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Intelligence Is Over-Rated
TRIGGER WARNING: There are parts of this essay in which I sound like an arrogant twit. This is not my intention, and I’m just trying to make a point. In order to make this point, I refer to my life as an example, because that’s what I’m familiar with. So read on if you like, and I hope you’ll see my point by the end, if you’ll bear with me. But if you roll your eyes and scroll on to other stuff in the third paragraph or so, I’ll understand…
I’ve done well in life, financially and professionally. I’ll skip the details so I don’t sound like an arrogant twit (Dang! Too late!), but we lost our hog farm when I was 16, and now, by the age of 50, I live in a fancy house on a golf course in Hilton Head. I’m very good at a very important job, and I help a lot of people. I also have three very successful kids. A family friend (“Bob”) complimented one of my kids recently, saying that we were all really, really smart. This immediately offended me, which seemed odd. It’s a nice thing to say. And I would have thanked him if I had been there. But I think that his view of intelligence is problematic. Common, but problematic.
My kids and I do have unusually high IQ’s – well above genius level. And I’m sure that helps, of course. So he was being complimentary, and he was not incorrect. But here is what bothered me about Bob’s compliment:
There are a lot of reasons for my success, such as:
- Ambition
- Unwillingness to accept “pretty good”
- Ability to ignore apparent limitations
- A vision of, and desire for, a better life
- A tendency to ignore naysayers
- Toughness
- Things go wrong. There are always setbacks, which can seem catastrophic at the time. Some people get back up and keep going, and others don’t.
- Creativity
- Finding better ways to do things
- Willingness to abandon more established ways of doing things
- Willingness to take responsibility for nearly everything
- If something goes wrong, I make it my problem, and I fix it, regardless of whose fault it is.
- Work habits
- The ability to work hard every day, even if no immediate reward is apparent
- Risk-taking
- Willingness to gamble, rather than falling back on the sure thing
- Figuring out which risks are worth taking, and which ones are not
- Ability to plan and estimate risk
- What exactly are my options here?
- How can I increase my odds of success with this plan?
- If something goes wrong, what is my plan B? Plan C? D? E? F?
- Ability to handle failure
- If you’re ambitious, and you take chances, you’re going to fail sometimes.
- Many people are crippled by these failures, or even by the possibility of failure.
I could obviously go on and on, and you could add more entries yourself that have helped you in your life, but my point is that of all these things that led to my success, I haven’t mentioned intelligence yet. If I kept going down this list far enough, I’m sure it would show up at some point, but it’s not near the top. And I suspect that this would be true of many successful people. At least, that’s how I see it.
But Bob thinks I’ve been successful because I’m smart. I was born with a high IQ, so of course, I make a lot of money. I think that’s just baloney, it’s destructive baloney. Bob can take comfort in this thought: “Dr. Bastiat makes more money than me, but that’s just because he was born with that magic brain of his. It’s not my fault.”
This deflection of responsibility is unhelpful for an individual, but when it is converted into government policy via affirmative action or whatever, it becomes enormously destructive for large numbers of people. Don’t tell little girls that men make more money than women, and that it’s not fair. Tell her that if she wants to earn more money than men, she needs to get to work. Don’t hold her back by telling her that her success, or lack thereof, is not in her control. What a horrible thing to do to somebody.
This brings up another problem I have with all this – the use of money to measure success in life. It’s a tempting metric, partially because it’s easy to measure. But there is a lot more to success in life besides money. Most of the people whose success I admire the most are not wealthy. But that’s another post…
Anyway, the efforts of leftists to view people as members of groups, rather than as individuals free to choose their own path, suppresses ambition and discourages risk-taking. You’re encouraging people to accept mediocrity. And many of them will.
But here’s the problem: Despite my protests to the contrary, it appears that IQ really is a good predictor of success in life. I rush to point out that this works better in large groups of people than it does in individuals, but if you group people by IQ, that is a good way to predict success in life among those groups. Modern psychology has come up with all sorts of ways to stratify those most likely to succeed, and nothing has ever worked as well as IQ. I don’t know enough about the data to make a good case for this, but Jordan Peterson, Charles Murray, Stefan Molyneux, and many others have reached this conclusion after much research.
If they’re right, I find that extremely problematic.
