Anyone here with an extremely high IQ?

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In summary: IQ scores of 120 and 160.IQ tests are woefully inaccurate. I do not trust them.You are correct in that online IQ tests are inaccurate. However, this does not mean that those with an IQ above 140 are not "gifted". In fact, many gifted individuals exhibit a range of IQ scores starting from about 130 or 140, with degree of giftedness increasing above that. Usually, at 130 or 140 someone is moderately gifted, 150 or 160 highly gifted, and above that exceptionally or profoundly gifted.
  • #71
Feynman's IQ was self-reportedly 127. His sister tested at 128 and he joked "so I guess she's smarter than me." I think this is something he says somewhere in "No Ordinary Genius," the BBC documentary. It's now on Youtube


EDIT: I can't find that IQ mentioned here, but it's worthwhile watching if you have a spare 90 minutes.

Whatever the number is, the point is clear that an IQ score is neither a barrier nor a gateway to greatness.
 
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  • #72
I'm sitting with a card carrying Mensa member* at the moment.

Ha ha!

*old friend. I was telling him about this thread, and he pulled out his card.
 
  • #73
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHTTr9y9ObE

sorry. just silliness.

send me home.
 
  • #74
IQ is not measurable, simple. Success is not an accurate metric nor is introspection. I think intelligence is the culmination of natural abilities, experience, environment and some luck. It cannot be quantified because intelligence is both an emotional and logical quality. The unabomber was a genious, but he decided to kill people and go into hiding, only to ruin his life. He had a high IQ, but was he smart? No.
 
  • #75
Aero51 said:
IQ is not measurable, simple.

phht!

3. Is it true Feynman's IQ score was only 125?

Feynman was universally regarded as one of the fastest thinking and most creative theorists in his generation. Yet it has been reported-including by Feynman himself-that he only obtained a score of 125 on a school IQ test. I suspect that this test emphasized verbal, as opposed to mathematical, ability. Feynman received the highest score in the country by a large margin on the notoriously difficult Putnam mathematics competition exam, although he joined the MIT team on short notice and did not prepare for the test. He also reportedly had the highest scores on record on the math/physics graduate admission exams at Princeton. It seems quite possible to me that Feynman's cognitive abilities might have been a bit lopsided-his vocabulary and verbal ability were well above average, but perhaps not as great as his mathematical abilities.

I bounce his score to 200.

I do not know why people can look at Michael Phelps, and say that he is an Olympian, and he should be patted on the back. But someone of a similar mental stature, should have rocks thrown at them, because they are egotistical maniacs.

phhht!
 
  • #76
micromass said:
You can't be serious. He's one of the smartest people of the previous century. If his IQ really was 125, then IQ tests are severely flawed.
I'm completely serious and yes, I.Q. tests are flawed in that they only test for certain kinds of intelligence and not at all for other qualities that lead to success. Why isn't Marilyn vos Savant out there revolutionizing physics?

It is probably true that his intelligence was for a huge part due to his father and his surroundings, but that still doesn't mean he's not an insanely smart guy.
His father, unlike most fathers, gave him permission to be clever. That gave him a huge psychological advantage.

I think someone can qualify as "insanely smart" without having an insanely high I.Q. In fact, as people keep pointing out about Mensa members, it seems there's some point after which they make dumber and dumber life decisions.
 
  • #77
So we have, what, 6 different purported IQs for Richard Feynman?

Anybody else care to make a wild guess?
 
  • #78
Before I was born, the ultrasound suggested that there might be potential birth defects leading to mental retardation lol... so I was IQ tested at a very young age and they discovered quite the opposite... the result was 176. I do fairly well with my intellectual pursuits, but I don't put much stock into an IQ test result from when I was young. There are plenty of people with IQs 20-30 points lower than mine who have accomplished more than I ever will.
 
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  • #79
Jack21222 said:
So we have, what, 6 different purported IQs for Richard Feynman?

Anybody else care to make a wild guess?

"Wild guess" is more of the significance of an IQ score. But the bona fide test at the time ("Stanford-Binet") really did measure him in the 125-127 range. What is agreed upon, by essentially all of us, is that Feynman was much more than his IQ score, and that traditional IQ tests do not completely/correctly measure a person's capabilities, and essentially anyone can put together a puzzle challenge and call it "an IQ test."

