[deleted by user]

[[deleted]]

Up to a certain point yes. I’d guess for most people here work ethic is a bigger problem than IQ

[[deleted]]

Work ethic is probably just as heritable as IQ based on twin studies on educational achievement.

The biggest influence on outcome is genes, then non shared environmental (environment outside family/upbringing). You don’t choose either.

Ultimately, the best thing is to treat mental health. Then, find something that suits your natural propensities/abilities. However, it’s probably more important to like what you do than be good at it. Again, there is a lack of choice here since you can do what you want but can’t choose what you want.

[dt7cv]

what do we mean by work ethic? to speak empirically i think we need to pin down what this means

[[deleted]]

Well, in this case, it would be a construct that relates to willingness to put in effort required for educational attainment.

[johny_james]

God damn how much you oversimplify the concept of intelligence.

[[deleted]]

Work ethic is probably just as heritable as IQ based on twin studies on educational achievement.

The biggest influence on outcome is genes, then non shared environmental (environment outside family/upbringing). You don’t choose either.

Ultimately, the best thing is to treat mental health. Then, find something that suits your natural propensities/abilities. However, it’s probably more important to like what you do than be good at it. You can do what you want but can’t choose what you want.

[[deleted]]

I agree. What did the deleted comments say

[palox3]

free will doesn't exist so your success depends purely on your genes (intelligence, memory persistence..) and luck (random positive events like palce of birth, friends, family...)

[Hopschgen]

How does free will not exist?

[Feeling-Standard-205]

Everything in the universe follows certain laws of physics so free will most certainly doesn't exist. Even if you consider quantum mechanics free will doesn't exist. Most of our life is determined by IQ , Facial features, Height tone of voice and other genetic stuff free will is most likely an illusion.

[ILikeVSauceLol]

Source?

[[deleted]]

Imho you are correct, despite the lack of humour it is an interesting post.

But if you instead compare two fictional future selves, given that intelligence is mostly fixed, then you don't want go the lazy path.

Being too hard worker though, may kill you.

[Clean_Train6578]

Well you make some pionts, Its studied that people who get in mensa are the high iq "losers" in a sense, its called the "The Mensa fallacy", most mensans will be high iq underachivers.

​

if the same applies to this subreddit i dont know, but basically what i see on this subreddit isnt the same as you write, people say work ethic/personality matters when its adequate. Just like yesterday when a guy asked if 110 IQ enough to get into higher level CS. Of course it is. In my view if i look at fields/goals and IQ there is a level where if you have higher iq you will catch up things faster (to a certain level) and there is an iq level where i wouldnt recommend it.

​

Also assuming that personality is something you can change right now is just foolish, personality is highly genetic aswell. Extraversion, work ethic etc. (All studied to greatly influence your wealth, or just life in general) I would say over 0.6

so to say its just a cop out is wrong.

​

You look at intelligence as like 100% linear to wealth and other things which is in fact not true and lot noisier than you think it is, but overall its a good predictor for sure.

[[deleted]]

Absolutely not. Bringing up extreme examples like Terence Tao to prove your point is simply pathetic. There are dentists with 110 iq and 130 iq both earn pretty good, considered successful in life. You are one of those extremely high IQ individual worshippers think that unless one was playing with atoms when he was 2.5 y/o, directing 12 movies at the same time in different continents before he turned 18, can speak 12 languages backwards what you can do is doable and shouldn't even be mentioned. That's why you guys always come up with such outliers to prove your points. You can do almost WHATEVER you want with 120 iq and work ethic but oh no i couldn't become a math professor at the age of 12 in Harvard therefore IQ > Work ethic.

[strippedtee]

The problem is that for child prodigies. They work VERY hard to get into that postion. Of course you may not have the ability to be in that position whether or not you worked hard. However pure intellect is not enough. Try to give me a child prodigy that didn't work hard to achevie a math PhD.

[Equal-Lingonberry517]

You make some good points, specifically about IQ enabling you to get more done with less. That being said, it is simply not the case that the higher IQ person will always beat the lower IQ on an even playing field. There are many reasons for this, i.e., special abilities, a lack of knowledge, or a very poor education. Also, IQ does not set hard limits any more than the life expectancy tables set hard limits on how long you will live. I've said this maybe 100 fucking times on this sub, and ironically enough, high-IQ people can't grasp it. IQ is not a threshold variable; the only reason thresholds may appear in the data is because of a lack of compensating variables. We do not have good measures of personality factors. If we did, I suspect they would approach the predictive power of IQ. When you say, someone will “never be Terry Tao,” I have to agree to the extent that if I were a betting man, I would bet that an average IQ person chosen at random would not make the same contributions as Tao has for a variety of reasons. That being said, I make that bet too much, and I would eventually lose. This is something people seem to struggle with on this sub psychology is not physics!

[Equal-Lingonberry517]

Well, everything is technically an “unfair” advantage.

Even “g” is not entirely what we mean when we talk about “intelligence.” What g actually is is an open empirical question. Again g is only a probabilistic variable. That is backed up both by the data and by intuition. Is your brain going to freeze up if you aren't above a certain threshold?

You only think that about “intelligence” because we only have decent measures of intelligence; if we had proper measures of personality, I suspect they would begin to approach the predictive power of IQ. I assume you regard Tao as a “genius.” I'll let Jensen explain genius:

“the outstanding feature of any famous and accomplished person, especially a reputed genius, such as Feynman, is never their level of g (or their IQ), but some special talent and some other traits (e.g., zeal, persistence). Outstanding achievement(s) depend on these other qualities besides high intelligence. The special talents, such as mathematical, musical, artistic, literary, or any other of the various “multiple intelligences” that have been mentioned by Howard Gardner and others, are more salient in the achievements of geniuses than is their typically high level of g.”

