8 ms·

Why super-smart people may be drawn to a life of crime

80 points by randomname2 10y ago

venomsnake 10y ago
Because it is fun? I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really - I was alive. - Walter White
lordnacho 10y ago
What about the simple idea that being smart means you find more opportunities to commit crimes where you won't get caught? Is that addressed? It seems to square with the fact that high IQ people commit fewer crimes; they'd also find more legit opportunities to enrich themselves.
- adrusi 10y ago
  Well I think that crime incidence is strongly negatively correlated with wealth, and IQ isn't very strongly correlated with wealth either, so that's not a great explanation
- ozim 10y ago
  End of the article: “Not only does it mean that elites are just as likely to lie, cheat, and steal as anyone else,” Oleson writes, but it also means that our prisons are largely filled with “unlucky people whose real crime was getting caught.”
- pixl97 10y ago
  > It seems to square with the fact that high IQ people commit fewer crimes; Do you see the problem with your statement here. The word crime is a selection bias filter. You automatically assumed that high IQ people committed less crime and immediately discounted they get caught less for crime. These styles of biases are rife in law enforcement communities. For example the idea that (poor|ignorant|minority) groups do more drugs than the average person. Therefore the police search those groups more and when they find drugs it is a justification for their behavior. Meanwhile studies outside of law enforcement show that illegal drug use across all spectrums of wealth, IQ, and race are similar. Also, another similar observation is the saying "You're likely to be murdered by someone you know 70% of the time". The problem with that statement is it only take in account solved murders. The other 33% (or way higher in some places) of cases that are unsolved are not counted in that statistic. If we had perfect information on who committed a murder we might say that "50% of the time you are murdered by someone you know". This may have a major influence on how cases are handled. Juries are lead to believe that in the majority of cases it is someone the murderer knew and they become biased against the charge. If it was a 50/50 thing a jury may not be as willing to pin a conviction on circumstantial evidence. That said, it may also be that those 70% of murder cases that convict someone the victim knew are correct and murdering someone you know is a good way to get caught. tl;dr, be careful using law enforcement statistics. Systemic bias in law enforcement procedure can make them invalid.
  - lordnacho 10y ago
    >> In comparison, intelligent people have traditionally been seen as less likely to commit crimes, and this view of brainpower as a protective factor against offending has been bolstered by many studies over the decades. No idea whether those studies have accounted for your comments, but you'd think if they're academic studies they would have?
- mcguire 10y ago
  "“Claimed” is the operative word here, as Oleson’s research is based on self-reports, where subjects fill out detailed questionnaires about their criminal histories. It may seem counterintuitive that people would willingly confess to undetected crimes. But self-reporting is the most commonly employed methodology in criminology, and it generally yields results that correspond to official crime statistics. Self-reports also matter because most crime research is based on offenders who have been caught, and very little is known about offenses that go undetected and unreported."
VLM 10y ago
When a culture and economy are in general decline, lots of equations indoctrinated into kids along the lines of "do ABC, get XYZ" will be broken, and the smart kids will feel ripped off and at the same time have the agency, time preference, and logical thinking skills to achieve XYZ anyway, just perhaps while bending the rules.
- saxonklaxon 10y ago
  The most dangerous one being when educated, middle class young men can't find wives or a middle class income. Then revolutionary forces start to brew.
  - anonnyj 10y ago
    Memes and waifus may be working towards making that particular reaction less potent in developed countries.
    - cryoshon 10y ago
      on the contrary, the rage surrounding the opposite sex is a core element of the alt right's platform. couching discontent via memes is still expressing it.
  - FabHK 10y ago
    Will be interesting to see what will happen in China, where (due to selective abortion during the one-child policy, and more independent women that don't feel obliged to marry) there'll be tens of millions of young men that won't be able to find a wive (estimates are 160 men for 100 women that want to marry).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Many prevailing theories of intelligence suggest that people with lower IQs are the ones most likely to break the law, since impulsivity, struggles at school, lack of social bonding, and lack of foresight are all linked to criminality. ... the overall amount of crime in this range is still “much, much lower” than among people with very low IQ scores. In fact what I would expect you find is that these groups of people break different laws, not fewer. The "low IQ" group likely have less capability of breaking say, regulatory laws, by virtue of standing or access. They are more likely to break laws like B&E, drug dealing, petty larceny, etc... that are more harshly and more frequently prosecuted. The laws that high performing, and High IQ people would be breaking, securities, privacy, regulatory etc... might not be prosecuted at all, or at most would lead to civil fines. I think the bottom line is that "high IQ" people will tend to have more capability to break white collar crimes, and will do so with better cover (lawyers, special accounting etc...).
