Anyone here with an extremely high IQ?

[operationsres]

I actually think it is the same psychological phenomenon for people to latch on to IQ scores as for people to believe they are a leo or scorpio.

What do you mean?

They want to put meaning into arbitrary signs or patterns about something they know nothing about in order to explain something about themselves.

How do you know "they" know nothing about it? There's an abundance of studies on IQ tests. Clearly your statement doesn't apply to the non-trivial proper subset of all those that have taken IQ tests who have also read these studies.

 

[Evo]

What do you mean?

It seems clear to me.

Clearly your statement doesn't apply to the non-trivial proper subset of all those that have taken IQ tests who have also read these studies.

What do you mean? Please share this information with us, I am not aware there was a study on the number of people that had taken online IQ tests that read studies about IQ tests.

The two senteces you answered were part of one statement. If you read the member's entire post, it should be quite clear what he is saying.

 

[operationsres]

It seems clear to me.

What do you mean?

I'll try to make clearer what I don't understand.

He/she stated: "I actually think it is the same psychological phenomenon for people to latch on to IQ scores as for people to believe they are a leo or scorpio. They want to put meaning into arbitrary signs or patterns about something they know nothing about in order to explain something about themselves."

I don't understand the link (hence my "What do you mean?").

"Arbitrary signs and patterns." - I don't understand what's arbitrary about taking a test and then getting information on your quantile location on the distribution based on a random sample of the population that's also taken the test.

"They know nothing about." - I don't understand how this claim can be made.

More generally, I don't see the link between the belief that planetary movements cause events to occur in their personal life and what I believe to be most people's perception that IQ scores are related to certain types of intelligence.

Please share this information with us, I am not aware there was a study on the number of people that had taken online IQ tests that read studies about IQ tests.

I've read a singular study on IQ tests and I've taken an IQ test, which qualifies me as being outside of the category of knowing "nothing", which is enough to justify what I stated.

Out of the many people that have also taken IQ tests I would be shocked if 0 of them have read these studies. But this being true is not needed for my statement to stand.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

I would like to know what these categories are supposed to mean.

Nothing. IQ tests are wonderful at determining whether or not you are retarded, but any deep analysis of the upper tiers is more or less meaningless.

 

[nitsuj]

Woo hoo I'm not retarded.

Good thing it's not just testing language, or is it "good thing it's not testing just language."...? idk.

 

[turbo]

IQ testing has to taken in context. As a new student in the Sputnik Scare, my classmates and I got the living crap tested out of us. I only found out recently what those scores were, when my father brought down a bunch of old school records.

 

[Galteeth]

By the way, out of curiosity, I went to the Mensa website and tried some of their workout tests. The questions were pretty easy.

 

[Cerlid]

I can take a very limited amount of information and create a solution, people who are good at IQ tests need all the information to do that, because they simply cannot extrapolate, think laterally or solve a Sherlock Homes murder, they are lacking in the fundamental skills that are what intelligence is all about. May not be dumb, may do very well in school but as someone already said the higher echelons require more than just brute crunching of numbers etc. They have to know how to imagine more than that, to fire those neurons so that the creative process is king, they have to be able to intuitively work something out, something new, not intellectually solve mundane problems anyone could solve because they are already solved by very mundane people.

I don't want to boast but last week, I invented not only a novel way of controlling terrorism, working out what people really think, determining who is a liar, working at optimal efficiency whilst picking my nose, working the envelope, and reprinting the spandle. See most people don't even yet know what a spandle is. You people are way behind me cause I did that all at the same time, whilst checking on my bank account..

Meh the real Rainmen are ten a penny but have you ever invented some new way of thinking? Do you have 100 ideas a day, are you creative? Then who the hell cares, IQ, we all have one, but does it really reflect anything?

 

[Danger]

And you have to be pretty dim to not qualify for the army.

There is a limit to that. Although I didn't qualify for military service, I belong to the Legion. A lot of the soldiers and old vets are of at least "normal" intelligence, and some are above normal. (Probably about the same proportion as in civilian society.) What the military wants is compliance. As long as someone is willing to take orders, intelligence is advantageous. Fighter pilots, for instance, know a lot of math and aeronautical engineering.

I usually suspect people who commit misdeeds of stupidity before I assume bad intent.

That's how I look at it. I've lived by a quote from someone who's identity I can't remember (likely either one of the classical SF writers or Mark Twain). "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

By the way, out of curiosity, I went to the Mensa website and tried some of their workout tests. The questions were pretty easy.

It's probably the same as the one that I checked out back in 1975 that was printed in "Reader's Digest". They give an easy one to suck you in, but you have to pay for a supervised test in order to apply for membership.

