One huge assumption no one has challenged is the notion that IQ is a valid measure of intelligence. One reason to doubt this is that above a low threshold (80 IIRC), IQ has no correlation with salary.
http://www.emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Intellige...
There are a lot of reasons you would expect divergence when just looking at salary. A Reporter is averaging 41k, a Postdoctoral Research Associate is averaging under $48k while a nurse makes $65k and a elevator repairman is making 79k. Higher status jobs don't necessarily pay more.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/money-academic-su...
- Intelligence is not correlated with salary
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with materialism
- Intelligent people get paid more for doing work that requires I but less for having an unpleasant job (given equal pay, would you rather be a programmer or a garbage collector?)
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with other abilities (brain areas specialized in reasoning can't be specialized in social skills, energy spent on the brain can't be spent on the immune system)
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with mental health (Less Intelligent people don't notice or understand problems more intelligent ones do – ignorance is bliss; the things that make one intelligent also make one less stable – the genes that make one less intelligent haven't died out because evolution hasn't progressed that far yet but because the brain designs intelligent people have are buggy.
Come on, surely you aren't suggesting that genetics have anything to do with intelligence, are you?
Also I just listed all possibilities that came to my mind, whether I think they're likely or not.
As it should be, there's simply no data to back up claims like this.
No it's not, it's flat out racist.
But seriously: Isn't considering material wealth one meaning of "materialism"?
The higher your IQ, the greater the odds of you making more money. The higher the collective IQ of a nation or group, the greater the odds of that nation or group being successful or wealthy.
https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.html
If you look at the list of successful and wealthy countries and the list of national iqs, they tend to correlate fairly well. Barring war or some external impediment, the nations with the highest iqs tend to be wealthier and the lower iqs tend to be poorer.
Do you have a source for this? Everything I have read suggests IQ is highly correlated with income (without considering a threshold).
I'm not saying that assumption is not wrong; I certainly have my doubts about the validity of IQ tests. But salary isn't a valid measure of intelligence either.
Honestly, I don't think we can even really agree on what intelligence is, and as long as that's the case, we can't really know what we're supposed to measure either.
Perhaps what you're getting at is 'how much does IQ matter' which is an interesting question.
In modern society the answer is probably a lot. And when you factor in the negative correlation between intelligence and aggression / self-control, probably a lot more.
If intelligence was correlated with salary that would be a symptom of bad outcomes in the economic system. I'd expect that, but wouldn't be happy to see it. Eg, whoever is running the local plumbing small business is in a position to make a lot of money. The plumber might be smart or might not be, really shouldn't matter.
I've seen situations where truck drivers make a higher salary than engineers. More intelligence almost correlated with a lower salary.
If you think about what is involved in an IQ test and all the ways someone's intelligence manifests itself, it seems clear to me that IQ is at best a very distorted and narrow measurement of intelligence.