Does IQ cause income or vice versa

[tkingdoll]

I think to say that "luck is controllable" is something of an overstatement - or at least something which could be misinterepreted as such...

Well, it's not meant to be an absolute. See my post above. We can't control those crazy random events, for example. But those are rare enough for it to be a meaningful enough general statement. How about: in general, luck is controllable.

luck itself is simply a subjective perception - "good luck" and "bad luck" are meaningless outside a personal comparative - so when we talk about "luck" in general terms it makes no sense to talk of it being controllable. Things just happen, and some people will attribute labels of "luck" to some events - to then post hoc look for controllable factors to use to pass judgement as to whether that luck was "controlled" or not is therefore also redundant.
You weren't run over by a bus last Tuesday - and yet I doubt you got home feeling lucky as a result, you didn't contract meningitous and die as a teenager, or weren't born with severe brain damage - we are "lucky" that every one of our fathers, mothers, grandfathers, great great grandfathers or neolithlic hunter gatherer ancestors didn't get eaten by sabre toothed tigers, died as a galley slave or trapped in a mine before having the opportunity to pass on their DNA in an unbroken chain spanning millions of years that led to one particular sperm out of millions of competitors to fertilise an egg that led to me or you. Luck is a meaningless concept - you find good luck and bad luck in equal measure where ever you choose to look for it. And you certainly can't control a concept


This is only true insofar as you can control whether or not you are a "lucky" person by deciding that you are.

Yes, which is why I say it's controllable. You can decide to become a lucky person, take the steps to change your attitude and the way you react to things and, voila! you will find your luck seems to change. This has been proven.

Perception is everything. I lose my leg in a car crash - am I unlucky because I lost my leg or lucky because I didn't die?

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

No, because 'luck' is people's perception of the outcome of your reaction to an opportunity. So if you are perceived as 'lucky', it's not because you have more opportunities, it's because you spot them and act differently to the 'unlucky' person. Luck itself isn't a thing, it's just the name other people put to an outcome as it relates to a person. The fiver being on the ground isn't itself a lucky thing - it's nothing. The lucky part is spotting it, and that is something you can control. Or: the 'what you do with it' part of your sentence is the bit that relates to luck perception, not the event/situation part.

Winning the lottery isn't lucky - I'd be interested to meet the person who won the lottery without spotting and taking up the opportunity known as 'buying a lottery ticket'. That is the degree to which you are controlling your own luck. People who are seen as lucky in competitions enter more than others. Conversely, those seen as unlucky think "I'm unlucky, what's the point of entering?" and so they don't bother. Hence they never win, and perpetuate the perception about themselves.

I'm not saying anyone can control how many random chances come into their lives, of course not. I'm saying anyone can control whether or not they are a lucky or unlucky person, simply by changing the way they observe and respond to those random chances.

Have you been reading motivational management books?

Winning the lottery is lucky. People who by a ticket every week of their adult lives would be expected to win the jackpot on the UK lottery about once every 4000 lifetimes.

 

[andyandy]

Yes, which is why I say it's controllable. You can decide to become a lucky person, take the steps to change your attitude and the way you react to things and, voila! you will find your luck seems to change. This has been proven.

Perception is everything. I lose my leg in a car crash - am I unlucky because I lost my leg or lucky because I didn't die?

Indeed, if the glass is always half full you will never go thirsty

 

[andyandy]

back on topic a little bit, i stumbled across this when looking for the study on perceptions of happiness...rather bizarre that it made the first page of my google search....maybe google has evolved its own intelligence

A great mind does not always make for a great bank balance, according to research that suggests the richest people are no cleverer than the rest of us.

Scientists in the United States have found that while average incomes tend to increase with IQ scores, intelligence has very little to do with absolute wealth.

A high IQ also offers no protection against falling into heavy debt or other kinds of financial mismanagement. The very brightest are more likely to have money problems than those who are slightly above average intelligence.

The findings, from a team at Ohio State University, could reflect the way in which many of the most impressive fortunes are not amassed through steady accumulation of high salaries, but by other means that are not influenced heavily by academic intelligence.

Most of the richest people in Britain, for example, are not salaried, but rather have amassed their fortunes as entrepreneurs or by inheritance.

The research, led by Jay Zagorsky, has not yet examined in detail why IQ seems to be linked to income but not to wealth, but early indications suggest that differences in saving may be part of the answer. “People don’t become rich just because they are smart,” Dr Zagorsky said. “Your IQ has really no relationship to your wealth. And being very smart does not protect you from getting into financial difficulty.”

In the study, published in the journal Intelligence, Dr Zagorsky examined detailed data from 7,403 Americans who had been interviewed repeatedly since 1979. IQ scores were compared with income and overall wealth, and participants were asked whether they had ever reached their limit on a credit card, been declared bankrupt or missed paying bills for financial reasons.