- adrusi 10y ago
  The article implied greater incidence of violent crimes as well These included minor offenses such as trespassing and copyright violations, but also serious crimes such as arson, fraud, and kidnapping. Only one crime mentioned qualifies as "white collar".
  - pc86 10y ago
    Isn't one of the major reasons to commit arson insurance fraud? I'm not saying arson is a white collar crime just that if you're desperate for money for whatever reason, and you're generally pretty smart, you may be inclined to try to get away with something like that. The same with kidnapping, although that seems much more violent and likely to end badly for everyone involved than arson.
  - omouse 10y ago
    Copyright violations? Hahahaahahaha. Copyright itself is the offense. Ridiculous.
    - sqeaky 10y ago
VA3FXP 10y ago
2 reasons: (1) Boredom - 'work' is boring and involves tedium. Smart people try to avoid that. (dad joke: That's why it's called work and not play!) (2) False idols - We have been told since we are children, "work hard, and get ahead" or "you need an education to get ahead". We know this is only works to a certain degree. The wealthy stay wealthy because the game is rigged. The laws are tailored so that they can maintain wealth. They don't have to pay the same amount of tax and there are multiple tax-loopholes that allow them to keep their money. They get the public to pay for their expenses and are not forced to share the wealth that they generate. Smart people recognize this and do not want to play that game. Why should I bust my ass to make some millionaire more money? It is obvious that the 'easy' way to make money is to break the law. It's only the poor people who end up getting caught/punished.
- jackcosgrove 10y ago
  I generally agree with this, and would emphasize that wealth is not just due to intelligence or academic achievement as some are led to believe. In fact, accruing wealth has more to do with work ethic and simple living practiced over a long time than being a wizard at something or getting credentials. The whiz kids who make it big are a tiny fraction of all smart people. The rest of the smart people have to grind it out over decades to assemble an inheritance which will maybe afford their children the opportunity to generate wealth from rents. A lot of people frankly don't care enough about the lives their children, if any, will lead, and want a wealthy lifestyle fast. As you pointed out, more intelligent people also see how the system works and may resent it more.
adrusi 10y ago
The study looked at members of high-iq societies and alumni from elite universities primarily, which is going to select for a disproportionate amount of people who consider their high-iq important to their personalities. Intuitively, I'd expect high IQ to be correlated with narcissism, and in this group even more so. Narcissists are going to be more likely to commit crimes.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  A little searching and I don't see any evidence that IQ is related to narcissism. That seems intuitive to me - narcissism is unrelated to the real world, they don't have to be actually better than anybody to believe they are.
  - a_name 10y ago
    narcissism is currently an 'in' word. It's fashionable to name your exes and others as narcissists, and justifies why your actions/feelings against others.
  - DFHippie 10y ago
    The claim is that membership in high IQ societies, not high IQ itself, correlates with narcissism.
- stagbeetle 10y ago
  > elite universities primarily, which is going to select for a disproportionate amount of people who consider their high-iq important to their personalities As someone who's been around this scene, the kids from these unis are surprisingly down to earth.
  - da02 10y ago
    Can you go into more detail? Any patterns ypu observed? (It would be a nice departure from the depressing stuff I normally read.)
    - 10y ago
sulam 10y ago
My IQ tested in this range, and I've broken some laws that aren't entirely common. I managed to get a copy of the master key to my campus and had essentially unfettered access to all the buildings and rooms I wanted, provided I was careful (for a while I shifted my waking time so that I was able to take more advantage). I got into software development as a profession by way of breaking into systems for several years. This was a time when the only way to get the access I needed normally was to be in the major and I wasn't. I've never killed anyone, although I can think of one instance where I considered it and would certainly have gotten away with it. It would have been a big hassle, though, and honestly who wants that on their conscience? At the end of the day it seems to me that I've only done the things other people would have also done if the opportunity arose. I may be somewhat more attuned to those opportunities than the average person, but in many cases they arrived after a cascade of events that weren't specifically aimed at any kind of criminality. At worst I was initially guilty of a high degree of curiousity. The only thing that really resonates for me in this article is low attachment, although I find it hard to really quantify that. I do seem to have fewer friends than most people, but there are probably mathematical reasons for that. I am confident in my ability to make friends, but don't feel like making the effort usually. I have a busy life and can barely keep up with work and family -- having more than a few good friends outside those two groups takes more time than I have.
- mmmpop 10y ago
