Kim Ung-yong: The man with the highest IQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-yong

by fogus • 16 years ago

106 120 16 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

zackattack• 16 years ago

Even someone supremely intelligent seems to be bound by human needs of social approval. I wonder what his brain looks like. I wonder if he has superior rates of motor skill acquisition.

barrkel• 16 years ago

I would doubt it. Physical coordination seems to be inversely correlated with signs of intellectual achievement, such as advanced degrees etc. People who live in their head seem awkward in their bodies.

mmaunder2• 16 years ago

This story is kind of sad. You'd think he would stick with Physics and help advance the species by building an engine to travel to the stars or solving the unified field theory. But instead he went into the most earth-bound profession imaginable.

It makes one think that innovation is less about raw IQ and more about curiosity and passion.

mapleoin• 16 years ago

Have you seen Good Will Hunting?

mmaunder2• 16 years ago

Great movie, but it's about child abuse and recovery.

ynniv2• 16 years ago

"While I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president."

That scene couldn't have done a better job describing our last 10 years in the middle east if it had been written after it happened.

wheels• 16 years ago

Well, I think it just confirms that there's no strong coupling between intelligence and ambition, but I don't think that's really new information.

ynniv2• 16 years ago

The greatest physicists have been disgusted by society's use of their work. Maybe a modern genius would decide that a small amount of social change would be better than a vast amount of scientific.

fiaz• 16 years ago

Actually, in a way it is inspiring: he is exercising his own choice to live a life that he loves.

AngryParsley2• 16 years ago

I think that's rather selfish. He's squandering his talents and the rest of humanity is worse-off because of it. There are a lot of problems in the world and they're not going to solve themselves. I think exceptional people have a duty to use their talents to aid humanity.

I don't mean that everyone with an IQ >120 should drop what they're doing an join OXFAM. The greatest help is usually done through research. Also, people aren't robots with infinite motivation. They have to be interested in their work to perform well. That said, he can probably find something he's interested in that also benefits others.

ubercore• 16 years ago

I don't think it's sad at all; I find it kind of comforting. This dude's living the life he wants to lead. Good on him for making a decision that was at odds with the expectations everyone seemed to be layering on him.

starkfist• 16 years ago

Maybe his gigantic IQ helped him to see the limits of his potential contribution to Physics. Related, innovative Civil Engineering is extremely important in densely urban societies like Korea.

scotty795• 16 years ago

Even highest IQ single man can have is small when compared with capacity of few people combined into a good problem solving process.

Two people with IQ 120 can be smarter than one with 210. Not to mention if they all use computers.

Hexstream2• 16 years ago

Sorry but I doubt that, given that I'd much rather have a 2.1x programmer than 2 1.2x programmers.

But of course that's not necessarily correlated with IQ.

blhack• 16 years ago

Maybe he "doesn't want to spend the rest of his life explainin' shit to people".

arethuza• 16 years ago

Maybe he is smart enough to have decided that a star drive or unifield field theory are not possible and decided to do something else that interests him more.

techiferous• 16 years ago

"help advance the species by building an engine to travel to the stars or solving the unified field theory"

But why? Technology is a means, not an end, so unless we've got our ends right, there's no point pouring all our effort into the means.

vinutheraj• 16 years ago

"You are not responsible for other people's expectations about you" - Richard Feynman

DaniFong2• 16 years ago

Speaking as an ex-academic physicist, this is pure snobbery! What's wrong with civil engineering?

david927• 16 years ago

Malcolm Gladwell states in Outliers that there's really no correlation between high IQ and performance. After a certain IQ, I think it's 120, the rest is about emotional maturity and how deeply your understanding goes.

I think that in the future we'll come to realize that IQ is actually a silly metric and that this "understanding" is where it's at. Point of view (understanding) doesn't give you more intelligence (Alan Kay's proverbial 80 IQ points), but instead intelligence can help you to gain understanding.

mynameishere• 16 years ago

I think it's cute that you believe something that Gladwell put forth to the world.

http://studentcareers.learnhub.com/lesson/6941-iq-ranges-of-...

gjm11• 16 years ago

Your link doesn't offer any sort of evidence against Gladwell's contention (which isn't original to Gladwell, and which on the basis of negligible evidence I suspect is an oversimplification but not far from the truth).

