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Comment by nonethewiser | Hacker News Reader

Plus, geniuses tend to make a shitload of money already. And when they dont, there is a reason.

If you pick "high IQ" as the definition of "genius", this isn't true. Right around the point where and individual would be considered a "genius", the correlation between income and IQ breaks down. So a super-genius makes about the same amount of money as a very smart, but within the bell curve, person.

I would imagine this holds true for other definitions of genius, but I haven't seen quantitative data on it.

Genius is also loaded. It's a fact kids in poverty have lower test grades, so the ACT of giving them UBI will in fact RAISE test scores and maybe move them up to the 'genius' level, or at least give them a better shot.

It's hard to focus on schooling when you're tummy is growling, or there's a ton of stress at home, or abuse, etc.

We grew up poor in the US. We worked hard in school and had above average to excellent test scores. Being poor does not directly support bad test scores or whether society can or should bear the burden of UBI.

Conflating growing up poor with growing up with abuse is incorrect.

And assuming wealth and poverty do NOT correlate with test scores and professional success is equally problematic.

No, not when the correlation is used as an argument against such measures (see, e.g., this thread). Such arguments are perniciously classist, anti-meritocratic, and anti-poor.

Fair point.

Poverty is directly statistically correlated with poorer test scores and lower IQ. Your hard work and test scores don't contradict those statistics.

ok, well one obvious reason would be environmental effects of being raised by idiots without money.

The more obvious reason would be intelligence has zero correlation with motivation to contribute to society. Your stereotypical high school educated blue collar worker will still be better for society than a NEET Mensa member who spends all their time speed running videogames

I mean it seems like one could perhaps get some estimation of how much impact family wealth and a positive environment has one success in relation to intellectual abilities based on lots of studies over probably about half a century now.

Obviously it would be a wide range of stuff to argue about but still your example sounds more to me like something we won't have that much data on, relatively speaking.

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