  > I've never killed anyone, although I can think of one instance where I considered it and would certainly have gotten away with it. It would have been a big hassle, though, and honestly who wants that on their conscience? HN is not your shrink. I would avoid making these kinds of admissions on a public forum.
  - Retric 10y ago
    It's a terrible idea to say something like that to your shrink. The odds of something bad happening are probably lower on a public form.
    - 10y ago
YCode 10y ago
I suspect the two pragmatic points to take away are: > Many of Oleson’s respondents discussed the alienating effects of their high intelligence; social maladjustment could be a possible explanation for their elevated crime rates. > Another issue is that the bulk of his gifted cohort was recruited from a private high-IQ society, and people who join such clubs might not represent highly intelligent people in general. To that last point, this has the same vague smell of the kind of study whose participants were from the college it was sponsored by and so as he says it should be taken as preliminary and I'd add with a large grain of salt.
- FabHK 10y ago
  In particular, I'd venture that well adjusted high-IQ people are less likely to join a high-IQ society than more alienated people.
Pitarou 10y ago
What utter garbage. Not to put too fine a point on it, this isn’t a survey of the high IQ population; it’s a survey of high IQ losers. The sample is drawn from a high IQ club. You won’t find many Nobel laureates, brilliant engineers and so on in these clubs. Why would they bother? They have nothing to prove and better things to do with their time. Broadly speaking, people join a high IQ club because their performance on standardized tests is the ONLY thing they have going for them. And by the way, the average IQ of the sample was 149, so many must have been below that score. Smart, but not exactly Hannibal Lecter.
- shmageggy 10y ago
  To be fair, the author does acknowledge that: > Oleson is quick to point out that the results presented in his book should be seen as preliminary rather than conclusive, especially considering how rare his subjects are. Another issue is that the bulk of his gifted cohort was recruited from a private high-IQ society, and people who join such clubs might not represent highly intelligent people in general.
- tajen 10y ago
  > Smart, but not exactly Hannibal Lecter H.L. is a fictional character with IQ 200, and Einstein is only 160, so who would qualify as an "Hannibal Lecter" for you? If the average is 149 and the group is spread in a gaussian curve with exactly one Einstein, then the dumb guy of the group will be 138. Which is under 1% of the population, especially in US where the average IQ is 98. So the first 3 paragraphs of your criticism are well-reasoned, but I wonder why you feel the need to down-play the smartness of that group with your first and last sentence.
  - Pitarou 10y ago
    > Einstein is only 160 I don't believe Einstein is ever recorded as having taken an IQ test. In any case, IQ scores quickly lose their meaning when you get to 160 or above. Try taking a physical fitness test designed to make fine distinctions across the general population, and extending it to Olympic athletes. The athletes would just laugh at you. > Which is under 1% of the population, especially in US where the average IQ is 98. ... I wonder why you feel the need to down-play the smartness of that group with your first and last sentence. It's the use of words like "super-smart" that bugs me. A US male in the top height percentile would be about 6'4". Tall, but no André the giant.
foldr 10y ago
I think there's a presupposition here that's worth challenging. Smart people aren't morally superior to dumb people; they're just smarter. They're drawn to crime for the usual reasons: greed, selfishness, lust, etc. etc.
booleandilemma 10y ago
But Schwartz stresses that the overall amount of crime in this range is still “much, much lower” than among people with very low IQ scores. The smartest criminals don't get caught.
brilliantcode 10y ago
Here's what I disagree about the article. That white collar crimes are committed by high IQ people. It's the socioeconomic lineage that gives you to access to such position where it's very easy to commit crimes that the law is not designed to punish. Much of the written laws are around hauling violent criminals away from civilization. While high IQ could empower someone to feel that they can get away with white collar crime, such disposition are innately built from their lack of attachment that arises from being isolated from poverty and all the bullshit that comes with non-upper class life. You go to an elite school, meet other friends who think rules for tools, they go onto work at powerful positions, it's all too simple to collude and create secret societies to further their collective monetary ambitions. It really seems to be true what they say. There are rules for those who made it (because they create the rules) and conditions and terms for those who didn't make it (you follow the rules). It almost seems to me like the whole system is a sham. Imagine if Ghengis Khan discovered the best way to conquer people and other nations is not by force but by credits and materialism. In a chaotic and lawless reality, law is created by individuals who impose their power on rest of society. We are so entrenched that we are "right" and rest of the world is "wrong", we've become a slave because we are told we are free to make our own decisions-limited by powerful men who play God.
eyeownyde 10y ago
Can you help me reconcile these two quotes? But Schwartz stresses that the overall amount of crime in this range is still “much, much lower” than among people with very low IQ scores. “Not only does it mean that elites are just as likely to lie, cheat, and steal as anyone else,” Oleson writes Do these people simply disagree, or am I misinterpreting one of them?

