[luffapi]

Talent, pay and IQ (if you believe it’s valid) have almost no correlation. Without question, the people I know earning them most money are rich kids and I assure you they are neither talented nor intelligent.

There are incredibly talented musicians out there that can’t even afford rent and genius mathematicians are rarely seen purchasing a yacht.

[sz4kerto]

> There are incredibly talented musicians out there that can’t even afford rent and genius mathematicians are rarely seen purchasing a yacht.

Sorry, but anecdotes are really problematic (i.e. useless) when evaluating correlation between variables.

Research puts IQ - income correlation to around 0.4, if my memory serves.

[luffapi]

I’d like to see some research to back that up. Here’s an article that says otherwise:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-people-...

Common sense will tell you billionaires aren’t orders of magnitude smarter than the rest of us.

[mortehu]

The researcher starts out by admitting that IQ is correlated to income and wealth[1], then keeps adding factors to the model until the IQ factor is statistically redundant. If you think this method is sufficient to say two variables are not correlated, then nothing is correlated. Excluding wealth, none of the variables listed were more strongly correlated with income than IQ.

1. "Each point increase in IQ test scores is associated with $202 to $616 more income per year,”

[luffapi]

> If you think this method is sufficient to say two variables are not correlated, then nothing is correlated.

And thus you’ve discovered why social “science” is not science at all. IQ is a nebulous concept anyway. Yes, if you’re cognitively impaired, there are lots of things you can’t do and that will impact your pay but higher income is related to who you know, not what you do.

[when_creaks]

That newscientist article is a bit old (from 2007) but seems to support sz4kerto's claim that income is correlated with IQ.

“Each point increase in IQ test scores is associated with $202 to $616 more income per year,”

That study claims that the income increase associated with higher IQ doesn't necessarily translate into increased average wealth though as other life style factors may offset the increased average income.