It found that IQ was strongly linked to income, with each extra point of IQ worth between $202 (£101) and $616 (£308) a year. The average annual income difference between a person with a normal IQ, of 100, and a person in the top 2 per cent, with an IQ of 130, was between $6,000 (£3,000) and $18,500 (£9,250).

Overall wealth, however, was not correlated strongly with IQ, and there were mixed results regarding financial problems. While people with low IQs were the most likely to have reached their limit on credit cards, those with very high IQs were more likely to have had financial difficulties than those with slightly above-average intelligence.

“In these measures of financial difficulties, it seems that those of slightly better-than-average intelligence are best off,” Dr Zagorsky said.

“Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t get into trouble. Among the smartest people, those with IQ scores above 125, even 6 per cent of them have maxed out their credit cards and 11 per cent occasionally miss payments.

“Financial success for most people means more than just income. You need to build up wealth to help buffer life’s storms and to prepare for retirement. You also shouldn’t have to worry about being close to or beyond your financial limits.”

He said that the tendency of university academics not to be rich reflected that wealth was poorly linked to IQ.

“Professors tend to be very smart people,” he said. “But if you look at university parking lots, you don’t see a lot of Rolls-Royces, Porsches or other very expensive cars.

“Those with low intelligence should not believe they are handicapped, and those with high intelligence should not believe they have an advantage.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1701377.ece

 

[kjkent1]

Without that part, they don't win. Of course there's no luck involved. Your chances of winning are the same as anyone else who bought a ticket. What do you think 'luck' is under those circumstances?

You're kidding, right? Sure, the lotto winner took the opportunity to purchase the winning ticket. But the outcome was completely out of proportion to the opportunity cost. Plotted on a graph, the opportunity is at the far negative tail of the curve, while the outcome is at the far positive end.

And, if that ain't luck, I don't know what is!


ETA: We Yankees are presently led by an amazingly "lucky" President Bush. I doublt that many people would claim that our leader is blessed with a remarkable IQ, but he's the Pres, and mainly because 5 out of 9 members of the Supreme Court of the U.S. decided that the election was over -- even though it was arguably a dead heat.

These are not outcomes based upon opportunity and preparedness -- they are outcomes tied to random chance. No one could have predicted such a tight election race, and certainly the outcome was not tied to President Bush's IQ.

It was luck -- all the way.

BTW: This is not a political speech. I didn't vote for Bush or Gore. It's just an example of how luck changes history.

 

[NorfolkAtheist]

Without that part, they don't win. Of course there's no luck involved. Your chances of winning are the same as anyone else who bought a ticket.

If luck is a chance happening beyond a person's control and winning the lottery involves no luck, then what differentiates a lottery winner from those that played the same lottery and lost?

 

[Just thinking]

Perception is everything. I lose my leg in a car crash - am I unlucky because I lost my leg or lucky because I didn't die?

What if I said both ... or neither. You lost your leg (and didn't die) because the seriousness of the crash resulted in the specific injury and not more, that's all. To say you were lucky because you didn't die adds no more validity than saying you were lucky you didn't die when your doctor treated your small infection before it became terminal. Nothing more than a matter of course --- unfortunately many people look for more to it than that.

But perception has nothing to do with winning a 50 million dollar lottery prize --- you're going to be glad no matter what. And winning it is luck --- good luck to the winner. Does that make them a lucky person, per se? No --- basically because I feel there is no such thing. To say one is a lucky person is to somehow feel that good fortune is unevenly being bestowed upon someone --- which no longer defines true luck. It more defines true woo.

 

[jimtron]

Does Bill have a high IQ? Absolutely. Is that the reason why he's the richest man on Earth? Nope. He's rich because he's smart, AND his daddy was connected at the right time and place.

Also, he was lucky to be around at the dawn of the personal computer. If he was born 10 years later, even if he worked 10 times harder, and was 10 times smarter, I don't think he could have made anywhere near as much money. It's not often when there's such an enormous growth opportunity (the PC revolution).

 

[tkingdoll]

You're kidding, right? Sure, the lotto winner took the opportunity to purchase the winning ticket. But the outcome was completely out of proportion to the opportunity cost. Plotted on a graph, the opportunity is at the far negative tail of the curve, while the outcome is at the far positive end.

And, if that ain't luck, I don't know what is!


ETA: We Yankees are presently led by an amazingly "lucky" President Bush. I doublt that many people would claim that our leader is blessed with a remarkable IQ, but he's the Pres, and mainly because 5 out of 9 members of the Supreme Court of the U.S. decided that the election was over -- even though it was arguably a dead heat.

These are not outcomes based upon opportunity and preparedness -- they are outcomes tied to random chance. No one could have predicted such a tight election race, and certainly the outcome was not tied to President Bush's IQ.

It was luck -- all the way.

BTW: This is not a political speech. I didn't vote for Bush or Gore. It's just an example of how luck changes history.

Well, then, you're using the word luck where I use the word chance. We're in a semantics debate. I could say "no, that's not luck, it's chance" and you would say "no, it's luck" and I would say "OK then, it's snuffles" and we'd get nowhere.