80 points by randomname2 10y ago

Because it is fun? I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really - I was alive. - Walter White

What about the simple idea that being smart means you find more opportunities to commit crimes where you won't get caught? Is that addressed? It seems to square with the fact that high IQ people commit fewer crimes; they'd also find more legit opportunities to enrich themselves.

adrusi 10y ago
Well I think that crime incidence is strongly negatively correlated with wealth, and IQ isn't very strongly correlated with wealth either, so that's not a great explanation
ozim 10y ago
End of the article: “Not only does it mean that elites are just as likely to lie, cheat, and steal as anyone else,” Oleson writes, but it also means that our prisons are largely filled with “unlucky people whose real crime was getting caught.”
pixl97 10y ago
> It seems to square with the fact that high IQ people commit fewer crimes; Do you see the problem with your statement here. The word crime is a selection bias filter. You automatically assumed that high IQ people committed less crime and immediately discounted they get caught less for crime. These styles of biases are rife in law enforcement communities. For example the idea that (poor|ignorant|minority) groups do more drugs than the average person. Therefore the police search those groups more and when they find drugs it is a justification for their behavior. Meanwhile studies outside of law enforcement show that illegal drug use across all spectrums of wealth, IQ, and race are similar. Also, another similar observation is the saying "You're likely to be murdered by someone you know 70% of the time". The problem with that statement is it only take in account solved murders. The other 33% (or way higher in some places) of cases that are unsolved are not counted in that statistic. If we had perfect information on who committed a murder we might say that "50% of the time you are murdered by someone you know". This may have a major influence on how cases are handled. Juries are lead to believe that in the majority of cases it is someone the murderer knew and they become biased against the charge. If it was a 50/50 thing a jury may not be as willing to pin a conviction on circumstantial evidence. That said, it may also be that those 70% of murder cases that convict someone the victim knew are correct and murdering someone you know is a good way to get caught. tl;dr, be careful using law enforcement statistics. Systemic bias in law enforcement procedure can make them invalid.
- lordnacho 10y ago
  >> In comparison, intelligent people have traditionally been seen as less likely to commit crimes, and this view of brainpower as a protective factor against offending has been bolstered by many studies over the decades. No idea whether those studies have accounted for your comments, but you'd think if they're academic studies they would have?
mcguire 10y ago
"“Claimed” is the operative word here, as Oleson’s research is based on self-reports, where subjects fill out detailed questionnaires about their criminal histories. It may seem counterintuitive that people would willingly confess to undetected crimes. But self-reporting is the most commonly employed methodology in criminology, and it generally yields results that correspond to official crime statistics. Self-reports also matter because most crime research is based on offenders who have been caught, and very little is known about offenses that go undetected and unreported."

