There's certainly some element of correlation in there, but that doesn't mean that there's no causation. Going to an Ivy League school is partly correlation and partly causation. So is getting a Ph.D. from a top university, if you're going into academia. Why should business school be different?

I should also note that this point applies equally well to PG's original argument. What if it's purely correlation- that is, what if "programming IQ" and "business IQ" just correlate really well, so that lots of top businessmen are also top programmers? In that case, it would be relatively useless to learn programming.

Since the data points are solely about extreme wealth and Elite MBAs, the only thing that can be proven is some degree of correlation between the two. What you have is insufficient (by a lot) to prove causation.

If your thesis is that the Elite MBA led to the extreme wealth, you have to look at the volumes of Elite MBAs out there. HBS alone turns out 1000 a year. Only a small % of them get to extreme wealth (going back to your point that a few hundred million doesn't count).

As someone else noted, an Elite MBA is a worthwhile investment as a stamp of approval. I have one of these, and I can speak from experience that it helps. Is it going to get me to extreme wealth? No.

"Since the data points are solely about extreme wealth and Elite MBAs, the only thing that can be proven is some degree of correlation between the two. What you have is insufficient (by a lot) to prove causation."

The conventional wisdom is that there is causation as well as correlation. Everyone who goes to one of those elite MBA schools- and a lot of smart people do- goes because they believe in causation as well as correlation. The burden of proof is on you, to show that there is no causation, because the conventional wisdom says the exact opposite. See also:

"One who wishes to believe says, “Does the evidence permit me to believe?” One who wishes to disbelieve asks, “Does the evidence force me to believe?” Beware lest you place huge burdens of proof only on propositions you dislike, and then defend yourself by saying: “But it is good to be skeptical.” If you attend only to favorable evidence, picking and choosing from your gathered data, then the more data you gather, the less you know. If you are selective about which arguments you inspect for flaws, or how hard you inspect for flaws, then every flaw you learn how to detect makes you that much stupider." - http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues

"If your thesis is that the Elite MBA led to the extreme wealth, you have to look at the volumes of Elite MBAs out there. HBS alone turns out 1000 a year. Only a small % of them get to extreme wealth (going back to your point that a few hundred million doesn't count)."

Agreed, but that's a lot larger than the percentage of people who "learn how to hack" that go on to extreme wealth.

No, not really "enough said". If a correlation is demonstrated between two events, then the probability of the observations being due to chance is low. Now, whether we conclude that "A caused B", "B caused A" or "something else altogether caused both A and B" is another matter. In this case, since the MBA likely precedes billionareship, we will rule out the possibility that the MBA was caused by the billions. As to which of the remaining two explanations is the case, I suspect that it is a mixture of the two.