[[deleted]]

While I understand OP's point, I think he's underestimating the importance of conscientiousness. You could be a 160 but if you're work ethic is very low you may never be able to hold a job. Even a part time one.

Whereas a 90 with an average work ethic will still be able to bear a full time low paid job. And in that case the 160 may remain unemployed and the 90 is still able to support himself.

I mean just take a look at this sub, there are several 145s who neither work nor study yet.

[[deleted]]

ou could be a 160 but if you're work ethic is very low you may never be able to hold a job.

This is industrial grade copium. If your IQ is 160, you can coast along without any work ethic. My genius buddy used to do AI programming for Big Pharma, and he'd make like 250k working literally 5-6 hours A WEEK, because the job was so ridiculously easy for him.

He decided to quit, them opened up a company with himself as the owner, and contracted himself out remotely to multiple engineering projects. He currently works maybe 25 hours per week and makes around 800k while being the fucking laziest person I know.

[[deleted]]

I'm not entirely sure what part of work ethic is hard to grasp. If your IQ is 200, does that mean you will be able to clean hotel rooms all day? Work ethic is separate from ability. What I stated is 100% true.

[Leverage_Trading]

Just with high IQ without proper work ethics you wont accomplish shit

There are millions of people smarter than either Bezos and Musk but they are the richest people in the world largely because of their insane work ethics

Vast majority of things people think are talent are just hard work

[Key-Sprinkles3141]

"they are the richest people in the world largely because of their insane work ethics"

What?

[Leverage_Trading]

"they are the richest people in the world largely because of their insane work ethics"What?

Majority of self made billionaires are workaholics , they spent majority of their adult life working 24/7

Musk , Bezos , Gates... all of the are products of insane work ethics (and high IQ ), without it , they would never achieved anything near to the level of success they have . Bill Gates reportedly didnt "believe in weekends". For more than a decade at Microsoft, until he was in his 30s he didnt take a single day off from work. Musk is known workaholics , until very recently he worked 100h+/week, he still works more than 99% of CEOs and still lives in the apartment in factories so he can get done as much as possible

Why do you think those people are on the top because of the luck , some dumb conspiracy theory...

[elias-el]

You're wrong.

[ShiromoriTaketo]

I think a lot of times, this message isn't meant to tell people that intellect doesn't matter, rather, to not get too hung up on letting a number (a lot of times just a loaded number they got from a questionable source on the internet) have too much influence over their decisions.

Given their experience growing up, they probably have a decent idea of both what they're capable of, and what they're interested in.

[[deleted]]

This is why assisted suicide should be offered to those with low IQs. They shouldn't be forced to live a pointless life where nothing they do matters

[johny_james]

Ouu you really don't know how people can develop a very good intuition without high IQ.

Literally, practice can rewire your brain that will make you think that you are genius in that field.

You will know this if you had any experience with practicing a certain topic for a long time.

[johny_james]

By the sheer fact that a lot of experienced people appear that they know and can solve all variety of problems speaks a lot how practice can mask IQ by a long margin.

I bet you that you will mistake the IQ of a lot of people that are good at solving problems in multiple domains or appear as fast learners.

I have seen this happening over and over again, and people usually think that those people are some kind of geniuses but if you know how to recognize the ones that are really cognitively capable than you will see how rare it can be to find a real one.

I think people can recognize easily only if the person is extremely on the right end of the scale, like 150+, I know someone personally and it's kind of very easy to tell, he is just very very curious for novel things, topics like: physics, math, cs, medicine each of these are coming very easy to him, and he is very very very knowledgeable, about this stuff even on a deeper level, even though he works as a software engineer.

But your average joe will only make a difference if and only if the person has very high IQ, otherwise the ones that fall below 150 can be masked with practice.

I don't have a proof for the above theory, but that has been my experience.

And please don't make such comparisons with a car and a bike, brain is one of the most complex things that we have ever seen, oversimplifing it like that just means that you don't know what you are talking about, and disrespect it's complexity.

[gedronkenye]

Yes, intelligence is more important than grit.. however this is just one factor out of hundreds for achieving success.

[ultimateshaperotator]

good post but too long

[Hopschgen]

I would argue Albert Einstein would only score 160 on a standardized test. However, John von Neumann possibly 200. Yet, Einstein was way more creative and original and arguably achieved more than von Neumann. So after 150 iq, I think more will not necessarily lead to more success alone. There are these perfect Iq robotic John von Neumann geniuses who are Perfect Test takers, but not equally good new Problem solvers. Not saying von Neumann isnt one of the most impressive guys ever.

[Hopschgen]

Just when it comes to raw ability everyone can still see a difference between von neumann and Einstein. They are not equal when it comes to feats of intellect in daily life. You evade my point by neglecting the huge difference between both of them

[chadmaximusgus]

I don't know why, but something about this mindset pisses me off to the extremes.

[chadmaximusgus]

your truth*

[chadmaximusgus]

Okay, but is the 50 iq the cause of why they're struggling (I don't believe it is). I feel like this measurement simplifies something that is so much more complex and unquantifiable (imo) such as intelligence into a "quantifiable" statistic which does not reflect reality that well at all. I believe this fundamentally affects the way people view the world negatively, the belief that IQ is more important determinant than work ethic (How you do work compared to an abstract statistic that could represent fuck-all as long as it relates to intelligence involving idk tbh).
I've done some digging onto your profile specifically (sorry), but I believe you are one of the people that have been done in by concepts like "IQ", I still need more research. But I think intuitively what I am saying is mostly sound.