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I have read the article, and I feel is missed one obvious possible thing. Maybe highly intelligent people don't care about being rich? Certainly reaching a "co

I have read the article, and I feel is missed one obvious possible thing. Maybe highly intelligent people don't care about being rich? Certainly reaching a "comfortable" income has value, but beyond that there is a limit. I am an AI researcher in University, so I guess under some measures I might come up as "highly intelligent" (whatever that actually means). I'm fairly sure (based on emails I keep getting) I could go into industry and earn much more money. However, the cost/benefit ratio to me isn't worth it.

Stubb 7y ago
Bingo, we have a winner! Speaking for myself, I'm at a point where I'm making enough money and have been making decisions to increase my free time. Things like working 100% from home so that I don't waste time commuting and turning down job offers that would pay more because they'd cut into leisure time. An extra $50k/year (or whatever) wouldn't be worth an additional hour of work per day to me.
- surething123 7y ago
  Your time must sure be valuable, at roughly $192 an hour ;)
  - rocmcd 7y ago
    Time is the most valuable thing there is.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - Stubb 7y ago
    The marginal cost of my time when I'm already making enough money is expensive as fuck.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      This entirely. For context, I’m not referring to SV software engineer salary just normal big city America. I know a guy who probably now makes a little more than I do on his main job, is my age, but has been saving and investing much more consistently. He’s always doing side gigs for $50 - $70/hour. Which is really nothing for a software engineer even in my city and much less than he would be making as a full time contractor. When an opportunity like that comes up for me to “make extra money”. I always turn them down even at much higher rates. Anything we can’t get with my relatively average salary and my wife working we don’t need. I enjoy my time way too much. I don’t think I would work a contract that paid the equivalent of twice my salary as a side job.
      - ryandrake 7y ago
        I can relate to your friend more, honestly. $50-70/hr is not an elite high level professional salary, but it’s no joke, and much more than the $0/hr you'd otherwise make farting around on HN or watching Netflix. When you’re young and able, life is merely a race to turn time into money fast enough to allow you to survive long after you can no longer turn time into money. Every day I waste now may translate into a week of eating dog food after I can no longer work. Therefore, I generally want to maximize the dollar utility of my time, while I can. If I could guarantee that I’d drop dead as soon as I retired, maybe I’d stop and live a little now. But since I can’t (an don’t want to commit suicide when I run out of savings), well, an extra dollar is an extra dollar! “Money isn’t everything” -says someone with a lot of it.
        scarface74 7y ago
        We are both in our 40s. Not exactly young.
    - smitty1e 7y ago
      In the literal Jeff Bezos sense?
fifnir 7y ago
The title question is such an american thing to ask.. Again and again, specially in HN, I see people who are completely incapable of seeing any other value in life other than monetary.
- tsukurimashou 7y ago
  well, let's call it a side effect of living in a society which you cannot escape
- bittercynic 7y ago
  Some of us in the US are preoccupied with money to an annoying degree, but it is often a product of our economically precarious situation - not greed. If you don't have enough money life is very bad here, maybe even worse than other wealthy nations.
  - huherto 7y ago
    What an insightful comment. Housing, Health care and College costs are out of control which are needed if you want to stay in the middle class.
  - linuxlizard 7y ago
    And what we have can disappear in a moment. One bad medical diagnosis or a layoff and my savings will be wiped out.
- rofo1 7y ago
  That has nothing to do with America or HN. Everywhere I've went I've seen the same thing: vast majority of people see no other value than financial, in general. It shapes how they think, who they hang out with and what their "values" are. Money comes first, and then everything is rationalized later. For example, if a rich person does activity X and a poor person does the same, equivalent activity X, it can happen (and it does happen) that they say that the poor person is an idiot while the rich person is a genius. For the same exact thing. Rich people know this. They know they are buying everything around them, including people. None of the rich people I know are naive in the sense that they think are that funny, interesting, intelligent or attractive, especially to females. The things that I've seen rich people get away with, I guarantee, 99% of HN will not believe. Probably me too, if I didn't witness it. Not talking about crimes here (although that happens, too). Just social things. It's all a game and everyone involved knows exactly how everything is setup, but for some reason, we look the other way and if we say anything like this in real life, we would be thought of as "bitter" or jealous or something. Money is indisputably important, but the best marker of intelligence that I have consistently seen is the right attitude and appreciation of money. And I am saying this as someone well off, who will most probably never have any financial issues in life. So this is not "bitterness" or envy of the rich or something.
tartoran 7y ago
Becoming rich and maintaining that requires a commitment that eats into everything else. If one has money in their mind that will taint everything they do. For some this equates with not truly being free. But one can be rich in other things as well, money is needed up to the point of becoming and staying independent and free to pursue other great things
- krapp 7y ago
  >Becoming rich and maintaining that requires a commitment that eats into everything else. But if you're rich, you can just hire people to maintain that commitment for you. And if you're rich enough, most of your money makes itself through stocks and investments anyway.
  - tartoran 7y ago
    Didn't downvote you and Im not denying that what you’re saying is to some extent true but want to point out that’s mostly the case for the old rich. The new rich get affected quite badly by this money bug. At some point money becomes second and power becomes #1, in other words there’s never enough of it because more is needed to feed the ego/power, worries never subside - worries of a different nature than poor people’s, such as maintain that status, comparing with others at that level, that others are to take advantage of their wealth, power games in the family, inheritance nightmares, false friends, trusting no one, not even the partner sometimes etc. These are demons of money. Sure, there are rich people that are truly illuminated which detach completely from that world to pursue other things but these are usually not first gen. If you want to make a correct generalization, moderation is the key goes a long way. Personally, my financial goal is to become self sufficient (decent but modest pension and such) and that’s about it. Amassing wealth and spending lots of money does not interest me in the least.
Waterluvian 7y ago
This is my intuitive conclusion as well (with no data to back it up). My goal ever since I finished school was to hit a certain income number and then find ways to convert advancement into working less, not being paid more. So far so good. I like to think I'm reasonably intelligent.
berkeleyjunk 7y ago
Yes. Good point. This is my intuitive feeling as well. An extreme example of this is Paul Erdős (of Erdős number fame) who did not care about any material posessions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Yes and Einstein was famously a socialist and egalitarian. The ability to create new knowledge would seem to require thinking beyond the status quo, not maximally optimizing one’s place within it.
wolfgke 7y ago
> I have read the article, and I feel is missed one obvious possible thing. Maybe highly intelligent people don't care about being rich? A different consideration: maybe there exists a relationship between intelligence and "less tolerance for bulls..t". This explains why I know some really smart people who did not succeed in their academic careers even though they were highly intelligent. I consider it as highly plausible that you need an even higher tolerance for bulls..t if you want to become rich.
petra 7y ago
The question is what's the causal relationship between "not wanting to work a lot/hard" and "not wanting to become rich". If the cause is "not wanting to work a lot/hard" that is a bit more interesting, because it speaks directly to the thesis of the article.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  I only have anecdotal data (which isn't really data), but I know very few people who want to become rich. But all of them work hard.
flashgordon 7y ago
Hmm is there any evidence to suggest that highly Intelligent people have atleast reached this level of financial independence? Keep in mind today's house prices and cost of living!
el_programmador 7y ago
Yes, but there are people of both kinds. Consider Linus Torvalds who instead of starting a multi-million firm, focused on Linux development instead (in fact, it was expected of him to start something like Red Hat or Novell!). On the other hand, we have the creator of NPM Software[1] Isaac Schlueter who stepped into corporate shoes and turned NPM into a profitable venture. On the other hand, the income of Ryan Dahl who invented Node.js is meager in comparison to Issac's. There was a lot of controversy surrounding this in the FOSS community too if I recall correctly. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_(software)

