We also know lots of brilliant MIT people. Some of them are millionaires (usually because the started a company), others make very little but have a HUGE amount of freedom over their time.

I don't know a single highly intelligent person who is just dutifully climbing a corporate ladder. Wealthy yes, highly intelligent no

No no no. Intelligence doesn't correlate with wealth. But I do think it correlates with something -- freedom. And money can buy freedom. But, there are other ways gain freedom as well.

My husband and I are both smart -- former National Merit Scholar finalists (so scores in the top 1 percent), other tests (IQ) correlate to that. We are also not wealthy (he works for a non profit and I'm a writer) and don't have much desire to be wealthy. but we both do exactly the kind of work we want to do, have a big impact, and have figured out how to raise children in a nice house in the city on our income. Maybe we are able to apply our intelligence to our lives in ways that allow us to see opportunities where others might not. (Like our house -- we looked at probably 40 houses, but We also found one that was way underpriced (one very blurry photo, owner landlord who was eager to sell quickly, no open houses and hardly any opportunities to see it) but high quality... We knew the things we had to change were not expensive (kitchen and bathroom) so we were able to jump on something that a lot of people overlooked. it was honestly probably underpriced by $200,000, and now it was worth literally triple what we bought for). So we use our intelligence in those kinds of ways often.

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. As I get older I see that the more conventionally successful a person is, the likelier it is they have sociopathic tendencies.

That is really the only correlation I see.

I think it depends on the field but many times, yes. It takes a certain personality to ascend the corporate ladder. Saying yes to upper management/not being a very understanding manager to those under you. It’s the same in healthcare. It’s a meme now that nurses/physicians who go into admin and stay look the other way when it comes to patient safety issues.

Anonymous wrote:There are plenty of smart people who don’t care about being rich. The fact that OP doesn’t understand this tells a lot about them.

I think it’s how some people who make obscene amounts of money justify it. They are well off because they are smart and make good decisions. Only because of these things. And therefore, people who don’t make money are not smart. DCUM is rife with black and white thinking.

I am, but it’s family money.

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Anonymous wrote:My brother is much dumber than me and quite rich (in sales). I got rich the smart way (law) and he’s definitely winning.

Meh.

Getting rich the smart way is tech, not law.

I am not sure why lawyers think they are very smart.

LOL! As a lawyer with tech clients, I assure you they're a bunch of dumb dumbs. Which is why so many lost their shirts (and others their freedom) in obvious scams like crypto and NFTs.

No that’s the brogrammers — jocks and waspy crew who used to stream into IB and Wall Street. Tech is where the best rent-seeking is, but these are not smart people.

The actual techies, who design the algorithm that run ML, scale databases, etc are probably pretty smart but often didn’t prioritize income over working on cool tech and innovation — they congregate on Hacker News and ridicule crypto and NFTs constantly.

I was sorta smart techie, and I had no desire to be rich or have much money (I was a little bit of a minimalist hippie, going car free etc nonsense) until I got married and then HOLY F is money important esp with kids, but it’s harder to pivot when you are already knee deep in working on astronomy software for NASA.

DH was a programmer then realized he needed more money for a family… now he’s a lawyer.

Did you have kids in your 20s or did your DH quit his job and go to law school in his 30s and then made it to BigLaw? It’s quite an accomplished to make it to BigLaw outside conventional path, but I guess with patent law you have an edge.

Kids in our 20s. He's a partner now. It's all worked out quite well! Although it's possible he would have made even more if we had moved to SV and ridden the incredible salary inflation wave of the past few years, but that seems to be reversing anyway.

Yeah it’s a life hack to meet your spouse in high school or college, it brings clarity to the world much sooner (and often a spouse can be more clued in than your idealistic programmer)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My brother is much dumber than me and quite rich (in sales). I got rich the smart way (law) and he’s definitely winning.

Meh.

Getting rich the smart way is tech, not law.

I am not sure why lawyers think they are very smart.

LOL! As a lawyer with tech clients, I assure you they're a bunch of dumb dumbs. Which is why so many lost their shirts (and others their freedom) in obvious scams like crypto and NFTs.

No that’s the brogrammers — jocks and waspy crew who used to stream into IB and Wall Street. Tech is where the best rent-seeking is, but these are not smart people.

The actual techies, who design the algorithm that run ML, scale databases, etc are probably pretty smart but often didn’t prioritize income over working on cool tech and innovation — they congregate on Hacker News and ridicule crypto and NFTs constantly.

I was sorta smart techie, and I had no desire to be rich or have much money (I was a little bit of a minimalist hippie, going car free etc nonsense) until I got married and then HOLY F is money important esp with kids, but it’s harder to pivot when you are already knee deep in working on astronomy software for NASA.

DH was a programmer then realized he needed more money for a family… now he’s a lawyer.

BTW I was pretty stubborn in my bohemian ways — I imagined us living in apartment with the kids, learning to take the metro everywhere as urban kids, not even having a car.

Only once we had kids in elementary school did we realize how isolated that would be — all the families move out ti suburbs where they can afford a house or at least a townhouse. People don’t want to visit because parking is a pain (because they all drive), etc. and buying groceries for a family of 4 got exhausting by granny cart. If you don’t want to be outcast you need to earn enough to live well where you are, your kids will suffer if you are the “modest minimalist” bohemians.

