jonskinner said:
I never seen so many inaccurate statements made about IQ tests! For one thing, IQ is 80% genetic and does not fluctuate over time. Real accurate IQ tests results will not vary from age to age, nor well any amount of practice improve your IQ test. An IQ test is not a jigsaw puzzle no amount of practice will improve an IQ. You already have to be intelligent to understand physics and math. Let me ask you a question, a mentally handicapped person with only 60 IQ could they win a nobel prize? No, no amount of practice and reading would able them to do so. It is a fact that the average IQ of a nobel prize winner is 150, and Newton had an IQ of 190 and Tesla possibly had around 160+ IQ. The average IQ of a physics Phd is 130 and the average IQ of a mathematician is 129. Richard Feynman has only 125 IQ and he won a nobel prize, which means with a lot of practice and hard work if your already consider bright by your peers you may have a slight chance of winning a nobel prize. The thing is, hard work only gets you so far or else everyone would be has smart as Einstein. IQ is a measure of how hard you have to work intellectually and also how far you can go intellectually. If you have average IQ, I'm afraid to tell you that it will be nearly impossible to get a Phd in Math or Physics. And if your not a genius, I'm afraid to tell you that your odds of winning a nobel prize are nearly 0. These are facts. If I could have it my way we'd all have 190 IQs, but it's not how nature works. Accept that your not as smart as you think you are. We can't all be geniuses.
First of all, this thread it super old so I'm surprised you even bothered to post here.
Second of all, I want you to think about the probability that any list of celebrity I.Q.s and lists of the I.Q.s of the "Greatest Geniuses" that you read online are genuine and accurate.
I want you to consider the fact that Newton did two hundred years before the first normed I.Q. test was developed. Combine this with the fact that they extrapolated that '190' from his accomplishments and how subjectively difficult they would have been to achieve (along with some other questionable parameters). If they would have applied the same to Feynman I am absolutely certain they would have said his I.Q. was 170 or some other number totally out of line with his score on the test he took in high school. So your logic is inconsistent there, you're comparing apples (fake, extrapolated I.Q.s) and oranges ( real, tested I.Q.s).
Feynman was not merely considered 'bright' by his peers, he was considered to be a genius of world class abilities in theoretical physics.
I doubt that anyone has access to any documentation of the I.Q.s of every, or even most Nobel prize winners. I doubt that every Nobel prize winner has taken an I.Q. test (especially since, again, the Nobel prize preceded I.Q. testing). So again your logic is inconsistent with the facts. I highly doubt that there is enough data available to say that the average I.Q. of all physicists and mathematicians is 130. I've read of other questionable "surveys" claiming that the magic number for mathematicians is 140 (without presenting any evidence whatsoever, of course).
Also, I want to point out that it is generally accepted by psychometricians (who I really have trouble taking seriously) a test really sets a baseline. You could still score higher because you had a bad day, a learning disability (such as ADHD, which would cause you to under perform due to lack of focus) etc.
Telling someone who is interested in the sciences that hard work will only get them so far, that they won't be able to get a PhD in math or physics unless they are card carrying members of MENSA (the international society for pointless games, pizza dinners and mutual mental masturbation) when you clearly have no knowledge of what goes into getting a PhD and can't even piece together a logically coherent argument, is shameful at best. Please stop doing it; please stop discouraging people who actually have the drive to get the work done.