How are some intelligent people so productive?

[Posty McPostface]

In other words, is there some correlation between high intelligence and productivity? Is it related to creativity?

I don't think I need to go into examples of famous people like Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Von Neumann, Gauss, Goethe, Aristotle/Plato, and the list goes on.

One unifying theme that is undoubtedly true is that they were all passionate about what they did. However, I am interested in what sustained their endless curiosity combined with a passion for knowledge. Do they view the world simply in a more efficient or different manner than the rest of us do and that allows them to describe things in novel ways due to their intelligence?Thoughts?

 

[Posty McPostface]

Even upon superficially reading The Bell Curve, one can draw some conclusion correlation between higher productivity and intelligence among the population in the US. Would that be something that could be a form of support for the above?

 

[symbolipoint]

How? Motivation!

 

[symbolipoint]

Even upon superficially reading The Bell Curve, one can draw some conclusion between higher productivity and intelligence among the population in the US. Would that be something that could be a form of support for the above?

Probably not.

Some "intelligent" people may seem "intelligent" because such people may reject "the minimum time to..., is ...", and spend MORE time than the rest of the people expect to do things or learn things or work on things. How is that? These intelligent people are MOTIVATED.

 

[Posty McPostface]

Probably not.

Some "intelligent" people may seem "intelligent" because such people may reject "the minimum time to..., is ...", and spend MORE time than the rest of the people expect to do things or learn things or work on things. How is that? These intelligent people are MOTIVATED.

What if you substitute "more efficient at X task (a job for example)" for "have more motivation"?

 

[Psinter]

people may seem "intelligent" because such people may reject "the minimum time to..., is ...", and spend MORE time than the rest of the people expect to do things or learn things or work on things.

Haha! So true! You got me!

Way too many people have told me that I am intelligent in the past and they continue to do so in the present. It happened in school, university, and even at lines in stores with people who chat with me. But I've always told them all that I am not intelligent, I just have a lot of knowledge on whatever subject it is that we are talking about. I tell them that I've spent countless hours reading and practicing. They confuse it. I tell them with an example: "Try to force me to learn X amount of Y material by Z time. I won't be able. I'm slow. It will take me longer to assimilate that information, compared to an actually intelligent person.

They swear I am intelligent. I just spend a lot of time absorbing knowledge. Nothing more.

 

[Posty McPostface]

They swear I am intelligent. I just spend a lot of time absorbing knowledge. Nothing more.

Perhaps you need to apply that gained knowledge to some discipline or field of thought to affirm what people are already telling you. I've been reading the definitions of "intelligence", "prodigy", and "genius" and the common theme is the ability to produce something of great value via creativity and general talent or ability, that seems to be the only way one can justify applying those terms.

 

[symbolipoint]

Perhaps you need to apply that gained knowledge to some discipline or field of thought to affirm what people are already telling you. I've been reading the definitions of "intelligence", "prodigy", and "genius" and the common theme is the ability to produce something of great value via creativity and general talent or ability, that seems to be the only way one can justify applying those terms.

No. Don't count on that. Genius is given to a few people, but less-than genius people who try hard and long to do something can still find success in those things they find interesting to do.

 

[Posty McPostface]

No. Don't count on that. Genius is given to a few people, but less-than genius people who try hard and long to do something can still find success in those things they find interesting to do.

Look, I don't mean to exalt or demean intelligent or less intelligent individuals. However, there seem to be some things that highly intelligent people do really well at, where a person who has a lower intelligence quotient won't be able to compete with no matter how hard they work, given each are putting in as much effort as the other. Practice does make perfect, and motivation is essential; but, not everyone can become a Mozart.

 

[symbolipoint]

Look, I don't mean to exalt or demean intelligent or less intelligent individuals. However, there seem to be some things that highly intelligent people do really well at, where a person who has a lower intelligence quotient won't be able to compete with no matter how hard they work, given each are putting in as much effort as the other. Practice does make perfect, and motivation is essential; but, not everyone can become a Mozart.

You are right. Not a reason to give less effort. The chiefs who hire people to do wonderful work will not find enough geniuses to go around.

 

[lekh2003]

Going back to the bell curve idea, what if the extremely intelligent people at the absolute top of the spectrum realize that being productive is futile and has no meaning in th grand scheme of the universe.

 

[Borek]

is there some correlation between high intelligence and productivity?

No. I know highly intelligent people (with officially measured IQ > 130) wasting their potential by doing nothing.

 

[Posty McPostface]

No. I know highly intelligent people (with officially measured IQ > 130) wasting their potential by doing nothing.

Let me slightly amend what you have quoted.

Is there some correlation between the ability and willingness to apply high intelligence in any given domain or field and productivity?

This kind of factors out some of the issues related to socioeconomic status, individual issues or traits like an attitude of cynicism, apathy, and/or depression.