I couldn't believe it when I went to apply for a job as a service writer for a Toyota dealership about 15 years ago. The receptionist gave me an IQ test to fill out before asking for my resume, and told me that there was a 45-minute time limit. When I handed it back after 15 minutes, she said, "No, you have to fill out the whole thing." When I pointed out that I had, she looked quite flustered, especially since I had a perfect score. Needless to say, I never heard back from them.

 

[Cerlid]

I would like to know what these categories are supposed to mean.

Nothing at all.

A person with an IQ of 200 may well spend their life doing nothing worth while, where as a mundane pleb with and IQ of 122 may well spend their life revolutionizing science. Richard P Feynamn for example, who was apparently only quite "intelligent", with his mediocre IQ of 122, and yet changed the very nature of how we think about physics.

IQ I wouldn't bother with "intelligence" tests, as most psychologists know intelligence cannot be measured, nor can genius, nor can talent, the only thing you can measure is what you do with what you have and what you achieve, the rest is just mental masturbation for elitists.

High IQ, meh who cares, perseverance, a willingness to learn, to think, to dream. A willingness to think about everything and outside of any box, will serve you far better than a test for the mundane to measure mundane skills that were never designed to test anything other than your skill up to age 18 to pass tests, before you really get to learn how to think for yourself. IQ tests are for children, intelligence is measured by what you do after you lose your training wheels and learn how to really think, not by a score board that is redundant.

Have I got a high IQ, yes, does it mean anything to me, no. Nor should it, nor does it, nor will it ever.

Man that was quite a rant. By the way IQ tests do have their uses, I don't mean to sound down on them, it's just there are better ways of determining peoples talents. Ones we tend to overlook, hell tests are not the be all and end all of people, and this is coming from someone who always flew through tests. I just I suppose get disappointed by people who are discarded because they don't quite measure up to something that does not quite measure up to anything, end of the day put the effort in and you will do better than your predetermined monkey test, predetermined by dumb monkeys.

 

[rebat]

IQ tests are only good at scoring how well you are with a very limited amount of subjects and problem solving techniques they test you on.

To make an analogy, I could make an athleticism test based on a persons mile run time and how much they can bench press. If they score high on both, then they have a high athleticism score.

Someone like a football wide receiver would probably score very high, whereas a golfer would score very low. Even most miler runners would score average or low because the bench press score would weigh the overall score down. Its easy to see the test is very flawed.

Needless to say, I care nothing for IQ tests and Mensa for that matter.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I've lived by a quote from someone who's identity I can't remember (likely either one of the classical SF writers or Mark Twain). "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Hanlon's[/PLAIN] Razor.

 

[DragonPetter]

What do you mean?
How do you know "they" know nothing about it? There's an abundance of studies on IQ tests. Clearly your statement doesn't apply to the non-trivial proper subset of all those that have taken IQ tests who have also read these studies.

First off, what I said was merely an opinion.

The meaning I had is that there is a willingness for people (not everyone, of course) to put more merit into the results from studies like astrology (a study that use no logic or evidence) and IQ tests than the underlying facts/evidence can support. I think it is psychological in nature that people do this because both of these topics attempt to categorize and explain human thought and behavior in large generalizations/simplifications that people can relate to in an anecdotal, subjective, personal experience based perspective.

Notice that I didn't imply that astrology and IQ tests are in the same category, as astrology has no legitimacy while IQ tests can have some kind of evidence/data associated with them in studies. The reality though is that the generalized conclusions that many people try to draw from the facts/evidence associated with IQ tests are questionable, controversial, and unproven. If the conclusions from these IQ test results are as objective and authoritative as some people's beliefs seem to be, then it would imply that we know a lot more about human intelligence than I think the present evidence can suggest. That is why I said "They want to put meaning into arbitrary signs or patterns about something they know nothing about in order to explain something about themselves." When I say "something they know nothing about", that is because even the professionals in the field of psychology and neuroscience don't even have a clear consensus on what extent IQ tests are valid in indicating human intelligence and all of the other characteristics associated with intelligence, like creativity. It is possible to amass a large collection of data (IQ scores) and to try to correlate it to metrics, like income level, education level, original contributions to a field, etc. which one might lump together as indication of intelligence. But it is not valid to then pick one of those data points (an individual's IQ score) and to blindly conclude that the person possesses all of the metrics that are strongly correlated by the total sample and to blindly conclude that they are intelligent, which a lot of people like to do, like Mensa members.

I only commented on the willingness for people to latch on to what these topics can tell them about themselves without grounding the results in reality first.

 

[OmCheeto]

...Richard P Feynamn for example, who was apparently only quite "intelligent", with his mediocre IQ of 122, and yet changed the very nature of how we think about physics.
...