However, I have read a lot about the science of luck, so I do feel that I'm coming at this from an informed angle. I did provide you with some sources if you wanted to at least get a cursory knowledge of the subject.

 

[tkingdoll]

If luck is a chance happening beyond a person's control and winning the lottery involves no luck, then what differentiates a lottery winner from those that played the same lottery and lost?

Chance. What do YOU think differentiates them?

 

[Just thinking]

Also, he was lucky to be around at the dawn of the personal computer. If he was born 10 years later, even if he worked 10 times harder, and was 10 times smarter, I don't think he could have made anywhere near as much money. It's not often when there's such an enormous growth opportunity (the PC revolution).

See my remark number 11 in post 51 ... if you already haven't noted it.

 

[Just thinking]

Chance. What do YOU think differentiates them?

Yes, they both had the same chance ... and one was lucky to have the numbers on their ticket that matched the little balls that popped up.

 

[NorfolkAtheist]

Chance. What do YOU think differentiates them?

It was also by chance that the lottery losers lost.

 

[dann]

http://www.skepticreport.com/pseudoscience/iq2.htm
http://www.skepticreport.com/pseudoscience/iq1.htm

 

[tkingdoll]

Yes, they both had the same chance ... and one was lucky to have the numbers on their ticket that matched the little balls that popped up.

Then you're using a different definition of 'luck' than the one I've been debating. There are different types of luck perception. I'm talking about the everyday sort that makes up a 'lucky' person - someone for whom good things are always happening. The lottery doesn't really fall into this category.

You are using it to mean 'the outcome of an extremely unlikely random chance'.

You could also use it to denote envy, for example 'he's a lucky bastard' to mean 'he got the girl I wanted'. Nothing to do with luck, but you could use the word that way.

If you're talking about random outcomes, then that's a different definition of luck. Rolling dice in a casino and getting the outcome you want could be called luck, or chance. As I said, it's a semantics issue at that point. That's not the type of luck I'm referring to, though. The type I'm talking about is the sort where you spot the fiver in the street or you don't.

Do you see the distinction?

I'm not saying that you can control random chance. If you are talking about THAT definition of luck then this isn't that debate. I'm talking about spotting opportunities and acting on them, which is what goes into the general societal perception of a lucky or unlucky person. Ten years of research into luck proves it.

 

[Just thinking]

It was also by chance that the lottery losers lost.

Right --- yet we don't go around saying they were unlucky to have lost; we say the winner was lucky. Why? Because it was expected for most players to lose ... and that's the key to use of the word luck. When something is very unexpected by having a low probability (either good or bad) we assign the word luck to it. But one must be careful, having a winner is not a lucky event (if enough people play) --- just the specific winner is lucky.

 

[Just thinking]

Then you're using a different definition of 'luck' than the one I've been debating. There are different types of luck perception. I'm talking about the everyday sort that makes up a 'lucky' person - someone for whom good things are always happening. The lottery doesn't really fall into this category.

You are using it to mean 'the outcome of an extremely unlikely random chance'.

You could also use it to denote envy, for example 'he's a lucky bastard' to mean 'he got the girl I wanted'. Nothing to do with luck, but you could use the word that way.

If you're talking about random outcomes, then that's a different definition of luck. Rolling dice in a casino and getting the outcome you want could be called luck, or chance. As I said, it's a semantics issue at that point. That's not the type of luck I'm referring to, though. The type I'm talking about is the sort where you spot the fiver in the street or you don't.

Do you see the distinction?

Yes ... and you are right, I would not use the word luck as you do.

 

[jimtron]

See my remark number 11 in post 51 ... if you already haven't noted it.

Right on. Good list.

 

[tkingdoll]

Yes ... and you are right, I would not use the word luck as you do.

You've never called someone who repeatedly seems to be in the right place at the right time, or who always seem to land on their feet, or who always seems to have good stuff happen to them 'lucky'? You've never heard anyone use the word that way?

That is the definition I'm talking about. That's the only definition in any way related to careers.

 

[Just thinking]

You've never called someone who repeatedly seems to be in the right place at the right time, or who always seem to land on their feet, or who always seems to have good stuff happen to them 'lucky'? You've never heard anyone use the word that way?

That is the definition I'm talking about. That's the only definition in any way related to careers.

These folks may have advantages going for them you and I are not aware of ... for a partial list, see post 51. To us, it may appear as luck, but as others have mentioned, it could be a strong ability to take advantages (exploit) of situations. Or past experiences and/or acquaintances. But whatever it is, it's not the common use of the word luck. Why? Because I feel they would fare no better than I side by side playing slot machines, or at a Roulette table, or winning the lottery with equal numbers of tickets. In this regard, they have no more "luck" than anyone else.

And as for being the "lucky bastard" in getting the girl I was after --- well that's again just dumb luck. After all, who really knows what goes on inside girls' heads?