Thursday, January 30, 2014

Do you think that well-off people, on average, are more intelligent than people of low social position?

No.  I absolutely do not believe this.  There are a number
of reasons for this, of which I will discuss
two:


  • People who are well-off tend to do better
    in school because they are born into situations where they are exposed to more books,
    more intellectually stimulating activities, etc.  This means that they are more
    educated not that they are more
    intelligent.

  • Relatedly, they
    often start higher up the socioeconomic scale.  If you take two people of similar
    intelligence, it stands to reason that the one who starts out richer will end up richer
    simply because they got to start from higher
    up.

The first of these means that well-off
people seem more intelligent because they are better educated.  The second means that
they can get richer without being more intelligent.  This indicates to me that the rich
are no more intelligent, on average, than the rest of us.

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