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Anonymous wrote:My brother is much dumber than me and quite rich (in sales). I got rich the smart way (law) and he’s definitely winning.

Meh.

Getting rich the smart way is tech, not law.

I am not sure why lawyers think they are very smart.

LOL! As a lawyer with tech clients, I assure you they're a bunch of dumb dumbs. Which is why so many lost their shirts (and others their freedom) in obvious scams like crypto and NFTs.

No that’s the brogrammers — jocks and waspy crew who used to stream into IB and Wall Street. Tech is where the best rent-seeking is, but these are not smart people.

The actual techies, who design the algorithm that run ML, scale databases, etc are probably pretty smart but often didn’t prioritize income over working on cool tech and innovation — they congregate on Hacker News and ridicule crypto and NFTs constantly.

I was sorta smart techie, and I had no desire to be rich or have much money (I was a little bit of a minimalist hippie, going car free etc nonsense) until I got married and then HOLY F is money important esp with kids, but it’s harder to pivot when you are already knee deep in working on astronomy software for NASA.

DH was a programmer then realized he needed more money for a family… now he’s a lawyer.

Did you have kids in your 20s or did your DH quit his job and go to law school in his 30s and then made it to BigLaw? It’s quite an accomplished to make it to BigLaw outside conventional path, but I guess with patent law you have an edge.

Kids in our 20s. He's a partner now. It's all worked out quite well! Although it's possible he would have made even more if we had moved to SV and ridden the incredible salary inflation wave of the past few years, but that seems to be reversing anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My brother is much dumber than me and quite rich (in sales). I got rich the smart way (law) and he’s definitely winning.

Meh.

Getting rich the smart way is tech, not law.

I am not sure why lawyers think they are very smart.

LOL! As a lawyer with tech clients, I assure you they're a bunch of dumb dumbs. Which is why so many lost their shirts (and others their freedom) in obvious scams like crypto and NFTs.

No that’s the brogrammers — jocks and waspy crew who used to stream into IB and Wall Street. Tech is where the best rent-seeking is, but these are not smart people.

The actual techies, who design the algorithm that run ML, scale databases, etc are probably pretty smart but often didn’t prioritize income over working on cool tech and innovation — they congregate on Hacker News and ridicule crypto and NFTs constantly.

I was sorta smart techie, and I had no desire to be rich or have much money (I was a little bit of a minimalist hippie, going car free etc nonsense) until I got married and then HOLY F is money important esp with kids, but it’s harder to pivot when you are already knee deep in working on astronomy software for NASA.

DH was a programmer then realized he needed more money for a family… now he’s a lawyer.

Did you have kids in your 20s or did your DH quit his job and go to law school in his 30s and then made it to BigLaw? It’s quite an accomplished to make it to BigLaw outside conventional path, but I guess with patent law you have an edge.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My brother is much dumber than me and quite rich (in sales). I got rich the smart way (law) and he’s definitely winning.

Meh.

Getting rich the smart way is tech, not law.

I am not sure why lawyers think they are very smart.

LOL! As a lawyer with tech clients, I assure you they're a bunch of dumb dumbs. Which is why so many lost their shirts (and others their freedom) in obvious scams like crypto and NFTs.

No that’s the brogrammers — jocks and waspy crew who used to stream into IB and Wall Street. Tech is where the best rent-seeking is, but these are not smart people.

The actual techies, who design the algorithm that run ML, scale databases, etc are probably pretty smart but often didn’t prioritize income over working on cool tech and innovation — they congregate on Hacker News and ridicule crypto and NFTs constantly.

I was sorta smart techie, and I had no desire to be rich or have much money (I was a little bit of a minimalist hippie, going car free etc nonsense) until I got married and then HOLY F is money important esp with kids, but it’s harder to pivot when you are already knee deep in working on astronomy software for NASA.

DH was a programmer then realized he needed more money for a family… now he’s a lawyer.

There are lots of ways to be intelligent. Money is only one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My brother is much dumber than me and quite rich (in sales). I got rich the smart way (law) and he’s definitely winning.

Meh.

Getting rich the smart way is tech, not law.

I am not sure why lawyers think they are very smart.

This

Anonymous wrote:Because my IQ is 150 but I have ADHD.

Be careful posting that here. They think people like us are dumb as a sack of rocks.

Interesting. As I get older I see that the more conventionally successful a person is, the likelier it is they have sociopathic tendencies.

That is really the only correlation I see.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a good troll post. I’m sure there is a correlation between income and intelligence. But it’s far from perfect I make a ton of money and I know many people who are smarter than me that make much less money. Intelligence is one of many factors that determine income.

Exactly. It's because the rich were more likely to take risks and they were lucky those risks worked and made them rich.


Whereas someone smarter may be risk adverse and didn't take any risks.

There’s also the consequence side of risk. Many rich were already fairly rich, so if they took big risks they weren’t ending up bankrupt and homeless. They just get hooked up to the next job from prep school buddy or dad, and parents can cover the rent for a couple years easy.