I wish I could remember where I originally saw this quote:
"If you hang out with smart people, you will get smarter. If you hang out with dumb people, you will get dumber. If you hang out with rich people, they'll leave you with the bill and you will get poorer."
It is probably most useful if you hang out with people who are just a little higher than you on a given metric. You get the pull upwards, and the inferential (and other) distances are still small.
It probably wouldn't be very useful for a dumb person trying to hang out with Nobel Price winners. Most likely, the dumb person would completely misunderstand them and get overconfident. A company of average people would be more useful for the dumb person, as they could empathise more, and give better practical advice.
Similarly, hanging out with richer people will cost you more. They can also give you some good advice and contacts, but if the inferential distances are too large, you will not be able to use them.
Thus spake Eliezer:
It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.
So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.