In fact, arguably it offers a little evidence against what Gladwell says. If IQ above ~120 makes no difference to performance, and if "career" and "performance" are close enough to make it worth while citing this thing at all, then you ought to see no little difference between {occupations substantially found among people with IQ ~120} and {occuptations substantially found among people with IQ ~130}. Now, look down the 120 and 130 lines of that plot, and notice that you see quite different things in the two instances. (The foregoing is a bit of a simplification, but it'll do. Anyway, I see no way to read the graph as providing evidence that IQ 120 is better than IQ 110, but IQ 130 isn't better than IQ 120, in terms of likely success/performance.)

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

Your graph only shows that IQ matters up to about 120. I agree that Gladwell wildly exaggerates his case, but your statistics don't contradict it at all.

larrywright• 16 years ago

Malcolm is certainly not the first person to put that idea out there, and I think there's some credence to it. I read something else recently (based on a Stanford study) that said that the greatest predictor of success wasn't IQ, but rather self discipline: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_...

Certainly someone with a high IQ AND self discipline could go farther than someone with just one or the other, but IQ by itself is not a meaningful gauge of someone's potential.

sethg2• 16 years ago

The original purpose of IQ tests was not to predict who would go on to the most brilliant career, but to help teachers recognize who would need special help in classes. In that context I think the distinction between 120, 150, and 180 IQ is meaningful.

cperciva• 16 years ago

to help teachers recognize who would need special help in classes

As opposed to SATs, which were designed to determine who was most likely to succeed in post-secondary education (which again has relatively modest correlation with career success).

WilliamLP• 16 years ago

The distinction between 150 and 180 IQ is meaningful? Really? If such a difference is reliably measured, and not easily trained by either person (e.g. by devouring a few books on vocabulary and brain puzzlers in the week before the test), then what is the meaningful difference? Both people are going to be bored out of their mind at school and are going to have to be basically self-reliant for their actual learning process for much of their lives. Feynman supposed had an IQ in the low end of that range, and a given person at the higher end probably isn't as smart in any real sense as Feynman was. Whatever the difference is there, it isn't IQ.

tokenadult3• 16 years ago

The distinction between 150 (barely recognizable as a validated score on current tests) and 180 (NOT a validated score on any test, ever) is less meaningful than many suppose:

"Put into the context of the psychometric movement as a whole, it is clear that positive extreme of the IQ distribution is not as different from other IQ levels as might have been expected. . . . While 180 IQ suggests the ability to do academic work with relative ease, it does not signify a qualitatively different organization of mind. It also does not suggest the presence of ‘genius’ in its common-sense meaning, i.e. transcendent achievement in some field. For these kinds of phenomena, IQ seems at best a crude predictor. For anything more, we will have to look to traditions other than the psychometric and to variables other than IQ."

Feldman, David (1984). A Follow-up of Subjects Scoring above 180 IQ in Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius. Exceptional Children, 50, 6, 518-523.

IQ scores, especially in childhood, vary over the course of a test-taker’s life, sometimes varying radically. Deviation IQ scoring was originally developed to make for more stability of scores over the course of childhood. Nonetheless, deviation IQs for children can also change considerably over the course of childhood (Pinneau 1961; Truch 1993, page 78; Howe 1998; Deary 2000, table 1.3). "Correlation studies of test scores provide actuarial data, applicable to group predictions. . . . Studies of individuals, on the other hand, may reveal large upward or downward shifts in test scores." (Anastasi & Urbina 1997 p. 326).

For example, young people in the famous Lewis Terman longitudinal Genetic Studies of Genius (initial n=1,444 with n=643 in main study group) when tested at high school age (n=503) were found to have dropped 9 IQ points on average in Stanford-Binet IQ. More than two dozen children dropped by 15 IQ points and six by 25 points or more. Parents of those children reported no changes in their children or even that their children were getting brighter (Shurkin 1992, pp. 89-90). Terman observed a similar drop in IQ scores in his study group upon adult IQ testing (Shurkin 1992, pp. 147-150). Samuel R. Pinneau conducted a thorough review of the Berkeley Growth Study (1928-1946; initial n=61, n after eighteen years =40). Alice Moriarty was a Ph.D. researcher at the Menninger Foundation and describes in her book (1966) a number of case studies of longitudinal observations of children's IQ. She observed several subjects whose childhood IQ varied markedly over the course of childhood, and develops hypotheses about why those IQ changes occurred. Anastasi and Urbina (1997, p. 328) point out that childhood IQ scores are poorest at predicting subsequent IQ scores when taken at preschool age. Change in scores over the course of childhood shows that there are powerful environmental effects on IQ (Anastasi & Urbina 1997, p. 327) or perhaps that IQ scores in childhood are not reliable estimates of a child’s scholastic ability.