I was very careful with this when I raised my kids. When they did well on a test, I NEVER said, “You’re so smart!” Instead I said, “Nice work!” I was more scared of laziness and complacency than I was of lack of ability. If they failed at something, I always suggested they either take a different approach or work harder, even if I knew that they just couldn’t do it. I NEVER told them that they couldn’t do ANYTHING, even though there were (of course) lots of things they just couldn’t do. Let them fail. But don’t let them not try. I’ve focused on this, relentlessly, since before they could walk. I wanted them to find their own limitations. I didn’t want anyone to tell them what those limitations were. They’d figure it out over time.
My three kids are very different from one another. But they are all tough. And now they’re happy, well-adjusted young adults doing quite well, thank you.
Life is hard. It’s harder if you’re a wimp. Wimps are never happy.
———-
Many leftists view this as a central contradiction in conservative thought. We promote individualism and personal responsibility. We dislike policies that try to produce equality of outcomes – we prefer equality of opportunity. Meanwhile, we acknowledge that not everyone has equal abilities. Thus, we acknowledge that some will succeed, and some will fail.
Leftists use this argument to suggest that conservatives are cold-hearted, uncaring, or even evil.
But conservatives, of course, disagree. You can’t have success without risking failure. You can’t win if you’re not willing to lose. Success is contagious. A rising tide lifts all boats. You can’t cure poverty by giving money to poor people. Poor people are not better off if rich people become less rich.
But all of these points require an honest effort to grasp them. It’s easier to just say, “Rich people are just the winners of life’s lottery. If you don’t succeed, it’s not your fault. Do you want a better life? Just vote for me, and I’ll take care of it.” That will win elections.
This argument is one of many at which conservatives are at a natural disadvantage, even if they are right.
So when Bob says that I succeed simply because I won the IQ lottery at birth, I bristle at this apparent compliment. Part of my discomfort rises from the fact that he may have a point. But even if that point is partially true, I think we should actively ignore it. You can’t control your natural gifts, but you can control your effort and a lot of other things. Worry about what you can control. And forget the rest. Are Jordan Peterson et al correct about the importance of IQ? Maybe, but who cares? Screw it. Get to work.
So I suggest that we ignore natural ability – start with the presumption that everyone is equal. Especially in matters of public policy. By emphasizing IQ etc, we de-emphasize individual decision making, ambition, risk-taking, and so on. And that’s what matters. Natural ability is just not as important as we make it out to be.
Or is it? What do you think?
———-
NOTE: Again, I apologize for sounding arrogant in this essay. I almost didn’t post it because of this. Those of you who know me know that this is not my style.
I also hesitated to use myself as an example, because I’m inviting personal attacks, which miss the point of the essay.
But without explaining why Bob’s compliment offended me, and without explaining why I think intelligence is not the primary determinant of my success, this essay made very little sense. So thank you for bearing with me.
Published in General
This is so true. I realized how lazy I truly am when I had my first baby’s first pediatrician’s visit. I was nervous about this new responsibility I had in my arms, and when I got home I realized I was recalling the entire conversation I had had with the doctor word for word–me who couldn’t remember anything my teachers had ever said. :-)
Intelligence and success mean nothing without basic goodness and sensitivity, being a mensch. When we teach our kids, it’s important that we teach them that being a good student or a good athlete is secondary to being a good human being.
If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. Success definitely depends on a lot more than intelligence – or even just talent in an area. My favorite part, though, was the above. There is a lot more to life than money.
It’s been my experience that intellectualism is inconsistent with leadership.
I spent a lot of time in the USMC and it’s safe to say that this organization is a veritable cult of leadership. We spend a lot of time talking about it and trying to define it, mostly failing in useful ways. For instance, we have leadership traits that we ask Marines to memorize and among them is to be “tactically and technically proficient.” However, I have known a great many leaders who have no idea what they’re doing, but they are very good at convincing people to follow them. You most especially don’t need to be thoughtful or a good person to be a strong leader, and in fact this often is a disadvantage.
So it is with intellectualism. Sitting quietly and thinking is not inspiring, and won’t cause others to act. The intellectual can help introduce new ways of thinking about a problem, but it will never be acted on without a leader, who is almost never an intellectual.