Stubb 7y ago

Bingo, we have a winner! Speaking for myself, I'm at a point where I'm making enough money and have been making decisions to increase my free time. Things like working 100% from home so that I don't waste time commuting and turning down job offers that would pay more because they'd cut into leisure time. An extra $50k/year (or whatever) wouldn't be worth an additional hour of work per day to me.

surething123 7y ago
Your time must sure be valuable, at roughly $192 an hour ;)
- rocmcd 7y ago
  Time is the most valuable thing there is.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- Stubb 7y ago
  The marginal cost of my time when I'm already making enough money is expensive as fuck.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    This entirely. For context, I’m not referring to SV software engineer salary just normal big city America. I know a guy who probably now makes a little more than I do on his main job, is my age, but has been saving and investing much more consistently. He’s always doing side gigs for $50 - $70/hour. Which is really nothing for a software engineer even in my city and much less than he would be making as a full time contractor. When an opportunity like that comes up for me to “make extra money”. I always turn them down even at much higher rates. Anything we can’t get with my relatively average salary and my wife working we don’t need. I enjoy my time way too much. I don’t think I would work a contract that paid the equivalent of twice my salary as a side job.
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      I can relate to your friend more, honestly. $50-70/hr is not an elite high level professional salary, but it’s no joke, and much more than the $0/hr you'd otherwise make farting around on HN or watching Netflix. When you’re young and able, life is merely a race to turn time into money fast enough to allow you to survive long after you can no longer turn time into money. Every day I waste now may translate into a week of eating dog food after I can no longer work. Therefore, I generally want to maximize the dollar utility of my time, while I can. If I could guarantee that I’d drop dead as soon as I retired, maybe I’d stop and live a little now. But since I can’t (an don’t want to commit suicide when I run out of savings), well, an extra dollar is an extra dollar! “Money isn’t everything” -says someone with a lot of it.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        We are both in our 40s. Not exactly young.
  - smitty1e 7y ago
    In the literal Jeff Bezos sense?

fifnir 7y ago

The title question is such an american thing to ask.. Again and again, specially in HN, I see people who are completely incapable of seeing any other value in life other than monetary.

