Four types of men

A reader writes in response to my earlier post on psychometrics and life outcomes.

I saw your comments on the Technology Review site and found them pretty interesting ... the observations are roughly consistent with my experience on Wall Street. I just want to point out an old quote which you might not know that's relevant to the topic. According to legend (the quote is used often but I have never seen the original source cited) Field Marshall Erich von Manstein said that there were only 4 types of men. Smart hardworking men, who make excellent staff officers; smart lazy men who make the best general because they can make the right decision without all the information; stupid lazy men for whom uses could be found, and stupid hardworking men who must be avoided because of the problems they create.

Note: MIT Technology Review hosts a mirror version of my blog, and occasionally good comments appear there although I tend to follow the ones submitted at http:infoproc.blogspot.com more closely.