The left often pretends to be led by intellectuals. In fact, however, they are not led by deep thinkers but by those who use faux intellectuals to justify their grabs for power. The power is never held by the intellectual, but by a parasite of the intellectual. The intellectual by his nature is not going to be a strong leader.
I don’t think it matters whether it’s a “virtue” or not. It’s effective either way.
My old company used the short-hand term “hi-pot” for someone identified as having high potential, either in a technical area or as a leader. I was working a major proposal for a while, and a “hi-pot” showed up. Management had assigned her a “mentor”, but she reassigned herself to me. No; I don’t know why. After a few weeks, she asked me how to be a leader. I had no idea, but she deserved an honest answer from me even if it wasn’t a particularly good one.
I asked her whom she would willingly follow. She mentioned a couple names, so I asked her why she would follow, and she listed the characteristics those she would follow exhibited. So I told her to adopt those characteristics as her own and exhibit them.
I’ll bet every true leader started out as a follower.
Sort of like every good writer started out as a reader.
Sadly, I have seen this attitude too many times and seen programmers who drop out of the profession as a result. There is no coasting in life – especially not one that revolves around a professional career. For professionals, learning is a lifelong commitment.
In my old company, the shelf life of an engineer who didn’t work hard at keeping his skills up-to-date was between four and six years. Because the company offered a 5% salary bonus for a master’s degree, a lot of newcomers got the degree and then stopped learning. Those folks usually switched from the technical path to the management path and their careers stalled at mid-level.
Help from other people isn’t on the list.
I just finished Hillbilly Elegy. What a great book. The author freely acknowledges the help he received from other people in having the success he has had. He had the other characteristics you’re talking about, @drbastiat, as well. But ignorance could have held him back and it was other people who helped him get over the ignorance and to help him figure out the direction of his own life.
I found, in manufacturing, that the only people who got promoted were the ones who switched to the management path. For those who liked to design things and make things better, the career was stagnant. They could get young guys out of college to do that. It was being a manager that paid more. I was never really sure why. So I became a manager, and got paid more, but I didn’t much like it.
In the old days, my former company was far-sighted. They realized they were losing good engineers and gaining mediocre managers, so they established a separate path for advancement that did not require becoming a manager of people. The defense/aerospace industry required “systems-of-systems” engineers for some projects and that expertise comes only with experience and the necessary clearances. The government did a post-mortem on a failed multi-billion dollar project and concluded that a lack of good seasoned systems engineers was a major cause. There is an unclassified version of the report floating around somewhere, but it is probably of limited interest.
Pretty much the path I took from systems analysis and programming to managing technical projects at the Treasury Department and then into the SES. Then I retired.
Although intelligence helps one in the area of making money, I like to point out some gross exceptions in our World. The following is Forbes Magazine’s list of top paid celebrities in 2018:
1.Floyd Mayweather – Boxer – $550 Million.
2.George Clooney – Smug Actor – $700 Million
3.Kylie Jenner – Have no idea what she does, member of Kardashian family – $900 Million
4.Judge Judy Sheindlin – Crabby Person – $400 Million
5.Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – Tough guy – $124 Million
6.U2 – Mediocre rock band – $316 Million
7.Coldplay – Invading British rock band – Over $500 Million
8.Lionel Messi – European soccer player with untidy last name – $111 Million
9.Ed Sheeran – Another musician I never heard of – $433 Million
10.Cristiano Ronaldo – Another European ball-kicker – $108 Million
No one would argue that these people make up the greatest intellectual giants in our society, well maybe with the exception of Kylie Jenner. (Ha!) By contrast, the highest paid CEO in America, Hock E. Tan, made a measly $103 Million last year. A mere piker, he would not have shown up on this list had he been a celebrity. I wonder what the earnings were of the people with the highest IQ?
The fact that Coldplay has made money at all has me depressed. I’ll just have to get over it.
There are plenty of people who lack basic goodness who would disagree with you.
“Only the good die young.”
“Nice guys finish last.”
Better to die young and finish last and be a mensch than to live long and finish first and be a jerk.
I’m sick of society assigning so much social and political baggage to IQ. One of the aspects of Mormon culture I really like is that people are encouraged to develop their talents, but they aren’t elevated because of it. Talent is something you develop to serve God and/or others, not a source of privilege and status.
I’m sure those who die young would totally agree with you.