tsukurimashou 7y ago
well, let's call it a side effect of living in a society which you cannot escape
bittercynic 7y ago
Some of us in the US are preoccupied with money to an annoying degree, but it is often a product of our economically precarious situation - not greed. If you don't have enough money life is very bad here, maybe even worse than other wealthy nations.
- huherto 7y ago
  What an insightful comment. Housing, Health care and College costs are out of control which are needed if you want to stay in the middle class.
- linuxlizard 7y ago
  And what we have can disappear in a moment. One bad medical diagnosis or a layoff and my savings will be wiped out.
rofo1 7y ago
That has nothing to do with America or HN. Everywhere I've went I've seen the same thing: vast majority of people see no other value than financial, in general. It shapes how they think, who they hang out with and what their "values" are. Money comes first, and then everything is rationalized later. For example, if a rich person does activity X and a poor person does the same, equivalent activity X, it can happen (and it does happen) that they say that the poor person is an idiot while the rich person is a genius. For the same exact thing. Rich people know this. They know they are buying everything around them, including people. None of the rich people I know are naive in the sense that they think are that funny, interesting, intelligent or attractive, especially to females. The things that I've seen rich people get away with, I guarantee, 99% of HN will not believe. Probably me too, if I didn't witness it. Not talking about crimes here (although that happens, too). Just social things. It's all a game and everyone involved knows exactly how everything is setup, but for some reason, we look the other way and if we say anything like this in real life, we would be thought of as "bitter" or jealous or something. Money is indisputably important, but the best marker of intelligence that I have consistently seen is the right attitude and appreciation of money. And I am saying this as someone well off, who will most probably never have any financial issues in life. So this is not "bitterness" or envy of the rich or something.

tartoran 7y ago

Becoming rich and maintaining that requires a commitment that eats into everything else. If one has money in their mind that will taint everything they do. For some this equates with not truly being free. But one can be rich in other things as well, money is needed up to the point of becoming and staying independent and free to pursue other great things

krapp 7y ago
>Becoming rich and maintaining that requires a commitment that eats into everything else. But if you're rich, you can just hire people to maintain that commitment for you. And if you're rich enough, most of your money makes itself through stocks and investments anyway.
- tartoran 7y ago
  Didn't downvote you and Im not denying that what you’re saying is to some extent true but want to point out that’s mostly the case for the old rich. The new rich get affected quite badly by this money bug. At some point money becomes second and power becomes #1, in other words there’s never enough of it because more is needed to feed the ego/power, worries never subside - worries of a different nature than poor people’s, such as maintain that status, comparing with others at that level, that others are to take advantage of their wealth, power games in the family, inheritance nightmares, false friends, trusting no one, not even the partner sometimes etc. These are demons of money. Sure, there are rich people that are truly illuminated which detach completely from that world to pursue other things but these are usually not first gen. If you want to make a correct generalization, moderation is the key goes a long way. Personally, my financial goal is to become self sufficient (decent but modest pension and such) and that’s about it. Amassing wealth and spending lots of money does not interest me in the least.

Waterluvian 7y ago

This is my intuitive conclusion as well (with no data to back it up). My goal ever since I finished school was to hit a certain income number and then find ways to convert advancement into working less, not being paid more. So far so good. I like to think I'm reasonably intelligent.

berkeleyjunk 7y ago

Yes. Good point. This is my intuitive feeling as well. An extreme example of this is Paul Erdős (of Erdős number fame) who did not care about any material posessions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

claudeganon 7y ago
Yes and Einstein was famously a socialist and egalitarian. The ability to create new knowledge would seem to require thinking beyond the status quo, not maximally optimizing one’s place within it.

wolfgke 7y ago

> I have read the article, and I feel is missed one obvious possible thing. Maybe highly intelligent people don't care about being rich? A different consideration: maybe there exists a relationship between intelligence and "less tolerance for bulls..t". This explains why I know some really smart people who did not succeed in their academic careers even though they were highly intelligent. I consider it as highly plausible that you need an even higher tolerance for bulls..t if you want to become rich.

petra 7y ago

The question is what's the causal relationship between "not wanting to work a lot/hard" and "not wanting to become rich". If the cause is "not wanting to work a lot/hard" that is a bit more interesting, because it speaks directly to the thesis of the article.

JohnFen 7y ago
I only have anecdotal data (which isn't really data), but I know very few people who want to become rich. But all of them work hard.

flashgordon 7y ago

Hmm is there any evidence to suggest that highly Intelligent people have atleast reached this level of financial independence? Keep in mind today's house prices and cost of living!

el_programmador 7y ago

Yes, but there are people of both kinds. Consider Linus Torvalds who instead of starting a multi-million firm, focused on Linux development instead (in fact, it was expected of him to start something like Red Hat or Novell!). On the other hand, we have the creator of NPM Software[1] Isaac Schlueter who stepped into corporate shoes and turned NPM into a profitable venture. On the other hand, the income of Ryan Dahl who invented Node.js is meager in comparison to Issac's. There was a lot of controversy surrounding this in the FOSS community too if I recall correctly. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_(software)