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Quote from the article you linked: Despite the modest conclusion, these results are important because they falsify a claim often made by the critics of the “te

Quote from the article you linked: Despite the modest conclusion, these results are important because they falsify a claim often made by the critics of the “testing movement”: that the positive relationship between intelligence and success is just the effect of parental SES or academic performance influencing them both (see Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Fischer et al., 1996; McClelland, 1973). If the correlation between intelligence and success was a mere byproduct of the causal effect of parental SES or academic performance, then parental SES and academic performance should have outcompeted intelligence as predictors of success; but this was clearly not so. These results confirm that intelligence is an independent causal force among the determinants of success; in other words, the fact that intelligent people are successful is not completely explainable by the fact that intelligent people have wealthy parents and are doing better at school. In other words, there are two models: 1) Your parents being rich makes you rich and also makes you good at IQ tests. 2) Heritable intelligence makes you rich and also made your parents rich. The article says the first model is falsified in favor of the second. That's pretty much the opposite of what you say in your comment.

bayesian_horse 7y ago
You don't seem to understand that part of the article. There are no discrete models for inheriting intelligence and wealth, and making such sweeping claims about this issue is just not warranted. It has been shown that wealth improves children's intelligence and "success". It has also been shown that intelligence is one factor in success, but not the only one. Even academic success is "only" about 70% dependent on IQ. Another problem is the difference in backgrounds for such studies among different countries. Sometimes wealth will have a big impact on childhood health (for example developing countries) and sometimes it doesn't (developed nations with proper medical systems, i.e. every one except US).
sgt101 7y ago
For 2 I could imagine that intelligence makes you rich - and if heritable wealth would run in the family. But be clear, other factors are much more important in getting rich - aggression, ruthlessness, a lack of imagination.. and being positive; a strong family affinity, luck, hardwork, attention to detail. The ability to reason and learn is clearly very useful, but it's not exclusively useful in our society, and in the not very distant past it was not very useful at all to the vast majority of economic actors. For example - if you are a land owner in a preindustrial society the opportunities for scheming and thinking are far more limited than if you are a startup owner in the modern day. Some would say.
noneckbeard 7y ago
I didn’t say there was no effect. The change in outcome from IQ is statistically significant, just modest.
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bayesian_horse 7y ago

You don't seem to understand that part of the article. There are no discrete models for inheriting intelligence and wealth, and making such sweeping claims about this issue is just not warranted. It has been shown that wealth improves children's intelligence and "success". It has also been shown that intelligence is one factor in success, but not the only one. Even academic success is "only" about 70% dependent on IQ. Another problem is the difference in backgrounds for such studies among different countries. Sometimes wealth will have a big impact on childhood health (for example developing countries) and sometimes it doesn't (developed nations with proper medical systems, i.e. every one except US).

sgt101 7y ago

For 2 I could imagine that intelligence makes you rich - and if heritable wealth would run in the family. But be clear, other factors are much more important in getting rich - aggression, ruthlessness, a lack of imagination.. and being positive; a strong family affinity, luck, hardwork, attention to detail. The ability to reason and learn is clearly very useful, but it's not exclusively useful in our society, and in the not very distant past it was not very useful at all to the vast majority of economic actors. For example - if you are a land owner in a preindustrial society the opportunities for scheming and thinking are far more limited than if you are a startup owner in the modern day. Some would say.

noneckbeard 7y ago

I didn’t say there was no effect. The change in outcome from IQ is statistically significant, just modest.

deleted 7y ago
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