REFERENCES

Anastasi, Anne & Urbina, Susana (1997). Psychological Testing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Deary, Ian J. (2000) Looking Down on Human Intelligence: From Psychometrics to the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Howe, Michael J. A. (1998). Can IQ Change?. The Psychologist, February 1998 pages 69-72.

Moriarty, Alice E. (1966). Constancy and IQ Change: A Clinical View of Relationships between Tested IQ and Personality. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Pinneau, Samuel R. (1961). Changes in Intelligence Quotient Infancy to Maturity: New Insights from the Berkeley Growth Study with Implications for the Stanford-Binet Scales and Applications to Professional Practice. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.

Truch, Steve (1993). The WISC-III(R) Companion: A Guide to Interpretation and Educational Intervention. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

dabent• 16 years ago

One of my psychology professors pointed out that income and IQ have a positive, but far from perfect correlation. He said we all could probably think of people who aren't the sharpest who've made great money. He also pointed out that those with high IQs often seek careers they think will be intellectually challenging, but not the most financially rewarding ... like becoming professors.

This also goes to show how much determination matters for a startup. Yes, being bright matters, but being determined matters more.

pw0ncakes15• 16 years ago

An uglier aspect of it is this: although people with 150+ IQs, contrary to the nerd stereotype, usually get along fine socially, they'll virtually never be selected as leaders, and always be outsiders. People usually aren't comfortable with a leader who is that smart.

We evolved in small tribal groups of 20 individuals per generation, so we look to the 90th-95th percentile (6'1, 120 IQ) for leadership, but extremes and "giants" frighten us. 99.5+ percentile is a threat-- possibly some other hominid that is going to eat us.

allenp2• 16 years ago

"On November 2, 1967, at age 4, he solved an advanced stochastic differential equation."

... and then gets a PhD in physics at age 16. Although the IQ score might be outdated/irrelevant - there is something special about this man and if we don't strive to quantify it we won't be able to reliably reproduce it.

sukuriant• 16 years ago

I'm somewhat confused. What does being able to label something have to do with reproducing it?

I may be able to label the heart in a person, or perhaps distinguish an exceptional sonata from something that isn't, but that doesn't mean that I can create a hart, or play that song.

secret• 16 years ago

I sent that quote to everyone in my stochastic calculus class. I couldn't be the only to feel that dumb today!

pw0ncakes15• 16 years ago

After a certain IQ, I think it's 120, the rest is about emotional maturity and how deeply your understanding goes.

I know you don't mean it this way, but this comes off as very smug. There are lots of reasons why most very-high-IQ people (170+) seem to underperform their potential-- some good, some bad-- but they're a lot more complex than a lack of emotional maturity and innate social acumen.

aik• 16 years ago

Lacking "emotional maturity" doesn't necessitate simplistic. Would you mind expounding upon what other factors there are?

Daniel_Newby• 16 years ago

"... there's really no correlation between high IQ and performance. After a certain IQ, I think it's 120, the rest is about emotional maturity and how deeply your understanding goes."

Carl Friedrich Gauss. General life "performance" at popularity and piling up money may (may) top out at 120, but there are some jobs where performance means being able to see through a brick wall of symbols like it is a window pane.

pw0ncakes15• 16 years ago

Any person with an IQ of 120 can learn and reproduce Euclid's proof of the infinitude of primes, especially because most educated people have familiarity with the most elementary number theory concepts (divisibility, primality).

Less than 1/10,000 of people with IQ > 120 could have come up with it at that time, keeping in mind that the only language one had to express numbers was geometry-- no algebra or number theory existed as we think of them today. Of course, whether this rare ingenuity shows up on an IQ test is an open question.

The same holds for something like Godel's theorem. I'm starting to understand it-- he's encoding a Lisp in number theory-- but there's no way I could have come up with it in 1931.

duhprey• 16 years ago

For some reason I want to read heavily between the lines of the wikipedia summary, and I find it incredibly sad. I mean in the first place my knee jerk reaction is to equivocate "I'm still good enough, even if I didn't solve diffeq problems at 6. My son's okay even if he still doesn't read at the age of 4."

But I don't want to imagine the kind of expectation people put on this kid (when he was a kid). Cynically, I suppose as I read I thought "oh yeah what's he done now? We still have cancer and no unified field theory. Does P=NP?! huh?" and yet under that was the expectation "well this guy should be curing cancer and resolving open problems!"

