I have an small observation: there are high productivity geniuses (Euler, Von Neumann, Gauss) that look to be super high IQ. There are also low productivity geniuses (Cantor, Einstein, Godel) that probably are not so high IQ.
While that kind of energy matters, I would say that there was a substancial gap in IQ between Von Neumann and Godel in favor of Von Neumann, while perhaps Godel was more a genius.
I associate IQ to the fast solution of well defined problems, and for that defintion I would say that v Neumann was 160, and a better mathematician as Godel was simply high IQ guy.
Call it whatever you like, however there are people of markedly higher intelligence than other smart people. An old friend of mine from Montreal learned languages with ease (becoming fluent in German over the course of a summer), stretched the capacity of McGill to handle the depth of his investigations into various sub-fields connected to topology, read hundreds of novels per year (Dostoevsky, not Ludlum), and just generally exhibited a level of raw intelligence far beyond most of the folks I met at MIT.
lol. "Let's speculate about individual intelligence of a handful of known famous scientists from the pre-ET era (Goethe, Leibnitz, et. al.) by gleaning the biographical details illustrating their achieved status, and then (somehow) estimate their IQs with retro-matching to one custom-crafted performance exam taken by one cohort of high-IQ testing PhDs, with the variation of results asserted as an extra refinement of IQ measurements at the lead tail, and then chart the metrics as Proof of something something, because numbers something something..."
140...160...180...210... You know, like millimeters. 250. 300!
I mean, really. In terms of the goal of assigning some precise "extra high IQ score" to the undeniably formidable intelligence of Great Minds of Western Civilization who were deprived of the opportunity to actually take any of the tests, on account of being born in an era before the ET Industry existed: what makes that a probative experimental design? More generally, what makes the task sufficiently important to take seriously? It's a counterfactual fantasy exercise.
You really think that IQ tests reliably measure 100% peak mental ability effort, the way Olympic athletic races typically demonstrate all-out aerobic capacity, muscle power, and kinesthetic effort? Anyway, did the top scorer of the elite PhD candidates taking the customized achievement exam back in the 1950s go on to renown, as the next Leibnitz?
I saw your post but given Hoel's response to your post, your ultimately not totally unfavorable TLDR, and the diversity of comments across your blog and his, it seemed worthwhile (at the very least) to share the essay.
His essay has the right conclusion, but the premises are mostly false. Some people have 160 IQ (we can't generally know who, bragging about having them is generally a sign of a problem), historical estimate have some issues (all do), intelligence does mostly linearly relate to success and often superlinearily in the right tail, measurement error goes up away from the mean using fixed-length tests (but we can just use other tests). Not one of his best essays.
I think you're confusing the map with the territory. IQ isn't intelligence; it's a *measure* of intelligence. So to say, "Some people have 160 IQ (we can't generally know who," doesn't really make sense. We can say, "we can be confident that there are some people who, if tested, would score 160," but the whole point here is that that's meaningless.
IQ is the metric, not the measure. IQ is just a shorthand for writing about age relative differences (115 = 1 standard deviation above age peers).
There is no confusion. If we had a perfect IQ test (standard error of measurement = 0 for entire range), there are some people who would attain a score of 160.
We have a very comprehensive program aimed squarely at producing intelligent behavior. It relies 0.0% on any kind of IQ research, because the IQ field has essentially nothing useful to say about the subject of its own investigation. Why are some people good at IQ tests? What do they do to excel at them? How could those techniques inform the AI program? If we ever learn it won't be thanks to anyone who "studies" IQ.
The author's premise struck a chord with me. I have given this subject some thought. From personal experience and observation, I've wondered how vital IQ numbers are. From a personal point of view, folks have always told me I was smart. I know that most parents and grandparents think that about their offspring, but teachers and coaches have made the same comments. I knew I had an excellent memory and could read something and retain it very well. It wasn't until my junior year in high school, while trying to figure out what I would do with my life, that I learned my IQ. My counselor told me and then showed me the record. It was 136. I had no memory of taking such a test, nor did I even know if that number was good. I suspected it was good, but I still asked, and of course, I was told it was great. Fast forward a bit, and I took the ACT; my state didn't require the SAT. I scored a 24 on it. My Engish section was a 13, and other scores were in the 30's so I eneded up with 24, however that's figured out. The thing is, I didn't get good grades in high school. I was called "lazy" by a parent and several teachers.
