If you’re that smart, why would you want to work in management? Ick.
I’ll take unlimited brains. As far as the PhD question goes, there’s a huge job market for paleographers. 
I’m with Potter as well here. Take the money, switch off your brain (and conscience), and relax on the beach with servants pampering you for the rest of your life… no worries about your wasted potential, how you could be helping others with the money, or cares about the world’s problems. Ah, the life of a rich moron 
Take the brains and you’ll end up worrying about 10 problems for every one you solve. If you’re smart enough to start making some real headway towards solving the world’s problems, you’ll end up behind the scenes in the backrooms hassling with the people who really call the shots and end up driving yourself crazy seeing how many great ideas are held back due to corruption, greed, power-struggling, fear of change, money, and the sheer stupidity of the the power-holders (especially compared to you), as well as the true causes of the horrors we’ve created for ourselves and how pathetic they most likely are. The only way to enjoy your intellegence would be to be aware of it and fully conscious of it (as opposed to savones for example), but as soon as you are you start seeing all the BAD things in the world as well as the good, and how powerless you and your brain are to fix them.
To me, being super intellegent would be like sitting in a room and trying to tell a hundred chimpanzees outside in the courtyard how to build a printing press from scratch over a megaphone. You’d be banging your head on the wall just to get them to stop picking each other’s asses (which isn’t so far from the truth regarding humans who hold a lot of power).
The part about being smart enough to make as much money as you’d want… I think a certain amount of intellegence is required to make substantial amounts of money, but a much more important quality is a very small amount of concern for others - the ability to totally screw over other people on a daily basis and not to think twice about it. I already know how to make a lot of money just by simple things like conning gullible people (there have been enough of those TV shows on that anyone should be able to do it)… or pull some insurance fraud, blackmail the owner of a big company, become a rock star manager and take 95% of their earnings, be real nice to a buddy who eventually gets elected to government and then receive kickbacks, sell drugs (or anything drug-related on the upper end), and so on. Those things don’t take super intellegence; they take a brutal attitude and complete lack of concern for anyone but yourself… and unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I just can’t screw innocent people over like the pros even now, so tripling my intellegence wouldn’t help much. I’m not saying that all rich people are evil by any means, but it helps to have that quality if you’re starting out and want to take over Bill Gate’s company. Hmmm, maybe I’d take the gift of being an Evil Genious, Muhahaha!!!
And of course those problems with being very very very smart mentioned above are just a few of the personal inner problems to deal with. There’s also what other people will think of you and how they’ll treat you. Ideally you’d be praised and rewarded, realistically you’d be hated and rejected by many. The current smart people would of course be very upset at you waltzing in and showing them all up after they spent a lifetime in their fields of study, so a good half of them would do everything in their power to discredit, ridicule, and get rid of you… if for nothing else than to maintain their own prestige, reputations, and jobs. The average Joe on the street wouldn’t give a damn what your IQ was, so 90% of the population would automatically not even care about you. Many of those smart enough to see your potential would try to take advantage of you in a harmful way, the others would be interested only in how you could solve their problems, which would leave very few people genuinly concerned for you (this last part is similar to being rich I guess). Then there’s the problem of being either on the wrong side, or too smart for your own good. Remember what happened to Gerald Vincent Bull ? He was damned smart… even considered a genious. He was allowed to do his work until money and politics got in the way, was jailed when he tried to continue to work for others, and ended up with 5 bullets in the back of the head because of what he could do with his mind and who he might do it for. Nah,
!!!Just gimme the money!!!
Sadly, I’d take the money. I don’t think that being the most intelligent person on the face of the Earth would make me happy – it would alienate me from my fellow man. While I don’t long for the money, at least I could probably do some good with it. I think unlimited brainpower would probably just cause me to off myself. I am just the sort of person who desperately needs to communicate and empathize with others; I think super-intelligence would be a big drawback here (unfortunately).
Give me the money, let me keep my moderately above average brain, and I will create a few jobs for the super-smart.
I don’t know that there’s such a correspondence between intelligence and wisdom.
Also, I’m of the opinion that dumber is happier. Dumb people aren’t as aware of all the problems around them, and they’re not as frustrated by OTHER dumb people.
I’ll take the cash.
If the question is posed another way, “Would I rather be smarter, or richer?”, I’d probably still take the cash.
Well, lots of good points have been brought up here. Super-smart means you’ll wind up a cold, cynical iconoclast who either offs himself or gets offed by the less smart. Super-rich means you’re tempted to be the one doing the offing.
Heck, I’ll keep my reasonably well-greased brain and take the money. I’ll buy my way into power and actually listen to those smarter than I am, rather than ignore them. If I’m powerful enough, I’ll redo the system under their guidance.
But I’ll be doing it wearing knee breeches and a cravat. With great wealth also comes great eccentricity.
Well, my answer comes with a caveat.
If I keep my current brain, and get to be rich too, then I’ll take the money. No question. I’m already smart enough for me.
If I had to become an idiot to get the money, I’d take the brains.
If you’re unbelievably rich without so much as a job, presumably you’ll have the time and resources to pursue whatever you like. And I’d rather have more time than I know what to do with than more intelligence.
There’s a great joke along these exact premises: a genie offers a man all the knowledge he wants, or all the wealth he wants. He chooses knowledge. Two seconds later: “Damn! I should have taken the money.”
Money. Smart people can be rented.
There’s the old joke about a guy who was offered this choice by a genie, and chose intelligence. As soon as he gets it, he smacks himself and says “!@E$, so I should have taken the money!”
I’d probably take the money - it seems easier to buy happiness than use intelligence to attain it.
I think it depends what “Really smart” or “Really rich” mean.
By “really smart,” do we mean superhuman, Godlike intelligence? If so, I’d take that. But if we mean just a regular ordinary genius, I’ll take the money. One of my dreams is to be a professional philanthropist. If I could spend all my time helping other people, I’d enjoy that more than I would being a whiz kid. I’m smart enough as it is to know what I’d really like to do.
And as Lodrain alludes to, part of being smart is being smart enough to hire people who know what’s what and listen to their advice and delegate to them. No matter how intelligent you are, you still don’t have multiple or objective perspectives on issues. Intelligence != wisdom.
Funny, all of the really smart people I know are divorced…In fact, being content is definitely NOT something that leaps to mind when thinking about smart people. Smart people are generally too smart for their own good. Always analyzing, concentrating, exploring, etc. What ever happened to simply accepting the world as it is and being happy?
I’d vote for rich. Ignorance is bliss and I have one life to live.
-Tcat
I’d rather be really rich so I could get scientists to research this and this to alter me into a superhuman. Oh yeah and have them see if humans have a gene like this.
I’d want to keep my current brain though.
I’m exactly as smart as I want to be already. I don’t crave riches, but I crave extra brainpower even less. So I’d take the money.
I’m actually very surprised to see how many people would choose the smarts. What the hell’s the point of being that smart? Who would you talk to?
I’d love to save the world, but that takes resources. Why should I think up ways to get those resources when I could just run out and buy them?
As the old saying goes, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” Give me the cash.
Even if you were super-smart, you’d still have to work to get rich.
I don’t want to work. I’d take the money.
I’d go with really smart (assuming we’re talking supergenius-smart, like being able to learn a language perfectly in a few weeks). Intelligence still opens a few doors money can’t – I’d be at the top of my profession without having to put in a proportionate amount of labor, I could live and work in any country I chose, etc.
People around me always comment on how smart they think I am, but since the last company I worked for went under, I’ve been stuck working at part-time jobs and getting turned down at one interview after another.
To hell with brains.