(no title)
spyhi | 7 years ago
"I very quickly realized that" <- Implying a prior assumption that was proven false
"very smart people" <- The set of very smart people OP has met, which hinges on perspective
"often" <- The key phrase here, implying that it is generally (but not always) true
"have very little knowledge of finance and business." <- The assumption at hand
I'm assuming OP thinks of STEM people as the definition of "very smart," based on his description of his degree, and his feelings about coding. OP may have assumed that since his knowledge is comparatively trivial for STEM people to learn, the knowledge might be widespread among what he thinks of as smart people, and was surprised when this valuable knowledge wasn't. In my experience, the average kind of person I'm assuming OP would consider "very smart" is either averse to business, or didn't bother learning business because it took time away from the hard problems they were more interested in, even though they easily could have.
More generally, the total set of obviously and profoundly smart people is bound to be (much) bigger than the set of obviously and profoundly intelligent people with knowledge of finance. Are there smart business people? Absolutely. But it's probably a small percentage when compared with the total set of Very Smart People. Also, at least in my school, the smartest people tend to go into harder disciplines, so that may further dilute the numbers of finance knowledge among the pool of Very Smart People.
So, there are multiple ways OP's statement can be true without being specifically about the capacity of intelligent people to learn finance through study or experience.
canadapups|7 years ago