If only half of what wiki claims of Feynman is true, his IQ test was probably put together by someone with a really low IQ:

Feynman later scoffed at psychometric testing. In the year 1933, in which he turned 15, he taught himself trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and differential and integral calculus. Before entering college, he was experimenting with and re-creating mathematical topics, such as the half-derivative, using his own notation. In high school, he was developing the mathematical intuition behind his Taylor series of mathematical operators.

How many 15 year olds, in the history of the planet, have done what he did?

I'd scale him around 199.

And his simple analysis of the first shuttle disaster struck me a brilliant. "Snap!"

 

[DragonPetter]

If only half of what wiki claims of Feynman is true, his IQ test was probably put together by someone with a really low IQ:
How many 15 year olds, in the history of the planet, have done what he did?

I know what you're getting at, because it is amazing that he did this. He happened to be born in the right time and place, with the right inputs and outputs of his mind from day to day or even minute to minute. I think other genius minds could create these same ideas, but it is all subject to external conditions and his ideas were building off an already established knowledge base to some extent. I truly doubt any mind could generate all of the knowledge of trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and differential and integral calculus without resources, and so I suspect "teaching himself" involved reading books about the subjects which allowed him to independently create new ideas built off of those. But I agree, he clearly showed genius that the IQ test did not find.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If only half of what wiki claims of Feynman is true, his IQ test was probably put together by someone with a really low IQ:

How many 15 year olds, in the history of the planet, have done what he did?

You're missing the whole psychological matrix he found himself in, which worked to get him to voluntarily push himself to achieve. First off, and foremost, his father raised him to believe it was OK to be observant, curious, and analytical. Most parents discourage their kids from examining radios and machines in the belief they'll just wreck them, and they discourage them from asking too many questions. Feynman's dad was completely supportive of any curiosity he showed and encouraged him to think analytically about any problem he encountered (without ever being pushy about it).

With that encouragement at home, in school he got in with the geekier crowd where status could be gained by being the best at solving intellectual puzzles. There's a quote from Feynman in a book called "No Ordinary Genius" where he says that what drives him mostly is intellectual competition, the urge to prove he can figure out a more clever solution than the other guy.

I really think his I.Q. was 125. What set him apart was a unique combination of open mindedness, curiosity, and drive.

And his simple analysis of the first shuttle disaster struck me a brilliant. "Snap!"

The solution to the problem with the shuttle was "fed" to him by the mysterious general who called him up and suggested he poke around into the o-ring situation. He didn't figure it out all by himself. The engineers actually knew all along the o-rings weren't made for these low temperature conditions, but they were over-ridden by management on the go to launch. Management was, in turn, under pressure to perform for the President. Feynman's achievement was mostly in getting them (the engineers) to fess up to him. Feynman explains all this in "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" The General used Feynman as a kind of bloodhound, but he had actually known all along where the body was buried, and he steered Feynman to the gravesite.

 

[micromass]

I really think his I.Q. was 125.

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.

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.

 

[lisab]

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.

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.

Bingo.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

Feynman's father also read entire encyclopedias to him as a child, and they would often stop and think realistically and observantly, about what they had just read.

Feynman may have been a genius, but I don't see him being nearly as successful as he was without having been raised in an environment like that.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Honestly, who cares? If people with extremely high IQ think they are super geniuses then let them. In the end I'm still worshiping the greats like Newton and Maxwell not, for example, Marilyn vos Savant just because she has a HUGE IQ. I think its pretty clear who the geniuses are out of those three. The only high IQ child prodigy that I've ever seen contribute something amazing was Terrence Tao.

 

[Chi Meson]

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.

 

[OmCheeto]

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.

 

[OmCheeto]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHTTr9y9ObE

sorry. just silliness.

send me home.

 

[Aero51]

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.

 

[OmCheeto]

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!

 

[zoobyshoe]

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.

 

[Jack21222]

So we have, what, 6 different purported IQs for Richard Feynman?

Anybody else care to make a wild guess?

 

[GreenMathlete]

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.

 

[Chi Meson]

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.

 

[Cygnus1027]

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.)

 

[Kutt]

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.

 

[Evo]

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.

 

[GreenMathlete]

Nooooo.

Yeah I really hope that was the best rock climbing experience he/she ever had.

 

[Illuminerdi]

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.

 

[Chi Meson]

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.

 

[Cygnus1027]

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.

 

[lisab]

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.

 

[Dembadon]

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.

 

[RabbitWho]

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.

 

[Evo]

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?

 

[RabbitWho]

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.

 

[Pythagorean]

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

 

[Evo]

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.

 

[RabbitWho]

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.

 

[zoobyshoe]

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?

 

[RabbitWho]

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!

 

[zoobyshoe]

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.

 

[Illuminerdi]

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.

 

[RabbitWho]

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.

 

[RabbitWho]

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?