My problem? Homework. I hated to do homework. I would get an A or B on a test in Physics and other classes but didn't do the homework. I ended up with a C in physics. I went round and round with that teacher, he was one who called me lazy, about what does the test measure? Knowledge of the subject, so why do I need to do the make work homework if I get A's and B's on the tests? Needless to say, I lost that argument but still refused to do the homework. Other classes like History didn't require homework, and I got A's in that. I ended up graduating with a 2.4 GPA. I started attending community college because my GPA was too low for a decent university, but I didn't like college either and dropped out. Fast forward a bit there, and I wanted to join the Army. I took the ASVAB, where my GT score was 124 and QT was 95. I didn't know what any of that was either, but the recruiter said I could do any job in the Army I wanted, so I chose Operating Room Technician, but the ship date was almost a year out. My parental units talked me into being a truck mechanic since I had an aptitude for that. I rebuilt my first engine when I was 15, as Dad worked for Ford in the Scientific Research Center there. He brought home all kinds of things. (Note on test scores. If you look at my supposed IQ score and ACT/ASVAB scores, that score is incorrect; it should be lower, more like 120 something.)
Anyhow, I changed my MOS to Truck Mechanic. My recruiter tried to talk me out of it, but to no avail. When I exited the Army four years later, I went to work as a Limited Federal Law Enforcement Officer. I was phyiscally very fit and had been a jock in HS, having played Basketball and Football, but I was board out of my mind. When the Clinton administration offered buyout packages, I took it and got into Information Technology. I took to that like a fish in water. Fast forward 30 years, and I'm a Sr Cyber Securty Engineer with a Fortune 5 company making great money.
What does this have to do with anything? Looking back and a lot of learning, I see where my abusive home and my mother's death when I was six had a significant impact on my motivation and other parts of my mental health. I also realized that I was on the autistic spectrum, even though I have not been officially diagnosed. I was one of those no-it-all kids in elementary school and junior high. I learned to temper it, except when I found myself under stress and having low self-esteem, and then that would come out, to show others "how smart I was." Of course, that was counterproductive. At 61, I still struggle with many things that revolve around procrastination and motivation in my personal life. Work is fine, since I do well when I have someone over me, like the Army or an Employer, to keep me moving in the right direction. Personally, though, projects are half done, and I have many, and my desire to finish them is poor or non-existent.
How does this correlate to a higher IQ than average? All I can say is that we are all different, and in my opinion, an IQ number is not all that it's cracked up to be.
“Psychology struggles as a discipline to achieve even close to the same tensile strength in its hypotheses as other scientific fields, like physics or biology”
This is true. It’s because the subject matter of psychology is vastly more complex and difficult than a relatively cut and dried field like physics.
I have an small observation: there are high productivity geniuses (Euler, Von Neumann, Gauss) that look to be super high IQ. There are also low productivity geniuses (Cantor, Einstein, Godel) that probably are not so high IQ.
https://www.theseedsofscience.pub/p/energetic-aliens
While that kind of energy matters, I would say that there was a substancial gap in IQ between Von Neumann and Godel in favor of Von Neumann, while perhaps Godel was more a genius.
I associate IQ to the fast solution of well defined problems, and for that defintion I would say that v Neumann was 160, and a better mathematician as Godel was simply high IQ guy.
Correct, this follows from the technology of the provision
Call it whatever you like, however there are people of markedly higher intelligence than other smart people. An old friend of mine from Montreal learned languages with ease (becoming fluent in German over the course of a summer), stretched the capacity of McGill to handle the depth of his investigations into various sub-fields connected to topology, read hundreds of novels per year (Dostoevsky, not Ludlum), and just generally exhibited a level of raw intelligence far beyond most of the folks I met at MIT.
I don't know why we have a rerun of this post from Erik Hoel. Most of these points are false.
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/some-people-have-iqs-of-160
re: the "Some People Have IQs of 160" essay:
lol. "Let's speculate about individual intelligence of a handful of known famous scientists from the pre-ET era (Goethe, Leibnitz, et. al.) by gleaning the biographical details illustrating their achieved status, and then (somehow) estimate their IQs with retro-matching to one custom-crafted performance exam taken by one cohort of high-IQ testing PhDs, with the variation of results asserted as an extra refinement of IQ measurements at the lead tail, and then chart the metrics as Proof of something something, because numbers something something..."
140...160...180...210... You know, like millimeters. 250. 300!
I mean, really. In terms of the goal of assigning some precise "extra high IQ score" to the undeniably formidable intelligence of Great Minds of Western Civilization who were deprived of the opportunity to actually take any of the tests, on account of being born in an era before the ET Industry existed: what makes that a probative experimental design? More generally, what makes the task sufficiently important to take seriously? It's a counterfactual fantasy exercise.
You really think that IQ tests reliably measure 100% peak mental ability effort, the way Olympic athletic races typically demonstrate all-out aerobic capacity, muscle power, and kinesthetic effort? Anyway, did the top scorer of the elite PhD candidates taking the customized achievement exam back in the 1950s go on to renown, as the next Leibnitz?
I saw your post but given Hoel's response to your post, your ultimately not totally unfavorable TLDR, and the diversity of comments across your blog and his, it seemed worthwhile (at the very least) to share the essay.