VLM 10y ago

When a culture and economy are in general decline, lots of equations indoctrinated into kids along the lines of "do ABC, get XYZ" will be broken, and the smart kids will feel ripped off and at the same time have the agency, time preference, and logical thinking skills to achieve XYZ anyway, just perhaps while bending the rules.

saxonklaxon 10y ago
The most dangerous one being when educated, middle class young men can't find wives or a middle class income. Then revolutionary forces start to brew.
- anonnyj 10y ago
  Memes and waifus may be working towards making that particular reaction less potent in developed countries.
  - cryoshon 10y ago
    on the contrary, the rage surrounding the opposite sex is a core element of the alt right's platform. couching discontent via memes is still expressing it.
- FabHK 10y ago
  Will be interesting to see what will happen in China, where (due to selective abortion during the one-child policy, and more independent women that don't feel obliged to marry) there'll be tens of millions of young men that won't be able to find a wive (estimates are 160 men for 100 women that want to marry).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Many prevailing theories of intelligence suggest that people with lower IQs are the ones most likely to break the law, since impulsivity, struggles at school, lack of social bonding, and lack of foresight are all linked to criminality. ... the overall amount of crime in this range is still “much, much lower” than among people with very low IQ scores. In fact what I would expect you find is that these groups of people break different laws, not fewer. The "low IQ" group likely have less capability of breaking say, regulatory laws, by virtue of standing or access. They are more likely to break laws like B&E, drug dealing, petty larceny, etc... that are more harshly and more frequently prosecuted. The laws that high performing, and High IQ people would be breaking, securities, privacy, regulatory etc... might not be prosecuted at all, or at most would lead to civil fines. I think the bottom line is that "high IQ" people will tend to have more capability to break white collar crimes, and will do so with better cover (lawyers, special accounting etc...).

adrusi 10y ago
The article implied greater incidence of violent crimes as well These included minor offenses such as trespassing and copyright violations, but also serious crimes such as arson, fraud, and kidnapping. Only one crime mentioned qualifies as "white collar".
- pc86 10y ago
  Isn't one of the major reasons to commit arson insurance fraud? I'm not saying arson is a white collar crime just that if you're desperate for money for whatever reason, and you're generally pretty smart, you may be inclined to try to get away with something like that. The same with kidnapping, although that seems much more violent and likely to end badly for everyone involved than arson.
- omouse 10y ago
  Copyright violations? Hahahaahahaha. Copyright itself is the offense. Ridiculous.
  - sqeaky 10y ago

VA3FXP 10y ago

2 reasons: (1) Boredom - 'work' is boring and involves tedium. Smart people try to avoid that. (dad joke: That's why it's called work and not play!) (2) False idols - We have been told since we are children, "work hard, and get ahead" or "you need an education to get ahead". We know this is only works to a certain degree. The wealthy stay wealthy because the game is rigged. The laws are tailored so that they can maintain wealth. They don't have to pay the same amount of tax and there are multiple tax-loopholes that allow them to keep their money. They get the public to pay for their expenses and are not forced to share the wealth that they generate. Smart people recognize this and do not want to play that game. Why should I bust my ass to make some millionaire more money? It is obvious that the 'easy' way to make money is to break the law. It's only the poor people who end up getting caught/punished.

