Oh, and correlation fallacy is, I think, what is currently being hashed out here. That is, while many intelligent people CHOOSE high-dollar career tracks, that doesn't mean that those things select for high intelligence or have features that particularly require it. Competition tends, ironically, to select not for HIGHEST intelligence, but for optimal intelligence. This is why physicians tend to cluster around that optimal line.
I agree and disagree here.First, the original point was "as IQ goes up, so does average income." The paper we were talking shows that and lists a lot of studies also making that point. The new thing about this paper is that the author also looked at accumulated wealth and financial difficulties and IQ. He used some weird regression analyses to make his corrections, and I haven't figured out what he did yet. But I was right about the summary article having cheated: true, ("uncorrected") accumulated wealth in the IQ 105 group was ~$84K compared to ~$71K in the IQ 110 group. BUT, wealth jumped to $95K in the IQ 115 group and $133K in the IQ 125+ group. So the journalist in New Scientist made really,
really misleading statement. (PM me if you want a copy of the paper.)
I disagree with the idea that professions like engineering, medicine, and research don't select for high intelligence. Of course they do! Your IQ has to be higher than average if you're going to get through a degree or two and succeed in these fields. Sure, there are exceptions on both sides. Unmotivated smart people fail and highly motivated average people don't. But the less intelligent people will always be at a disadvantage in these professions.
And the main point is that
average IQ is higher and so are average wages.
Yes, there is probably an optimal IQ for a lot of professions. Yes, there are wealthy people with lowish IQs and very smart people working low wage jobs. But those fact are different from that fact that,
on average, income and IQ rise together.
And my assertion is, similarly, not exactly identical to this rebuttal's meaning (I think, anyway).
That is, the professor teaching that med student calculus
probably has a higher IQ, on average, than those med students s/he is teaching.
But the professor is
likely to have a lower income in spite of that.
It's a Venn diagram, not a flow-chart; I guess that is what I mean.
There is definitely a 'sweet spot' where you still relate well to others and have no trouble fitting yourself into their expectations. THAT is what makes money-- often
lots of money, assuming that you've had the SES to recognize opportunity when it knocks, and know what to do about it in a social-emotional sense.
But (and again, anecdote) when you examine a
group that should select for higher IQ's-- such as the professoriate, or M.D.'s, for example, you do find interesting disparities that reveal what I've suggested here.
Highest IQ medical specialities tend to be those with lowest patient-interaction.
Highest IQ research/field specialties in the professoriate tend to be in theoretical math/physics, and those are
definitely not the most lucrative positions--
those are often in engineering disciplines, or biotech.
So there is definitely a general trend, but I'm not sure that the correlation here
is directly relatable to the same causative mechanism.
I think that smart people like to live as well as they can. Standard of living dictates making life decisions on the basis of status, but more critically, on earning power.
VERY smart people, however, often make decisions on a paradoxically emotional level-- what "lights their fire" so to speak, which tends to be more esoteric, more demanding, more difficult, more consuming. They gravitate to where they
fit in. That may (my own hypothesis) seem MORE important to that group (as IQ rises) than even remuneration does.
But "more cognitive demand" =/= "better remuneration" so it isn't a perfect correlation as you move toward the group that are true outliers. Back to Terman's observations about the wiggly tail.
