[noneckbeard]

There was a good meta analysis of the impact IQ has on outcomes estimating that, while statistically significant, IQ was not much better of a predictor of success than parent’s socioeconomic status or education, and high IQ people still have a wide variance in outcomes. So while you may get a bump, achieving Gattica-style world domination through gene editing seems a little far fetched.

https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2007-strenze.pdf

[cousin_it]

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.

[sgt101]

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.

[bayesian_horse]

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).

[noneckbeard]

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

[quotemstr]

> IQ was not much better of a predictor of success than parent’s socioeconomic status or education

Where do you think socioeconomic status and educational attainment come from? Divine right?

[danmaz74]

Socioeconomic status comes primarily from your family's money.

[dash2]

Socioeconomic status (SES) _is_ primarily your family's money. Where it comes from might easily include your family's genetics, e.g. genetics for intelligence. The parent's point, I think, was that controlling for SES in studies of the effect of intelligence on outcomes is likely to be a mistake, because SES itself will be caused by parental intelligence, which correlates with own intelligence via genetic (and other) pathways.

[bayesian_horse]

In my opinion the link between intelligence and economic success is hugely overestimated...

A strong belief in "meritocracy" leads to a lot of cognitive biases.

[quotemstr]

I'm very tired of people demanding that I believe obvious nonsense like this claim that differences in skill don't exist or that differences in skill don't affect material outcomes. I get that you don't like meritocracy, but I'm not going to accept claims that it's some kind of myth. Hard work and talent leads to success.

[quotemstr]

No, it doesn't. There are lots of self-made people. A pure inheritance model is both defeatist and inaccurate.

[chantelles]

"over 60 percent of the Forbes richest 400 Americans grew up in substantial privilege" (wikipedia) and add in race and gender rigging of the system and IQ is a factor among others.

[bayesian_horse]

Wealth can only accumulate exponentially, and there are big limitations for the "growth" factor. You have to build on the wealth of your parents. This makes it substantially easier for those with richer parents!

[danmaz74]

Primarily doesn't mean only. Of course there are self made people, but the number of those who come from money if much higher.