jackcosgrove 10y ago
I generally agree with this, and would emphasize that wealth is not just due to intelligence or academic achievement as some are led to believe. In fact, accruing wealth has more to do with work ethic and simple living practiced over a long time than being a wizard at something or getting credentials. The whiz kids who make it big are a tiny fraction of all smart people. The rest of the smart people have to grind it out over decades to assemble an inheritance which will maybe afford their children the opportunity to generate wealth from rents. A lot of people frankly don't care enough about the lives their children, if any, will lead, and want a wealthy lifestyle fast. As you pointed out, more intelligent people also see how the system works and may resent it more.

adrusi 10y ago

The study looked at members of high-iq societies and alumni from elite universities primarily, which is going to select for a disproportionate amount of people who consider their high-iq important to their personalities. Intuitively, I'd expect high IQ to be correlated with narcissism, and in this group even more so. Narcissists are going to be more likely to commit crimes.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
A little searching and I don't see any evidence that IQ is related to narcissism. That seems intuitive to me - narcissism is unrelated to the real world, they don't have to be actually better than anybody to believe they are.
- a_name 10y ago
  narcissism is currently an 'in' word. It's fashionable to name your exes and others as narcissists, and justifies why your actions/feelings against others.
- DFHippie 10y ago
  The claim is that membership in high IQ societies, not high IQ itself, correlates with narcissism.
stagbeetle 10y ago
> elite universities primarily, which is going to select for a disproportionate amount of people who consider their high-iq important to their personalities As someone who's been around this scene, the kids from these unis are surprisingly down to earth.
- da02 10y ago
  Can you go into more detail? Any patterns ypu observed? (It would be a nice departure from the depressing stuff I normally read.)
  - 10y ago

sulam 10y ago

My IQ tested in this range, and I've broken some laws that aren't entirely common. I managed to get a copy of the master key to my campus and had essentially unfettered access to all the buildings and rooms I wanted, provided I was careful (for a while I shifted my waking time so that I was able to take more advantage). I got into software development as a profession by way of breaking into systems for several years. This was a time when the only way to get the access I needed normally was to be in the major and I wasn't. I've never killed anyone, although I can think of one instance where I considered it and would certainly have gotten away with it. It would have been a big hassle, though, and honestly who wants that on their conscience? At the end of the day it seems to me that I've only done the things other people would have also done if the opportunity arose. I may be somewhat more attuned to those opportunities than the average person, but in many cases they arrived after a cascade of events that weren't specifically aimed at any kind of criminality. At worst I was initially guilty of a high degree of curiousity. The only thing that really resonates for me in this article is low attachment, although I find it hard to really quantify that. I do seem to have fewer friends than most people, but there are probably mathematical reasons for that. I am confident in my ability to make friends, but don't feel like making the effort usually. I have a busy life and can barely keep up with work and family -- having more than a few good friends outside those two groups takes more time than I have.

mmmpop 10y ago
> I've never killed anyone, although I can think of one instance where I considered it and would certainly have gotten away with it. It would have been a big hassle, though, and honestly who wants that on their conscience? HN is not your shrink. I would avoid making these kinds of admissions on a public forum.
- Retric 10y ago
  It's a terrible idea to say something like that to your shrink. The odds of something bad happening are probably lower on a public form.
  - 10y ago

YCode 10y ago

I suspect the two pragmatic points to take away are: > Many of Oleson’s respondents discussed the alienating effects of their high intelligence; social maladjustment could be a possible explanation for their elevated crime rates. > Another issue is that the bulk of his gifted cohort was recruited from a private high-IQ society, and people who join such clubs might not represent highly intelligent people in general. To that last point, this has the same vague smell of the kind of study whose participants were from the college it was sponsored by and so as he says it should be taken as preliminary and I'd add with a large grain of salt.

