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>> rich tend to succeed and poor tend to fail regardless of whether the grab the marshmallow or not. We were talking about intelligence. The marshmallow test m

>> rich tend to succeed and poor tend to fail regardless of whether the grab the marshmallow or not. We were talking about intelligence. The marshmallow test measures delayed gratification. >> If intelligence corresponds to wealth, we would expect Nobel prize winners and widely cited scientist to be the richest people. It's a correlation - so we'd expect them to be richer than average, and richer on average than dumber scientists. They are - you can sell a Nobel prize for $5M. >> Rich people .. scattered through the world .. history and thus have maximum genetic difference. They can not reasonably share a common gene that skips over millions of people between them. ... no gene correlating to wealth has been found. ... I am not proposing "wealth" genes - how ridiculous. It would be trivial though, just find a richer ethnic group and use their novel variants. That doesn't prove causality, though. Intelligence is a highly polygenic trait, there are probably thousands of variants involved. But here's a simpler model - inheriting a high IQ is partly due to a lack of damaging variants. There are plenty of variants associated with intellectual disability, go search OMIM. Inheriting one of them leads to not being able to hold down a job, and thus lower income. There you go - inherited intellectual disability - an exact genetic link to wealth acquisition (or lack thereof). >> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-people-are-no-better-off/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-people-... >> controlled for other factors – such as divorce, years spent in school, type of work and inheritance I wish I had a dollar for every social science paper confounded by genetics! Imagine wealth and IQ are perfectly linked and 100% heritable. Wouldn't controlling for inherited wealth completely wipe away the signal? For divorce - delayed gratification seems to be inherited - the original marshmallow experiment showed this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen... "Absence of the father was prevalent in the African-descent group but occurred only once in the East Indian group, and this variable showed the strongest link to delay of gratification, with children from intact families showing superior ability to delay."

TomMckenny 8y ago
>and richer on average than dumber scientists ...but not the richest of all people. Nor do the richest people in the world tend to be great scientist, mathematicians, chess players, writers etc. Because intelligence can only shuffle you around in the class you inherit but only luck will get you out of it. Children born to carpenters will tend to become good carpenters because they get connections, learn skill and are given tools by their parents not because they are inheriting more intelligence than someone just breaking in to carpentry. Children born to massive landlords will be landlords because they inherit the estate not because they are smarter than people wanting to become landlords with no cash. >Wouldn't controlling for inherited wealth completely wipe away the signal? You need to measure delta in wealth so in fact you _must_ control for wealth. Otherwise a rich kid who looses half his inheritance will be counted more successful than a poor kid who doubles his. >just find a richer ethnic group I point out above why this is impossible. If, for some reason, you decide this moment in history was the one to make the judgment on, you would find that the richest countries are also the most progressive and have the largest social safety nets. Are we going to claim the intelligence correlates to progressive politics and the wisdom of social safety nets as much as wealth? >The marshmallow test measures delayed gratification. And yet when it was believed to predict future wealth, it was said delayed gratification _was_ intelligence. >the original marshmallow experiment showed... The article explains why the original test was fundamentally flawed. For one reason, because it only had 90 subject rather than 900
- haihaibye 8y ago
  > ..but not the richest of all people. I said a correlation, not a correlation of 1.0 Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg etc are all very smart. Top 1% smart or better. I don't think that's a coincidence. >> Nor do the richest people in the world tend to be great scientist, mathematicians, chess players, writers etc. They dedicated their time and efforts to moneymaking rather than these pursuits. Same as chess skills may correlate with mathematical ability but to be word class in either you have to dedicate your time to only one. >> Because intelligence can only shuffle you around in the class you inherit but only luck will get you out of it. What about scholarships? My Granfather repaired fences and shot kangaroos, my mum got top marks in school and won a scholarship, now I'm a scientist. > point out above why this is impossible. If, for some reason, you decide this moment in history was the one to make the judgment on Not what the data shows: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903117/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903117/ In the 60s China and Korea were African level poor, but they had high IQs. Is it a coincidence where smart phones are being built now? > because it only had 90 subject rather than 900 A replication with much larger numbers found the effect, but with smaller magnitude. That's not bad.
  - TomMckenny 8y ago
    >What about scholarships? I believe scholarships are a nearly perfect indicator of intelligence. Self motivation toward education is certainly another. These things allow people to move from one part of their class to another. And by class I don't mean the ever shifting terms politicians use, I mean the very specific meaning when the term was coined: those who must work to survive vs those born never needing to. >Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg 1% of the population is in the top 1% of intelligence. 0.02% of the population are billionaires. Clearly intelligence is a trivial factor for immense wealth. For that list, some of the people you cite as smart were born to wealthy parents, others not. If we assume[1] they are intellectually in the top 1%, then this very list shows no correlation between inherited wealth and inherited brains. Since the claim is that the rich pass down smart genes, we should look look at the top hereditary billionaires in the world and see if there is any evidence that they are all in the top 1% intellectually. Is Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia super smart? How about Liliane Bettencourt, who does not even have hand in the business which makes her a billionaire. Or Georg Schaeffler who drove the company he inherited deeply in to debt. How about the wife of Steve Jobs. Most relevant would be those who have been ultra rich for generations and only married other rich people: is Prince Charles among the smartest people in the world? And the fact that rich Japanese adopt unrelated adults into the family who then run the business for the heirs. Obviously genes are irrelevant to wealth maintenance here. >In the 60s China and Korea were African level poor, but they had high IQs For that last several centuries, China's GDP was so low famines were a regular occurrence. Only in the last silver of history have they become rich. So obviously this has nothing to do with genetics but with changes to society both inside and outside China.