Here's how close I was to meeting him once: in college, I was briefly in a band with the son of Col. Kutyna (the Air Force guy who he worked with on the space shuttle investigation). This guy invited me to a party his dad was having "and this nobel winning physics guy is going to be there." I went rock climbing instead.
 
  • #80
I've never taken an IQ test, but according to the ACT test I took in seventh grade it's in the upper 130s. (Composite score of 31.)
 
  • #81
Cygnus1027 said:
I've never taken an IQ test, but according to the ACT test I took in seventh grade it's in the upper 130s. (Composite score of 31.)

The SAT and ACT are very poor at measuring IQ.
 
  • #82
Chi Meson said:
Here's how close I was to meeting him once: in college, I was briefly in a band with the son of Col. Kutyna (the Air Force guy who he worked with on the space shuttle investigation). This guy invited me to a party his dad was having "and this nobel winning physics guy is going to be there." I went rock climbing instead.
Nooooo.
 
  • #83
Evo said:
Nooooo.

Yeah I really hope that was the best rock climbing experience he/she ever had.
 
  • #84
I scored very high in some sections and very low in others.
I also took it when I was 11 and had a serious sleep disorder, apart from the diagnosis I got, alongside the test, of high functioning autistic.

But more importantly, though, IQ is a score you get on a test, it's not something you HAVE, and people who are members of MENSA can go eff themselves. I'd rather idolize the great physicists and engineers of the world than test scorers.
 
  • #85
Is this thread still open?
We have to leave room for the next IQ thread 3 months from now.

We wouldn't want an overlap, would we?

I believe it's time for another "Who's the best physicist" poll pretty soon.
 
  • #86
Kutt said:
The SAT and ACT are very poor at measuring IQ.

I know, but I haven't actually taken an IQ test. It is true that some people are great test-takers but may or may not have a high IQ.
 
  • #87
Chi Meson said:
Is this thread still open?
We have to leave room for the next IQ thread 3 months from now.

We wouldn't want an overlap, would we?

I believe it's time for another "Who's the best physicist" poll pretty soon.

No no no, you're skipping the "Who's the best-looking" physicist thread.
 
  • #88
Chi Meson said:
Is this thread still open?
We have to leave room for the next IQ thread 3 months from now.

We wouldn't want an overlap, would we?

I believe it's time for another "Who's the best physicist" poll pretty soon.

:rofl:
 
  • #89
I have a really low IQ but I find it really easy to learn and understand things so I don't mind.


IQ tests remind me of Richard Feynman talking about this strange habit people have of making clubs to congratulate themselves on how smart they are instead of working on using their brains.
 
  • #90
RabbitWho said:
I have a really low IQ but I find it really easy to learn and understand things so I don't mind.
Were you professionally tested or did you take an online test?
 
  • #91
Evo said:
Were you professionally tested or did you take an online test?

Both, as a kid and teenager I always did really badly on them. I think because I'd only have maybe the first 10 questions answered when the time would be up.
 
  • #92
RabbitWho said:
I have a really low IQ but I find it really easy to learn and understand things so I don't mind.

“Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.”
― Bruce Lee
 
  • #93
RabbitWho said:
Both, as a kid and teenager I always did really badly on them. I think because I'd only have maybe the first 10 questions answered when the time would be up.
That could just be a sign that you don't test well.
 
  • #94
I was reading about IQ tests today (not because I'm worried about it, because it's part of the syllabus)

In the early IQ tests women scored 10 points higher on average than men, so they took out the questions that all the women were excelling at to make the average IQ equal for both genders.

Modern IQ tests are still based on this model and that's why women and men have the same average IQ. I think this is a sort of acknowledgment of the nature of these tests, that they have in built bias, they corrected for the gender bias problem, but they haven't done it for all the other differences that individuals have or that social groups have.
 
