[Distraction] Controversial sociological hypothesis

[azekeil]

I was having a 'discussion' earlier this morning with my cow-workers over my theory that you can estimate a lower limit for someone's intelligence by how much they earn. With the exceptions of dumb luck, illegal activities and third world countries that don't have first world job opportunities. I challenged them to provide counter-examples (ie. someone that is dumb that earns a lot) to disprove my theory and they did eventually manage to come up with footballers and porn stars, and for a different reason artists.

I think the ability to earn money, however you do it, is a good measure of the lower limit of someone's intelligence because at the end of the day there is only a finite amount of money in this country as defined by the Bank of England¹ and therefore we are all in indirect competition for it. This is achieved by value being placed on goods and/or services and that being represented by an income.

So with the footballer and porn star arguments, it just shows what strange things humans place value in! Art I believe has its own value, but not one that many modern-day capitalists have much time for.

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¹ - On a side note, how do they govern and introduce new money into the economy? I realise that introducing more money without controls makes inflation spiral and devalues the currency against foreign currencies, but where does it enter the economy? With the government? UPDATE: This seems to give a good idea of how it works (and the effects of hyper-inflation) - through loans to businesses.

Comments

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

dude, so like * tiddles hair around finger * i like, totally earn megabucks, i am like on what was it... oh yeah! 12.6k a YEAR! that like so makes me bright yeah!
ow
i bit my tongue.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Luckily I managed to phrase my post better than I did in my earlier discussion. I propose that your earnings delimits the lower bound of your intelligence - so for lack of a better measurement I could say you have an IQ of at least 100 (for example). It may well be higher than that (and from personal experience I would say it is very much so).

However, it is also important because I'm therefore NOT saying that someone who earns little is dumb. I think one's intelligence (as I'm measuring it with earnings) gives your earning potential, and your earnings give a lower bound to your intelligence (as I choose to measure it).

The reason for all this is that ultimately I think it has to be the method for measuring (lower bounds to) intelligence because it's a constantly self-moderating system where we're all in competition with each other (because there is only a finite amount of money in our economy).

So yes, I'd say that the drug barons are bloody intelligent as their system allows them and their down-chain middlemen to make a lot of money with minimal responsibility. I don't think it's morally right however...

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Using economic factors to measure intelligence is like using bricks to measure quality of sound. They may be linked, but there's no direct and useful correlation. Money is, as you say, a finite resource, but due to its means of control it's no distributed in an even and equal fashion. Nobody gets paid by the IQ point.
Also, I can think of many examples of extremely intellegent people who, for various reasons, earn very little.

Counter-examples (other than models and pop stars) include several salespersons of my againtance who are as thick as tar but make heaps on commission.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Hm, it's a very loose link I agree, and therefore perhaps not useful.

I think I was more getting at trying to define intelligence by the value people are willing to pay for it..

[gashinryu.livejournal.com]

Okay...I'm on approx. £30K a year with an IQ of around 125.

blaadyblah has an IQ 0f over 150 but earns considerably less than me (almost half, I think).

How does experience work into your theory? The only thing holding back blaadyblah's current lack of earning potential is a lack of this.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Ah, now this is interesting.

What I'm really hypothesising is my measurement system for (the lower bounds of one's) intelligence relies on the constantly peer-reviewed system of earnings. There will be exceptions certainly but the average I think will be surprisingly tightly defined.

So IQ as we vaguely understand it does not directly translate into intelligence as I'm trying to measure it. Therefore, someone with more experience may be deemed to be more intelligent (according to measurement of earnings) than someone without.

But of course that goes contrary to what we understand intelligence to be.

I'm tempted to write it off and say it's just an exception, but I think there are many such exceptions. Perhaps in this case with this measure I'm also measuring business acumen and experience, as well as intelligence?

I may have to amend my theory accordingly (unless you can suggest a better alternative theory?). Watch this space.

[yaruar.livejournal.com]

This hypothesis falls down on a number of factors though. Firstly the concept of economic rent which compares how much someone is paid over and above how much they would be willing to do the job for.

+ in real world terms highly intelligent people often choose low paid careers in order to satisfy their intellectual desires.