Nah. Not all.
Although I admire your list, and understand where you are coming from, one thing you left out is luck. Another item is health.
You were not born in some god forsaken war torn nation. You weren’t injured severely in any accidents and you probably had overall rather good health.
Health is an item that people take for granted. There is a reason why the saying of: “Healthy wealthy and wise,” carefully lists health first.
There is some luck (good health being a matter of good luck to a large degree) involved but I think this post nonetheless speaks well to the situation of most of those likely to read it. They will very likely have been born in – if not the US, then another free and prosperous country – and in most cases will have enjoyed good or at least adequate health. Yes, there are exceptions. But that doesn’t diminish the importance of the message. It just reminds us that it is not universally applicable, just as no message really will be.
I’m late to this party.
What the good Dr. says is echoed by many other successful people. Adam Carolla preaches this same sort of work ethic and toughness all the time, and he’d trip over himself to tell you he doesn’t have a high IQ, barely got out of high school, worked a bunch of crap jobs, etc.
Success can be measured by those who take a punch, fall down, but get back up again – and learn to avoid the next punch. Everyone starts somewhere, meaning with advantages or disadvantages, but happy and successful people keep going regardless of those things. You can’t control them. So stop worrying about them, and get to work.
PS: Now I know who to ping when I’m hanging at Hilton Head.
I have listened to a lot of Adam Carolla. He’s very smart, and no doubt has a high IQ.
You’ve hit on the critical difference between actually getting something done, and just talking about it. Intellectuals talk. Leaders do (often through other people), but they lay out the vision, the path, the value, the benefit, to others, and drive work to the realization of that vision.
You need both to varying degrees. But in terms of providing value, the leader will leave something of value behind. That can be a project manager on a construction project, or a chief development officer at a 5013c. Take yer pick.
But I’d rather work with (or become) the leader.
If he does, it’s not because he memorized information in high school. He mostly took shop classes. They put him in the remedial groups because he was a crappy student. But he clearly had motivations in other areas (he was really good at football, as an example), he had a work ethic borne of not wanting to be what he perceives to be lazy parents, and wanted something more out of life than sleeping on a couch in someone else’s garage.
As we all do, generally. The difference for those who wind up in a better, more responsible, and “successful” place usually boils down to how hard you’re willing to work, and less the IQ piece.
I have a high IQ. That information and attribute, in and of itself, has literally done nothing for me. In fact, I think it made me lazy, and intellectually stilted, as a younger dude. I’d pay a lot of money for a time machine, so I could travel back to about 1987 and beat the holy crap out of myself with a 2×4. I could have done so much, with the head I have on my shoulders now, and my willingness to work, do whatever it takes, to get something done, that I would have been able to build a very comfortable life for my extended family, provided much more financial security, etc, than I can now.
It’s the biggest miss of my life. Trying to keep that in mind so I do not repeat it.
C
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I remember my department manager telling me about the ReadAct test that the company was giving selected people years ago. It was supposed to test leadership ability, or maybe potential. There were two components that were evaluated, as you can probably tell by the name. Those were the ability to “read” or assess a given situation and the tendency to act on the assessment. He was assessed as a very large “R” and a small “A”, i.e., he could assess a situation flawlessly and then get caught in analysis paralysis and fail to act. I got assessed as a moderate “R” and a huge “A”. I was happy with that because if you get off your a$$ and act, you can frequently change the situation.
I think there needs to be some basic level of competency established in the gig, and your confidence in it and yourself, where you can *then* act without freezing up. The freezing up is the lack of knowledge, the inability to see the potential pitfalls branching out in front of you, quickly – and then fear takes over.
In the short run, if you don’t know – ask your team what *they* think we should do. Involve them in the decision-making. Ideas will be borne from that. They don’t get to decide but they can offer options that you cannot think of. Fear prevents the scared leader from asking for help.
Don’t be that dude.
I knew all that when I replied.
I’m not an Adam Carolla fan mostly because his show has too much profanity. But my point is that IQ is generally a measure of inherent smarts, or at least that’s the idea. The tests aren’t perfect.
You seem to be associating IQ with education or good grades. Theoretically, you don’t need an education to score well on a IQ test, just a good knowledge of the world around you and native smarts.
At least that’s my impression of IQ as a non-expert in it.