but the clothes on their backs, within the last 60 years. Today, they've found their way to the middle and upper classes in about the same proportions as non-hispanic white people.
- Throwaway23412 10y ago
  A bit of self-selection here. Those two million Cuban-Americans were more likely to have been upper class Cubans (or descendants of upper class Cubans). Not only would upper class and upper middle class Cubans be the only ones to afford to flee Fidel Castro's dictatorship, but they would also be the ones most affected by Castro's communist policies and redistribution of wealth.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    Exactly. There's no denying that especially at first, Cuban refugees were skewed toward the middle class. But no matter what they came from, they almost all came with nothing. Which is what my point is. It's not the money, it's all of the cultural things that correlate with it.
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    It seems to me that was precisely the point he tried to make.
    - namenotrequired 10y ago
      It seems to me that if it was his point, he'd have mentioned it.
  - mc32 10y ago
    The "Mariel" people were not upper class Cubans. Many were petty criminals and mental health patients. So, just so people who might think they were all people who escaped back in '59, no, most were not those people.
pacala 10y ago
> As the best predictor of your wealth is your parents wealth. Coming from an Eastern European country, my parents were making less than $10000 a year combined in the '80s and '90s. Nowhere near "wealthy" by western standards. However, they gifted me with a strong STEM education, which translated in material affluence 25 years later on a different continent. Might consider that the biggest transferable wealth across generations is a good education and a life long example of thrift and hard work.
- kartan 10y ago
  I complete agree on that. I was NOT arguing against good education. Education (that gives you knowledge), love (that gives you mental well being) and good habits (that makes you more resilient) are going to have a huge impact in your physical, mental and economic well being. > which translated in material affluence 25 years later on a different continent Yes. And that's why emigration has a big impact in improving world-wide socio-economic mobility. But suppose that you have started your live in an already rich country. In that case that country socio-economic mobility, by definition, is what gives you how dependent is your wealth on your parents wealth. World wide socio-economic mobility probably is quite good. As it is easier and cheaper to emigrate than ever and also because there has been a lot of growth in non-western countries. But the article was talking about North America. And in that case, as it is also true on all western countries, mobility is shrinking. In that scenario education, love, good habits are still important for your well being. But they are not strong indicators of your absolute wealth.
- OvidNaso 10y ago
  But there is one other factor more important than any and muddles everything..the desire to accumulate wealth.
  - LnxPrgr3 10y ago
    If family socioeconomic status is the best predictor of your own wealth, it's hard to argue "wanting it" is the most important factor. Unless you genuinely believe most everyone living in poverty is perfectly happy to stay there.
BurningFrog 10y ago
Intelligence isn't very hard to measure. The methods to test it are quite mature. They do not involve asking people how intelligent they think they are, which is the only way Dunning-Kruger would influence the results.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "Intelligence isn't very hard to measure. The methods to test it are quite mature." Intelligence is a measure of aptitude, but aptitude applies to a broad range of activity, and not all aptitude is numerically quantifiable (in any meaningful sense, at least). For example, two broad categories of intelligence are academic intelligence and emotional intelligence. Excellence in one field does not necessarily transfer to all fields, otherwise socially gifted people would always make the best academic students, and from personal observation I can see this doesn't tie up with reality.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Intelligence isn't very hard to measure. The methods to test it are quite mature. On the contrary. A lot of the standard methods are crude and coarse measures of intelligence. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.h...
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    Good ones (consistent, calibrated) seems to exist but yes, I have read on HN about people being asked about American history under the guise of "IQ test".
    - s_q_b 10y ago
      That's a pretty bold statement, considering that it's currently unknown whether general "intelligence", or g, even exists.
      - reitanqild 10y ago

by kartan 10y ago

PeterWhittaker 10y ago

Why is this down voted? It is quite insightful. Is HN that much of an echo chamber for the self-made-person myth? A shame that our collective intelligence would harbour this blind spot.

themartorana 10y ago
I have no idea. I don't fit the mold - doing well, grew up poorer than many, so my success wasn't dictated by my parents, but that doesn't mean GP's post is wrong at all. I upvoted it. Edit: while I'm sure I'm smart (who isn't sure the are?), luck has a lot to do with any success I've had.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > luck has a lot to do with any success I've had. Does anyone expect that by sitting around doing nothing they'll get lucky and become successful? Do one's choices mean nothing?
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    "Fortune favors the bold."
    - drauh 10y ago
      "But the world remembers only bold successes, aka history is written by the victors." --me
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      Fortune favours the fortunate - and sends out journalists to interview some of them.
    - DrScump 10y ago
      Only the successful bold are remembered by history.
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      More like "misfortune filters the bold." As in "There are bold bikers, there are old bikers, but there are no old, bold bikers."
  - peteretep 10y ago
    I'm more successful than most people I know. I put this down mostly to phenotype, education, and and general social background. None of this is anything to feel proud about, I didn't choose any of this. I know (and admire) many many less successful people who work a lot harder than me, who display most of the traits that are meant to make people successful, but the halo effect, being white and male, getting easily bored, and being brought up in an environment where suggesting I could be the Prime Minister one day was met not with derision but with book suggestions were surely the keys to my success, and also the basis for all my choices. The key belief - in my experience - between the Left and the Right is that the Right doesn't believe in luck, good or bad.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      There's plenty of hardworking people who never get lucky and hit jackpot, but who nonetheless build happy fulfilled lives and can give their children many opportunities.
pystack 10y ago
Facebook, Walmart, and Ford Motor Company were built through hard work and perseverance, not through their founders' socioeconomic background. Building a successful business is so difficult, that the founders' socioeconomic background is an infinitely smaller obstacle to overcome. The self-made person is real, but there's so few of them that they are lost in the noise of this study's data.
- Bahamut 10y ago
  Don't know enough about the latter two, but Facebook had the benefit of Zuckerberg being from an upper middle class family in a county famed for being filled with old money (& Wall Street money), Westchester County. Hard work obviously came into play as well, but these factors break the point for that example.
  - vixen99 10y ago
    Always helps to be able to test out an idea on one of the most privileged set of class mates in the world.
  - adotjdotr 10y ago
    Its funny a lot of people discount this but Zucks father wrote him a $100k cheque that a lot of people miss. I'm looking at my FB friends list, counts well over 600 people, the bulk are from well to-do families all privately educated, top unis, top careers. I don't think any, would have their parents allow them to drop out of Uni irrespective of whether it was the next FB they were building and write them a $100k cheque to get going. This is an example of luck that many ignore in the narrative. However major kudos to Zuck his ad product has basically guaranteed me a career for the rest of my life. For that alone I'm grateful for FB being invented.
- Throwaway23412 10y ago
  >Facebook No one denies that Facebook was built through hard work and perseverance, but how many people have doctor parents, a software engineer for a private tutor in middle school, admittance to the richest private boarding school in the country, a (former) best friend whose father is a wealthy industrialist, and a number of other untold privileges? Using Zuckerberg as an example of a self-made person really hurts your argument.

