Does having money mean you are informed or even intelligent?

Great Debates
21

One of the first things that sprung to mind was using this concept with the arts. For instance - I am a “starving” (i.e. not rich) artist, but I have had my critical sucesses, and also have respect from peers as a person of some artistic “intelligence”. People like me are certainly not rare. Not at all rare. Capable and able artists, but poor.

On the other hand, I have encountered “artists” who have found a niche, a market, and have been clever enough to focus on it. Maybe they splash big blobs of paint on a canvas, or they have some sort of “gimmick”. But whatever it is, certain types of artists have little or no real talent…no drawing, color or composition skills to speak of. But they knew how to “schmooze”, they know how to sell what they have. So, as a consequence, they are rich, selling well in the art field.

Now, while other artists should respect their success, and be happy for it, should we think that they know more about art because of it? Should a “starving” (yet competent and skilled) artist consider the artist who splats big blobs of color on a canvas (but cannot converse coherently about color theory) “smarter”, because they are are making lots of money?

I know plenty of affluent artists who I would never ask technical artistic advice from, and would never respect their opinions on certain artistic concepts. I might, however, hang on their every word when it came to “schmoozing” and selling their product.

22

There are four ways you can have a lot of money:

  1. You inherit it. What in the world does that say about your intelligence?

  2. You marry into it. Well, all that says is you did a good job of picking a spouse.

  3. You win it in the lottery. Clearly, this indicates your superior intellect [/sarcasm].

  4. You manage to save more than you spend by a lot, either because you’re a frugal person (the typical elderly janitor who wills a couple million to the school for which he worked), or because you have large income.

4a) You are frugal. If this indicated intelligence, the Scots would rule the planet, having out-thought the English [/silliness]. :wink:

4b) You have a large income. Now let’s examine what a large income says about you:
you make a lot of money. This means you either are valued for what you can do, or you are paid for what you did.

4bi) You are paid for what you did. You either managed something out of the ordinary, or you managed something ordinary at the right time. Examine Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Do their relative wealths indicate that Mr. Gates is more intelligent than Mr. Jobs? No, they indicate many things, among them that Mr. Jobs made one simple error: failing to license the Apple Operating System, and that Mr. Gates surrounded himself with people who managed his business pretty well.

4bii) You are valued for what you do. To disprove the notion that this is an indicator of intelligence, I offer you Mike Tyson. More comprehensively, we can get into the notion of ‘value’ and what gets valued in a society. It all boils down to a lack of equivalence between value and intelligence (which is not to say intelligence CAN’T be valued, it just isn’t ALWAYS valued).

And ALL of this discussion totally ignores the more interesting question of what intelligence IS. Was Monet intelligent? Was Mozart? Some intelligence is very poorly valued monetarily by our society. Last I heard, Einstein wasn’t fabulously wealthy, wether early or late in his life.

We might also delve into motivation. Some who are driven to ‘succede’ materially are hardly intelligent, just ruthless and/or hard-working. Some people don’t see the need to accumulate things (including money). How then do we measure what their status says about them?

If you have done well in life, and if you are proud of what you have done to get there, then don’t measure your achievement by the money you have. Otherwise, you might have to invite Iron Mike to dinner to discuss your next investment. :wink:

23

Like Mr. Bernstein said in CITIZEN KANE:

“It’s no trick to make a lotta money…if ALL you want to do is make a lotta money.”

Uke

24

Glitch said:

Sure. Next you’ll be asking him not to breathe oxygen… A saying about tigers and stripes comes to mind…

25

Anything else to add to this thread other than childish antics prick?

26

For what it’s worth, after ten years in the finacial services industry, I think there’s no correlation between intelligence and money.

I do believe that most self-made wealthy people share a couple of interesting qualities.

  1. They tend to be self-critical and value constructive criticism directed at them.

  2. Their egos don’t get in the way of their decision making processes

  3. They have the ability to defer gratification.

27

I can’t believe this thread got so far without any mention of the Henry Ford libel trial.

Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@kozmo.com

“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

28

/Sarcasm on/

Yes, PQ, it does. Just look at Shaquille O’Neal. The guy’s a fucking genius.

/Sarcasm off/

29

Hughes was a very good engineer, and a very good business man. There really is no getting around the fact that he was a bright guy. Later in life, he became mentally ill. Not stupid, just sick.

30

There are stupid rich people just like there are stupid poor people. There are smart rich people just like there are smart poor people. Some people make it some people don’t. Some people are in the right place at the right time.