FabHK 10y ago
In particular, I'd venture that well adjusted high-IQ people are less likely to join a high-IQ society than more alienated people.

Pitarou 10y ago

What utter garbage. Not to put too fine a point on it, this isn’t a survey of the high IQ population; it’s a survey of high IQ losers. The sample is drawn from a high IQ club. You won’t find many Nobel laureates, brilliant engineers and so on in these clubs. Why would they bother? They have nothing to prove and better things to do with their time. Broadly speaking, people join a high IQ club because their performance on standardized tests is the ONLY thing they have going for them. And by the way, the average IQ of the sample was 149, so many must have been below that score. Smart, but not exactly Hannibal Lecter.

shmageggy 10y ago
To be fair, the author does acknowledge that: > Oleson is quick to point out that the results presented in his book should be seen as preliminary rather than conclusive, especially considering how rare his subjects are. Another issue is that the bulk of his gifted cohort was recruited from a private high-IQ society, and people who join such clubs might not represent highly intelligent people in general.
tajen 10y ago
> Smart, but not exactly Hannibal Lecter H.L. is a fictional character with IQ 200, and Einstein is only 160, so who would qualify as an "Hannibal Lecter" for you? If the average is 149 and the group is spread in a gaussian curve with exactly one Einstein, then the dumb guy of the group will be 138. Which is under 1% of the population, especially in US where the average IQ is 98. So the first 3 paragraphs of your criticism are well-reasoned, but I wonder why you feel the need to down-play the smartness of that group with your first and last sentence.
- Pitarou 10y ago
  > Einstein is only 160 I don't believe Einstein is ever recorded as having taken an IQ test. In any case, IQ scores quickly lose their meaning when you get to 160 or above. Try taking a physical fitness test designed to make fine distinctions across the general population, and extending it to Olympic athletes. The athletes would just laugh at you. > Which is under 1% of the population, especially in US where the average IQ is 98. ... I wonder why you feel the need to down-play the smartness of that group with your first and last sentence. It's the use of words like "super-smart" that bugs me. A US male in the top height percentile would be about 6'4". Tall, but no André the giant.

foldr 10y ago

I think there's a presupposition here that's worth challenging. Smart people aren't morally superior to dumb people; they're just smarter. They're drawn to crime for the usual reasons: greed, selfishness, lust, etc. etc.

booleandilemma 10y ago

But Schwartz stresses that the overall amount of crime in this range is still “much, much lower” than among people with very low IQ scores. The smartest criminals don't get caught.

brilliantcode 10y ago

Here's what I disagree about the article. That white collar crimes are committed by high IQ people. It's the socioeconomic lineage that gives you to access to such position where it's very easy to commit crimes that the law is not designed to punish. Much of the written laws are around hauling violent criminals away from civilization. While high IQ could empower someone to feel that they can get away with white collar crime, such disposition are innately built from their lack of attachment that arises from being isolated from poverty and all the bullshit that comes with non-upper class life. You go to an elite school, meet other friends who think rules for tools, they go onto work at powerful positions, it's all too simple to collude and create secret societies to further their collective monetary ambitions. It really seems to be true what they say. There are rules for those who made it (because they create the rules) and conditions and terms for those who didn't make it (you follow the rules). It almost seems to me like the whole system is a sham. Imagine if Ghengis Khan discovered the best way to conquer people and other nations is not by force but by credits and materialism. In a chaotic and lawless reality, law is created by individuals who impose their power on rest of society. We are so entrenched that we are "right" and rest of the world is "wrong", we've become a slave because we are told we are free to make our own decisions-limited by powerful men who play God.

eyeownyde 10y ago

Can you help me reconcile these two quotes? But Schwartz stresses that the overall amount of crime in this range is still “much, much lower” than among people with very low IQ scores. “Not only does it mean that elites are just as likely to lie, cheat, and steal as anyone else,” Oleson writes Do these people simply disagree, or am I misinterpreting one of them?