marcoperaza 10y ago

>If success is defined from an economic point of view in absolutes it makes sense. As the best predictor of your wealth is your parents wealth. It's not the wealth. It's all of the cultural things that correlate strongly with wealth. Case in point: Two million Cuban-Americans came to the US with nothing but the clothes on their backs, within the last 60 years. Today, they've found their way to the middle and upper classes in about the same proportions as non-hispanic white people.

Throwaway23412 10y ago
A bit of self-selection here. Those two million Cuban-Americans were more likely to have been upper class Cubans (or descendants of upper class Cubans). Not only would upper class and upper middle class Cubans be the only ones to afford to flee Fidel Castro's dictatorship, but they would also be the ones most affected by Castro's communist policies and redistribution of wealth.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Exactly. There's no denying that especially at first, Cuban refugees were skewed toward the middle class. But no matter what they came from, they almost all came with nothing. Which is what my point is. It's not the money, it's all of the cultural things that correlate with it.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  It seems to me that was precisely the point he tried to make.
  - namenotrequired 10y ago
    It seems to me that if it was his point, he'd have mentioned it.
- mc32 10y ago
  The "Mariel" people were not upper class Cubans. Many were petty criminals and mental health patients. So, just so people who might think they were all people who escaped back in '59, no, most were not those people.

pacala 10y ago

> As the best predictor of your wealth is your parents wealth. Coming from an Eastern European country, my parents were making less than $10000 a year combined in the '80s and '90s. Nowhere near "wealthy" by western standards. However, they gifted me with a strong STEM education, which translated in material affluence 25 years later on a different continent. Might consider that the biggest transferable wealth across generations is a good education and a life long example of thrift and hard work.

kartan 10y ago
I complete agree on that. I was NOT arguing against good education. Education (that gives you knowledge), love (that gives you mental well being) and good habits (that makes you more resilient) are going to have a huge impact in your physical, mental and economic well being. > which translated in material affluence 25 years later on a different continent Yes. And that's why emigration has a big impact in improving world-wide socio-economic mobility. But suppose that you have started your live in an already rich country. In that case that country socio-economic mobility, by definition, is what gives you how dependent is your wealth on your parents wealth. World wide socio-economic mobility probably is quite good. As it is easier and cheaper to emigrate than ever and also because there has been a lot of growth in non-western countries. But the article was talking about North America. And in that case, as it is also true on all western countries, mobility is shrinking. In that scenario education, love, good habits are still important for your well being. But they are not strong indicators of your absolute wealth.
OvidNaso 10y ago
But there is one other factor more important than any and muddles everything..the desire to accumulate wealth.
- LnxPrgr3 10y ago
  If family socioeconomic status is the best predictor of your own wealth, it's hard to argue "wanting it" is the most important factor. Unless you genuinely believe most everyone living in poverty is perfectly happy to stay there.

BurningFrog 10y ago

Intelligence isn't very hard to measure. The methods to test it are quite mature. They do not involve asking people how intelligent they think they are, which is the only way Dunning-Kruger would influence the results.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "Intelligence isn't very hard to measure. The methods to test it are quite mature." Intelligence is a measure of aptitude, but aptitude applies to a broad range of activity, and not all aptitude is numerically quantifiable (in any meaningful sense, at least). For example, two broad categories of intelligence are academic intelligence and emotional intelligence. Excellence in one field does not necessarily transfer to all fields, otherwise socially gifted people would always make the best academic students, and from personal observation I can see this doesn't tie up with reality.
coldtea 10y ago
>Intelligence isn't very hard to measure. The methods to test it are quite mature. On the contrary. A lot of the standard methods are crude and coarse measures of intelligence. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.h...
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Good ones (consistent, calibrated) seems to exist but yes, I have read on HN about people being asked about American history under the guise of "IQ test".
  - s_q_b 10y ago
    That's a pretty bold statement, considering that it's currently unknown whether general "intelligence", or g, even exists.
    - reitanqild 10y ago