“Do or do not, there is no try” - Yoda

31

OK, so I guess the consensus is that the answer is no, besides the qualifiers - the person may have some knowledge of his particular industry, but his wealth is not a good indicator of how his knowledge relates to others with knowledge of his industry.

Maybe I’ll save a link to this thread for the next time someone uses this for an argument. Or maybe I’ll just point out the Argumentum ad Lazarum fallacy.

PeeQueue

32

That’s very true, but if you’re a betting man and you’ve got two men in front of you, both clad in clown suits and you’re told that one is a multi-millionaire and one is dirt-poor. $10,000 is on the line. Which clown is the rich one?

All you can do is talk to the men, but there can be no questions about backgrounds or biographical information.

After talking to them both, you see that one is a dumb bastard and the other is well-informed and intelligent (i.e., approx. college-level knowledge).

I put my money on the smart clown being the rich guy. I think my odds are pretty good.

Hell is Other People.

33

Well, I’m not a betting man, but if I had to, I’d probably agree with you. But there’s still a decent chance we’d both be wrong. And if they got into an argument, I wouldn’t say the rich guy had to be correct simply because he was rich. It doesn’t seem as if your exercise really proves anything, except maybe something like: 60% of “rich” people have an above average intelligence. I’m not sure even that’s true, but it seems to be the impression people have.

PeeQueue

34

You’re right, it’s ignorant to claim that right = rich. The real experts are rarely wealthy anyway: Usually they’re a bit obsessive with poor planning skills and bad haircuts.

If anyone argues with you claiming to be right because of their wealth and status, either just smile and tell them, ha ha, the bible says they’re going to hell (it does, honest) or just chaulk it up to the commensurable relationship between the size of a man’s wallet and his ego.

And then there’s the Henry Ford libel trial.

Hell is Other People.

35

OK, but I think I’ll stick to the wallet/ego thing. I certainly don’t want to end up discussing religion with this rich ignorant guy! (Now that may be the answer to that what is hell thread…) :wink:

Thanks.

PeeQueue

36

One particular thought came to mind as I read this thread: I imagine Pauly Shore is pretty well off, money-wise.

Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.

“[A]gainst stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.” --J.C.F.S. as quoted by H.M.

37

What does having money prove?

Nothing more nor less that you have money!

Witness the poor schmoe who wins a kazillion bucks in the lottery, takes it as present value in cash. IRS takes its cut. Still has lotsa bucks left. A year later he is right back where he started buying lottery tickets with the last few bucks left in the hope of hitting it BIG AGAIN!

Then there is the hardworking person who strives to make ends meet who wins big and makes good use of their good fortune. Use it wisely and are content to not show off their new found wealth.

38

I would suggest that if you took a large enough sample of “rich” people and a large enough sample of “poor” people, and you could reliably measure intelligence, the rich would score marginally better, as making and retaining money is a skill: a pursuit that requires intelligence.
However, it is but one such pursuit among a huge number of other intelligence-reliant pursuits so the result would be marginal.

39

Money is a black box. If all you know is that a person has money, you do not know how they got it, how long they can maintain it, how smart they are, where they live, etc etc etc. To get wealthy, you need a little luck and a few good decisions. To stay wealthy, you need to make some moderately easy decisions with very little luck. It would be interesting to have a “reality” show where average people were given a million dollars, and the only conditions for winning were to maintain or grow it… how well do you think most people could perform in this situation? Change the game so that there is no winning condition, people are just given a million dollars and said, “Do what you want, we just want to monitor you.” Would the outcome in these two situations be the same because the intelligence of the parties is the same? To me, it seems the answer is clearly “no”, but that is because I don’t link wealth and intelligence in the first place, so that is a pretty unfair answer to assert in this thread.

Becoming wealthy is a different matter than staying wealthy. People who have the right inspiration at the right time can make a killing, but if they can’t follow it up then they’ll squander it on hookers and blow. Plenty of people can be very responsible with money, yet never quite have the opportunity to make it big (for what I think are obvious reasons that have nothing to do with intelligence, we can’t all be rich). Every few weeks there’s a new millionaire from the lottery. It is my understanding, though I’ve never researched the matter personally, that the majority of lottery winners have not maintained their wealth after a certain number of years because they spend outside their means. Does anyone know more about this or am I stuck looking up what information exists? :stuck_out_tongue:

40

Paris Hilton.
I rest my case.