Just trying to polish up what I said to make better sense, not some ego-thing here. I supposedly have an above normal intelligence, just like most members of this forum methinks, but have issues with trying to realize it in any domain or field. Hence, maybe some envy?

 

[Borek]

Have you heard about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment ?

 

[Nidum]

Success is generated by a suitable combination of Motivation + Opportunity + Capability .

It's a bit like the fire triangle - Ignition source + Fuel + Oxidiser .

 

[newjerseyrunner]

The brain is a self-learning system. If you do lots of complicated stuff (being productive) your brain gets better at doing those things, which makes you appear smarter. You also tend to be judged based on your abilities at a particular task. If I did a programming contest against any of the scientists on this forum, I'd almost certainly win. To an outside observer, that would make it appear as though I was way smarter than the other person, when it actuality, it's just that I've do it 8 hours a day for a decade and they dabble in it occasionally. Productive people have loads of experience in a variety of things because they've done them, so that helps make them appear smarter.

 

[symbolipoint]

This one deserves two more "LIKES":

The brain is a self-learning system. If you do lots of complicated stuff (being productive) your brain gets better at doing those things, which makes you appear smarter. You also tend to be judged based on your abilities at a particular task. If I did a programming contest against any of the scientists on this forum, I'd almost certainly win. To an outside observer, that would make it appear as though I was way smarter than the other person, when it actuality, it's just that I've do it 8 hours a day for a decade and dabble in it occasionally. Productive people have loads of experience in a variety of things because they've done them, so that helps make them appear smarter.

 

[Mark44]

is there some correlation between high intelligence and productivity?

No. I know highly intelligent people (with officially measured IQ > 130) wasting their potential by doing nothing.

And there are people with less than stellar IQs who are driven by their motivation to succeed.

Success is generated by a suitable combination of Motivation + Opportunity + Capability .

I think this is it.

 

[dipole]

I can tell some people in this thread are going to be very triggered.

This is slightly off-topic, but the addage the "smart people work harder than you" is simply not true. Yes, accomplishing great things takes hard work, no matter who you are, but the fact is that many attributes in life are genetic. We're all born with a certain capacity which we'll never overcome.

Ever meet someone who was really good at something you've struggled at for a long time? Ever try to understand a concept, and just never are quite able to get a full grasp on it, even though you've read the book over and over, while some lucky few seem to get it right away? Perhaps they just read the book twice as much as you did and kept it a secret, perhaps their unique experience in life made that concept more intuitive to them than you, but chances are their life wasn't much different than yours, and they probably put in the same effort you did - they're just better. Intelligence is a genetic trait, and I've read up that genetic components can account for up to as much as 70% of variance among intelligence between individuals.

So this whole thing about "you're not smart because you're lazy", may be true some times, but sometimes other people are just inherently better than you.

 

[symbolipoint]

I can tell some people in this thread are going to be very triggered.

This is slightly off-topic, but the addage the "smart people work harder than you" is simply not true. Yes, accomplishing great things takes hard work, no matter who you are, but the fact is that many attributes in life are genetic. We're all born with a certain capacity which we'll never overcome.

Ever meet someone who was really good at something you've struggled at for a long time? Ever try to understand a concept, and just never are quite able to get a full grasp on it, even though you've read the book over and over, while some lucky few seem to get it right away? Perhaps they just read the book twice as much as you did and kept it a secret, perhaps their unique experience in life made that concept more intuitive to them than you, but chances are their life wasn't much different than yours, and they probably put in the same effort you did - they're just better. Intelligence is a genetic trait, and I've read up that genetic components can account for up to as much as 70% of variance among intelligence between individuals.

So this whole thing about "you're not smart because you're lazy", may be true some times, but sometimes other people are just inherently better than you.

Trigger is pulled. SOME people may actually harder than "you" and some smart people may work less harder than "you". Fair enough, right?

 

[Posty McPostface]

I think that one can extrapolate from reading books like The Bell Curve, that high IQ people do achieve success, despite how that definition is often applied in terms of monetary gain. Just that it would seem strange that people of high IQ would feel motivated to only apply their intelligence in this myopic view of defining 'success', as many people have pointed out exceptions to the rule.

 

[symbolipoint]

I think that one can extrapolate from reading books like The Bell Curve, that high IQ people do achieve success, despite how that definition is often applied in terms of monetary gain. Just that it would seem strange that people of high IQ would feel motivated to only apply their intelligence in this myopic view of defining 'success', as many people have pointed out exceptions to the rule.

This now points to the idea of Many Types Of Intelligence.

 

[symbolipoint]

In other words, is there some correlation between high intelligence and productivity? Is it related to creativity?

I don't think I need to go into examples of famous people like Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Von Neumann, Gauss, Goethe, Aristotle/Plato, and the list goes on.