His essay has the right conclusion, but the premises are mostly false. Some people have 160 IQ (we can't generally know who, bragging about having them is generally a sign of a problem), historical estimate have some issues (all do), intelligence does mostly linearly relate to success and often superlinearily in the right tail, measurement error goes up away from the mean using fixed-length tests (but we can just use other tests). Not one of his best essays.
I think you're confusing the map with the territory. IQ isn't intelligence; it's a *measure* of intelligence. So to say, "Some people have 160 IQ (we can't generally know who," doesn't really make sense. We can say, "we can be confident that there are some people who, if tested, would score 160," but the whole point here is that that's meaningless.
IQ is the metric, not the measure. IQ is just a shorthand for writing about age relative differences (115 = 1 standard deviation above age peers).
There is no confusion. If we had a perfect IQ test (standard error of measurement = 0 for entire range), there are some people who would attain a score of 160.
We have a very comprehensive program aimed squarely at producing intelligent behavior. It relies 0.0% on any kind of IQ research, because the IQ field has essentially nothing useful to say about the subject of its own investigation. Why are some people good at IQ tests? What do they do to excel at them? How could those techniques inform the AI program? If we ever learn it won't be thanks to anyone who "studies" IQ.
That is why I asked because the test I took said I was in the top 7 percent in the world at problem solving so I wanted to know how close they were
The author's premise struck a chord with me. I have given this subject some thought. From personal experience and observation, I've wondered how vital IQ numbers are. From a personal point of view, folks have always told me I was smart. I know that most parents and grandparents think that about their offspring, but teachers and coaches have made the same comments. I knew I had an excellent memory and could read something and retain it very well. It wasn't until my junior year in high school, while trying to figure out what I would do with my life, that I learned my IQ. My counselor told me and then showed me the record. It was 136. I had no memory of taking such a test, nor did I even know if that number was good. I suspected it was good, but I still asked, and of course, I was told it was great. Fast forward a bit, and I took the ACT; my state didn't require the SAT. I scored a 24 on it. My Engish section was a 13, and other scores were in the 30's so I eneded up with 24, however that's figured out. The thing is, I didn't get good grades in high school. I was called "lazy" by a parent and several teachers.
My problem? Homework. I hated to do homework. I would get an A or B on a test in Physics and other classes but didn't do the homework. I ended up with a C in physics. I went round and round with that teacher, he was one who called me lazy, about what does the test measure? Knowledge of the subject, so why do I need to do the make work homework if I get A's and B's on the tests? Needless to say, I lost that argument but still refused to do the homework. Other classes like History didn't require homework, and I got A's in that. I ended up graduating with a 2.4 GPA. I started attending community college because my GPA was too low for a decent university, but I didn't like college either and dropped out. Fast forward a bit there, and I wanted to join the Army. I took the ASVAB, where my GT score was 124 and QT was 95. I didn't know what any of that was either, but the recruiter said I could do any job in the Army I wanted, so I chose Operating Room Technician, but the ship date was almost a year out. My parental units talked me into being a truck mechanic since I had an aptitude for that. I rebuilt my first engine when I was 15, as Dad worked for Ford in the Scientific Research Center there. He brought home all kinds of things. (Note on test scores. If you look at my supposed IQ score and ACT/ASVAB scores, that score is incorrect; it should be lower, more like 120 something.)
Anyhow, I changed my MOS to Truck Mechanic. My recruiter tried to talk me out of it, but to no avail. When I exited the Army four years later, I went to work as a Limited Federal Law Enforcement Officer. I was phyiscally very fit and had been a jock in HS, having played Basketball and Football, but I was board out of my mind. When the Clinton administration offered buyout packages, I took it and got into Information Technology. I took to that like a fish in water. Fast forward 30 years, and I'm a Sr Cyber Securty Engineer with a Fortune 5 company making great money.
What does this have to do with anything? Looking back and a lot of learning, I see where my abusive home and my mother's death when I was six had a significant impact on my motivation and other parts of my mental health. I also realized that I was on the autistic spectrum, even though I have not been officially diagnosed. I was one of those no-it-all kids in elementary school and junior high. I learned to temper it, except when I found myself under stress and having low self-esteem, and then that would come out, to show others "how smart I was." Of course, that was counterproductive. At 61, I still struggle with many things that revolve around procrastination and motivation in my personal life. Work is fine, since I do well when I have someone over me, like the Army or an Employer, to keep me moving in the right direction. Personally, though, projects are half done, and I have many, and my desire to finish them is poor or non-existent.
How does this correlate to a higher IQ than average? All I can say is that we are all different, and in my opinion, an IQ number is not all that it's cracked up to be.
“Psychology struggles as a discipline to achieve even close to the same tensile strength in its hypotheses as other scientific fields, like physics or biology”
This is true. It’s because the subject matter of psychology is vastly more complex and difficult than a relatively cut and dried field like physics.
I also don't know my birthstone or astrology sign
Voltaire is probably the most overrated intellectual, so choosing him as an example was deliberate, I guess