  • #95
RabbitWho said:
I was reading about IQ tests today (not because I'm worried about it, because it's part of the syllabus)

In the early IQ tests women scored 10 points higher on average than men, so they took out the questions that all the women were excelling at to make the average IQ equal for both genders.
This is interesting, and I've never heard of it. Can you dig up a link?
 
  • #96
I found something about it on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_psychology#IQ

You can't tell anything about male and female intelligence from this, my point is that the tests are intentionally adapted to make absolutely sure they give the result that our culture expects. It's pretty awesome that even at the turn of the century they decided to keep it so that women would show up as being equal and not try to make it look like we were dumb! Ahead of their time!
 
  • #97
RabbitWho said:
I found something about it on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_psychology#IQ

You can't tell anything about male and female intelligence from this, my point is that the tests are intentionally adapted to make absolutely sure they give the result that our culture expects. It's pretty awesome that even at the turn of the century they decided to keep it so that women would show up as being equal and not try to make it look like we were dumb! Ahead of their time!
What I'd like to know, among other things, is the nature of the questions women did so much better on.
 
  • #98
zoobyshoe said:
What I'd like to know, among other things, is the nature of the questions women did so much better on.

I don't have the answer for you, however, it's well known that, while men have more of the mysterious "gray matter" in the brain (tissue consisting primarily of cell bodies-the "powerhouse" of the neuron), women have more "white matter" (tissue consisting primarily of axons and myelin sheaths, the "connecting" bits of neuron). This said, women tend to greater excel at tasks pertaining to long term memory or other things dependent on intricately relating knowledge, where men tend to excel at brute force mental activities.
 
  • #99
Ha ha good question. I assume they nature of them couldn't have been that different from the type of questions you see on IQ tests now, they would have been another type of question but in the same topics.

It is a really good question, you often see certain people feeling quite smug because men excel in one subject, but maybe often that subject has been crafted over hundreds of years by men to facilitate the way men think (as though they were removing or remodeling the questions that men do bad at), the more we know the strengths of both genders the more we can get both genders working to their full potential and not have subjects dominated by one gender or another and not have "glass ceilings" because both genders will be able to preform to their best abilities.
 
  • #100
Illuminerdi said:
I don't have the answer for you, however, it's well known that, while men have more of the mysterious "gray matter" in the brain (tissue consisting primarily of cell bodies-the "powerhouse" of the neuron), women have more "white matter" (tissue consisting primarily of axons and myelin sheaths, the "connecting" bits of neuron). This said, women tend to greater excel at tasks pertaining to long term memory or other things dependent on intricately relating knowledge, where men tend to excel at brute force mental activities.

What's a brute force metal activity? Wining a chess game by breaking the opponents arm?
 
  • #101
RabbitWho said:
What's a brute force metal activity? Wining a chess game by breaking the opponents arm?

Something like solving a math problem at a really fast speed using only known algorithms.
 
  • #102
RabbitWho said:
What's a brute force metal activity? Wining a chess game by breaking the opponents arm?

In mathematics, I'd define a brute force method of solving a problem as the "long/hard way". Brute force methods usually lack elegance or creativity, but are sometimes more effective than other methods; it really depends on the problem. This is not to say that there exist elegant or creative solutions to all problems, though.

Example: How many 3-digit combinations can one make using 1's and 0's?

Brute Force: (write out all of the combinations and then count them)

Code: 
000 101
001 011
010 110
100 111

Analytically: 23 = 8. One chooses between two* distinguishable "balls" to put into three** different "bins" for each combination.

* the base -- representing the number of choices one has for each digit
** the exponent -- representing the number of digits one must use to form a valid combination
 
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  • #103
Illuminerdi said:
Something like solving a math problem at a really fast speed using only known algorithms.

Regarding mathematics, I hesitate to assign the speed characteristic to the brute force method. Typically, brute force methods are the "longer" route to a solution.
 
  • #104
Danger said:
From my experience with Mensa members, all that I can see is that it is an elitist club whose members are not actually elite. When I took the test, the cut-off IQ was only 132. In my real life, I know people who would probably score less than 100 and yet can hold a more intelligent, entertaining, and most importantly congenial conversation than the members that I have met.

Ditto! If common sense was part of the IQ score, there would be less MENSA members!
 
  • #105

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