One unifying theme that is undoubtedly true is that they were all passionate about what they did. However, I am interested in what sustained their endless curiosity combined with a passion for knowledge. Do they view the world simply in a more efficient or different manner than the rest of us do and that allows them to describe things in novel ways due to their intelligence?Thoughts?

Rethought about that.

CURIOSITY and taking INITIATIVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT CURIOSITY. That is what high intelligence and productivity are all about.

 

[Posty McPostface]

This now points to the idea of Many Types Of Intelligence.

Yes, I would think that's just the natural way of things. I neglected to mention an endless list of some more famous physicists from my list in the OP; but, you can find a multitude of high IQ people displaying their intelligence in different domains of human endeavor not necessarily in terms of monetary gain.

 

[Posty McPostface]

OK, found a really interesting research paper confirming what I suspected:

National IQ and National Productivity: The Hive Mind Across Asia

A recent line of research demonstrates that cognitive skills—IQ scores, math skills, and the like— have only a modest influence on individual wages, but are strongly correlated with national outcomes. Is this largely due to human capital spillovers? This paper argues that the answer is yes. It presents four different channels through which intelligence may matter more for nations than for individuals: 1. Intelligence is associated with patience and hence higher savings rates; 2. Intelligence causes cooperation; 3. Higher group intelligence opens the door to using fragile, high value production technologies, and 4. Intelligence is associated with supporting market-oriented policies. Abundant evidence from across the ADB region demonstrating that environmental improvements can raise cognitive skills is reviewed.

It is reasonable to be cautious about claims that IQ has a major influence on national productivity. After all, a large labor economics literature shows that IQ and other testable skills have only modest correlations with wages at the individual level. Whether we look in developing or developed countries, the story is the same: a 1 standard deviation increase in cognitive skills (15 IQ points) within a country is associated with about a 15 percent increase in wages, perhaps less. For instance, Alderman et al. (1996) found that in rural Pakistan, those who perform 1 standard deviation better on an abstract visual pattern-finding IQ test—the Raven’s matrices— earned 13 percent more. One should draw two lessons from this result. First, the intelligence tests widely derided in popular culture as being culturally biased nevertheless have the power to predict economic outcomes in one of the poorest regions in Asia. Second, this 13 percent effect is still far too small to explain poverty in South Asia. If differences in cognitive skill are important drivers of national economic outcomes, cognitive externalities must be large. Jones and Schneider (2006 and 2010) provide evidence for this. They found that across countries, the IQ–productivity relationship is much larger: 15 IQ points is associated with a 150 percent increase in productivity. Perhaps this strong relationship is epiphenomenal but the psychology, economic growth, and behavioral public choice literatures all give reason for thinking otherwise. There are good reasons for thinking that intelligence—the name used for the underlying trait measured by IQ tests—matters more for nations than for individuals. For instance:

1. Intelligent individuals tend to be more patient, and growth theory predicts that patient nations will save more, building up a larger capital stock in a closed-economy world.

2. Behavioral economics experiments show that high IQ players are more cooperative in repeated prisoner’s dilemma, trust, and public goods games. Since trust and trustworthiness are key to holding together wealth-creating institutions, intelligence will cause prosperity through public choice channels.

3. Skill complementarities may be important in producing “O-Ring” forms of fragile, delicate output. If so, then small differences in worker skill may cause massive differences in cross-country productivity.

4. According to Caplan and Miller (2010) high-IQ individuals appear more likely to support promarket, pro-trade policies. Thus, more intelligent voters are more likely to see the invisible hand, supporting policies that create prosperity.

Available here.

Relevant references to the bolded text:

Jones, G., and M. Podemska. 2010. “IQ in the Utility Function: Cognitive Skills, Time Preference, and Crosscountry Differences in Savings Rates.” Unpublished. George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.

Jones, G., and W. J. Schneider. 2006. “Intelligence, Human Capital, and Economic Growth: A Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) Approach.” Journal of Economic Growth 11(1):71–93

 

[mfb]

I’ll have to read that in more detail but it looks like the causal directory is unclear. A higher productivity is often associated with more complex mental tasks in jobs, which could be correlated with more training for IQ tests.

 

[symbolipoint]

Academic psychological fluff

 

[Windadct]

IMO - Intelligence is just one parameter that affects how we see, approach and interact with the world. But of these, intelligence is a distinct advantage, in many cases it may allow you to recognize personal weaknesses better. I do agree there are different types of intelligence, so the whole discussion hinges on how we define these different terms, including productivity.

It used to be (again IMO) that having pretty much one good strength, like intelligence, work ethic, charisma, memory, etc, was enough to be valuable enough to make a good life, but the stakes today are higher, the expectations are higher, and there are far fewer roles where just work ethic can get you where you want to be, or be happy, comfortable- etc.