TomMckenny 8y ago

>and richer on average than dumber scientists ...but not the richest of all people. Nor do the richest people in the world tend to be great scientist, mathematicians, chess players, writers etc. Because intelligence can only shuffle you around in the class you inherit but only luck will get you out of it. Children born to carpenters will tend to become good carpenters because they get connections, learn skill and are given tools by their parents not because they are inheriting more intelligence than someone just breaking in to carpentry. Children born to massive landlords will be landlords because they inherit the estate not because they are smarter than people wanting to become landlords with no cash. >Wouldn't controlling for inherited wealth completely wipe away the signal? You need to measure delta in wealth so in fact you _must_ control for wealth. Otherwise a rich kid who looses half his inheritance will be counted more successful than a poor kid who doubles his. >just find a richer ethnic group I point out above why this is impossible. If, for some reason, you decide this moment in history was the one to make the judgment on, you would find that the richest countries are also the most progressive and have the largest social safety nets. Are we going to claim the intelligence correlates to progressive politics and the wisdom of social safety nets as much as wealth? >The marshmallow test measures delayed gratification. And yet when it was believed to predict future wealth, it was said delayed gratification _was_ intelligence. >the original marshmallow experiment showed... The article explains why the original test was fundamentally flawed. For one reason, because it only had 90 subject rather than 900

haihaibye 8y ago
> ..but not the richest of all people. I said a correlation, not a correlation of 1.0 Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg etc are all very smart. Top 1% smart or better. I don't think that's a coincidence. >> Nor do the richest people in the world tend to be great scientist, mathematicians, chess players, writers etc. They dedicated their time and efforts to moneymaking rather than these pursuits. Same as chess skills may correlate with mathematical ability but to be word class in either you have to dedicate your time to only one. >> Because intelligence can only shuffle you around in the class you inherit but only luck will get you out of it. What about scholarships? My Granfather repaired fences and shot kangaroos, my mum got top marks in school and won a scholarship, now I'm a scientist. > point out above why this is impossible. If, for some reason, you decide this moment in history was the one to make the judgment on Not what the data shows: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903117/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903117/ In the 60s China and Korea were African level poor, but they had high IQs. Is it a coincidence where smart phones are being built now? > because it only had 90 subject rather than 900 A replication with much larger numbers found the effect, but with smaller magnitude. That's not bad.
- TomMckenny 8y ago
  >What about scholarships? I believe scholarships are a nearly perfect indicator of intelligence. Self motivation toward education is certainly another. These things allow people to move from one part of their class to another. And by class I don't mean the ever shifting terms politicians use, I mean the very specific meaning when the term was coined: those who must work to survive vs those born never needing to. >Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg 1% of the population is in the top 1% of intelligence. 0.02% of the population are billionaires. Clearly intelligence is a trivial factor for immense wealth. For that list, some of the people you cite as smart were born to wealthy parents, others not. If we assume[1] they are intellectually in the top 1%, then this very list shows no correlation between inherited wealth and inherited brains. Since the claim is that the rich pass down smart genes, we should look look at the top hereditary billionaires in the world and see if there is any evidence that they are all in the top 1% intellectually. Is Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia super smart? How about Liliane Bettencourt, who does not even have hand in the business which makes her a billionaire. Or Georg Schaeffler who drove the company he inherited deeply in to debt. How about the wife of Steve Jobs. Most relevant would be those who have been ultra rich for generations and only married other rich people: is Prince Charles among the smartest people in the world? And the fact that rich Japanese adopt unrelated adults into the family who then run the business for the heirs. Obviously genes are irrelevant to wealth maintenance here. >In the 60s China and Korea were African level poor, but they had high IQs For that last several centuries, China's GDP was so low famines were a regular occurrence. Only in the last silver of history have they become rich. So obviously this has nothing to do with genetics but with changes to society both inside and outside China.