+ one doesn't have to be intelligent to be ambitious and self servering which are often the two biggest factors in people who earn the highest amounts of money.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Ah, but:

I specify that your earnings are a measure of the lower bound of your intelligence (specifically to take that case into account)

And: Perhaps being ambitious and self-serving is a measure of intelligence? Darwinism in pure economic terms? It might not be very pleasant though..

[androktone.livejournal.com]

i think that theory makes me neglibigly intelligent at the moment!

But your theory presupposes that people always earn the maximum money that they can, which isn't true. I was on 40k and i'm happily not working so i can spend time with the kids and the lack of money doesn't actually bother me, because its worth it to have so much free time and actually start enjoying ym life again.

Or can we expand it into "the most you have ever earned" in which case I probably do ok..

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Again, as with above, I'm only suggesting your earnings give a lower bound to your intelligence.

The fact that you were earning 40k means that your lower bound is fairly high...

And of course, this measurement is in financial terms only, not emotional, so it's all inaccurate anyway. But it's the only one where the supply is finite (I don't believe there is only a certain amount of happiness in the world - that would be very depressing and lead to ideas like you have to step on others to make yourself happy).

[emilydongray.livejournal.com]

I have recently chosen job with mini-bucks as it seems middle-bucks makes people sad and stressed out. I think of employment being a means to get money to do the things you like. I have a strong work/home distinction and believe that if something makes you unhappy then you shouldn't do it; very simple really. Linette, Adam, Will, Darren..wait..everyone, have put me off getting Real Job. I will happily work in HMV for 13kPA until I am ready to sprog.

Sorry, yes and I am intelligent. yay!

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Yes, as I point out to androktone above, happiness isn't finite, so there is no meaningful competition and therefore I can't use it as a measure, which is why I didn't include it in my theory. That's a failing of my theory, not of your choice.

And I wish my plans for happiness weren't quite so tied up in having a reasonable amount of moolah! I don't react well to stress!

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much you get paid to be the President of the United States of America? ;P

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Touché ;)

This touches on another theory of mine that people can be individually bloody clever and have all the answers to the sociological problems of our times, but put people together and they're thick as pigshit and get it horribly, horribly wrong.

[gerald_duck]

OK. First let me mention something that's obvious to me, and which I'm surprised nobody's mentioned yet: many bounds you can set on a relationship between two variables are entirely true, yet so useless as to be essentially meaningless.

What if I were to observe that (n/18,734,929) is a lower bound on the magnitude of the nth prime number? For example, the 1000th prime number is 7919, which is much more than 0.0000534 (i.e. 1000/18734929). As I say, true but useless.

Similarly, I have no doubt that everyone in the world has at least one IQ point per £1,000,000,000 a year they earn, so your observation is entirely correct. (-8


What you seem to be talking about, stated more rigorously, is, for each salary, the lowest IQ of any person who earns at least that much. I doubt that anything meaningful will turn up in those statistics.

More generally, however, IQ will almost certainly be correlated with earnings, just as physical strength, maleness, whiteness, being born in a NATO country, wealth of parents, common sense, charisma and sexual attractiveness will be. Will it be any more significant a factor? I doubt it.

Even more generally, I'm generally quite scathing of IQ tests, despite having the good fortune to perform quite well in them. I draw a distinction between theoretical intelligence and applied intelligence. If you have applicable intelligence there's something you're good at, and your IQ test results are an irrelevance; IQ tests are only useful to people who are really clever in theory without actually being able to do anything clever. Earning power will obviously be much more closely obviously correlated with applied intelligence than theoretical. (-8

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Intelligence is such a difficult thing to measure. I think I was kind of trying to suggest that measuring it could be as simple as a linear relationship between what someone earns and their intelligence (lower bounded to cope with intelligent people who don't want to fulfill their earning potential).

I have a feeling that if a statistical analysis were done it might show a surprisingly tightly bound correlation.

Someone else pointed out to me in discussion that jobs like working on an oil rig earned a lot - I think I was assuming that with the same hours, same level of danger, same local economic conditions (ie. not London vs. village in Scotland) etc.