No wonder he escaped to something ordinary (poor Civil Engineers, though, what a bad rap that is ... my profession is the most ordinary!) People haven't changed much since the dark ages (or before). They still expect miracles and magic to cure their woes, they just expect it now from Science.

It agrees with me that accomplishment comes after the 120 IQ...heck I'm barely above the marker.. shwoo. But it comes in increments. It comes in mostly in pieces we have to put together. Einstein didn't make the world a better place single-handedly, it was the engineers who came after and created GPS (for instance) that did it. There's no reason this guy should have created miracles with his IQ, we probably don't have enough of the base research to solve that (whichever) problem, yet.

Instead, he's improved the world a bit (quite a bit in the sector of civil engineering apparently). Honestly, the universe is miracle enough. The fact that we can make it slightly better by our actions and increase joy in the miracle of existence at all is a good thing. Some people do a better job of that with much smaller IQs.

tomlin• 16 years ago

I tend to agree. The fact that your IQ metric can be swayed by lack of sleep, bad experience in the day of test, etc. make it an inaccurate way to measure intelligence precisely.

jexe• 16 years ago

After a certain IQ, I think it's 120, the rest is about emotional maturity and how deeply your understanding goes.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of people like this. He may not be the largest "producer" or whatever your personal metric for being successful is, but even solving a small problem that you or I won't ever be able to will have a unique, lasting, permanent effect on the world.

mikecane2• 16 years ago

And what about Christopher Langan?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan

tokenadult3• 16 years ago

Neither has a validated IQ score. NO ONE with an IQ score reported to be above 160 has a validated IQ score. IQ test scores in that range have never been properly validated, on any IQ test of any era.

It is well known that reliability of IQ tests is at its worst at the highest level of IQ scores. The author of the Stanford-Binet form L-M (the test that Marilyn vos Savant, among others, took to get a sky-high unvalidated score) was among the first to say so:

"The reader should not lose sight of the fact that a test with even a high reliability yields scores which have an appreciable probable error. The probable error in terms of mental age is of course larger with older than with young children because of the increasing spread of mental age as we go from younger to older groups. For this reason it has been customary to express the P.E. [probable error] of a Binet score in terms of I.Q., since the spread of Binet I.Q.'s is fairly constant from age to age. However, when our correlation arrays [between Form L and Form M] were plotted for separate age groups they were all discovered to be distinctly fan-shaped. Figure 3

http://learninfreedom.org/Terman%201937%20Figure%203.gif

is typical of the arrays at every age level.

"From Figure 3 it becomes clear that the probable error of an I.Q. score is not a constant amount, but a variable which increases as I.Q. increases. It has frequently been noted in the literature that gifted subjects show greater I.Q. fluctuation than do clinical cases with low I.Q.'s . . . . we now see that this trend is inherent in the I.Q. technique itself, and might have been predicted on logical grounds." (Terman & Merrill, 1937, p. 44)

To validate an IQ test (a test that purports to estimate "general intelligence"), one must first reach a consensus among test designers about some sign of intelligence that is detectable outside the testing room. Over the years, psychologists have proposed various behavioral characteristics of human beings as signs that those human beings are "intelligent," with entering challenging, high-income occupations that require a lot of higher schooling being one criterion proposed for adult IQ tests, and being precocious in school and having good grades and good teacher ratings being one criterion that is proposed for child IQ tests.

One finds a sample of persons to take a new brand of test in its norming administration, and rates those persons by external criteria of "intelligence," weighting those criteria by consensus, and then checks the rank-order correlation between the ranking of the test-takers yielded by the IQ test and the ranking of the test-takers yielded by the validation criteria. There will NEVER be a perfect ("1.0") correlation between the test and the validation criterion, just as there is never a perfect correlation between IQ scores on one occasion and IQ scores on another occasion on the same brand of IQ test by the same group of test-takers.

There is enough play in the joints in both IQ test scoring (whatever the brand of test) and ranking people by other validation criteria (whatever they are), that strictly speaking one can't say that there is any all-time, universally significant ranking of human beings by intelligence. But a close-enough-for-government-work validation study would show an IQ test having correlations above .80, and perhaps even above .90, in comparison with previous brands of IQ tests, or in comparison with subsets of its own item content, or in comparison with some well regarded external validation criterion.

For reasons mentioned above, there is especially little reliability, and hence especially little validity, for IQ scores far above the population mean, and thus it's very hard to devise a validation criterion that would sort, say, members of Mensa

http://www.mensa.org/

or members of the Study of Exceptional Talent

http://cty.jhu.edu/set/index.html

or members of the Davidson Young Scholars program

http://www.davidsongifted.org/youngscholars/

into their "true" rank order by IQ, not to mention that IQ scores for the same individual can and do change over the course of life.

Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of high-IQ elementary-age pupils showed that many of those young people did not qualify as "gifted" on a subsequent test that Terman gave them at high school age. But he kept them in the study group anyway.

Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.

An especially odd result of the Terman study is that Terman tested and rejected for inclusion in his study two children whose IQ scores were below his cut-off line who later went on to win Nobel prizes: William Shockley, who co-invented the transistor, and physicist Luis Alvarez. None of the children included in the study ever won a Nobel prize. The book by Shurkin I have just cited here is a good corrective on many misconceptions about IQ, and has an excellent section on attempts by one of Terman's study associates to estimate--by extremely dubious methods that have never been validated--the IQ scores of historical persons.

P.S. As Stephen Hawking says about IQ:

"Q: What is your I.Q.?

"A: I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12QUESTIONS.html

mikecane2• 16 years ago

Like others, I think it's sad that both of these people are not contributing more and I find their trajectories to be a waste. Maybe that's my jealousy speaking. But I know if I was suddenly gifted with the ease of learning and grasping of concepts both of them have, I'd do a lot with that.

TheSOB88• 16 years ago

That English quote at the end seems pretty non-fluent to me (the "but" seems unnatural). I wonder how much of his other achievements are exaggeration.

WingForward• 16 years ago

The quote was originally in Korean. It could be a translation problem, or a cultural issue (conflict avoidance?).

electromagnetic• 16 years ago

You're applying your own regional knowledge of English to someone else's. I'm English and I've worked as a writer and I've done copy-editing, and that 'but' has every right to be there, even if it hurts the flow of the sentence. For anyone growing up in an English speaking country we all know that a pause readily means 'but', especially if it was a longer pause.

As it's a translation of something he said, the issue here is the integrity of the translator not of the man himself. A good translator would have dropped the but, because he likely never used it when he spoke in Korean.

I've spent a lot of time in France, and even though I'm nowhere near fluent I still manage to speak the slang. By spending time in the country and amongst the people I learnt all the social norms for speaking that I never learnt in a high school class. There's a vast difference in usage between Bonsoir and Bonne nuit, the latter is literally used exclusively in the meaning "goodnight, I won't see you again today". Similarly I've seen many a confused tourist when they were greeted with Salut "bye" as a greeting.

Again from several vacations in Spain and the Spanish islands, I rarely ever heard Gracias "Thank you", they all use Graci "thanks", again despite everything I was taught of Spanish it wasn't right to how people actually speak.

There's a big difference between being fluent in a language, and being fluent in a dialect. Dialects typically teach us how to use English improperly, mainly because 90% of our interactions are informal. However almost every English speaking person would remove their dialect in the instance if they were brought in front of a world leader. I know for people receiving Knighthoods from the queen they have to instruct people on how to pronounce "ma'am" (pronounced mam) as they try to pronounce it 'properly' and in doing so pronounce it wrong, which apparently bugs the Queen herself as she's been noted for correcting people on it too.

holdenc• 16 years ago

Personal theory: stardom comes during childhood or adulthood, but rarely both.

Hexstream2• 16 years ago

First time ever I'm relieved to have been a loser in childhood.

Incidentally, I'm starting to kick some serious butt. Get ready, World, here I come!

maxklein• 16 years ago

The most intelligent people are rarely thick skinned. And to be and stay famous, you have to be pretty thick skinned.

waterlesscloud2• 16 years ago

Hollywood disagrees.

sethg2• 16 years ago

Assuming that the IQ test that Kim took was the kind that uses 16 points per standard deviation (some, IIRC, use 15), that puts him almost seven standard deviations above the mean. It seems to me that once you get above five standard deviations (i.e., the top 99.9999% of the population), tests of “general intelligence” aren’t really measuring anything more than the ability to max out whatever subtests that particular test author chose to include.

aubergene• 16 years ago

just thinking the same thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Post_War_...

scotty795• 16 years ago

If you want to make yourself feel better go and pass Mensa entry test. As a programmer you are already highly advantaged by knowing such concepts as xor an other bitwise operations and knowing how to animate a moving point (erase it and draw it again some distance away in each frame). There are puzzles based on these concepts.

I took that test once and had all answers correct, which means I have IQ at least 156 (Binet scale) but might be much higher since I still had almost 30 minutes left.

cabalamat• 16 years ago

I think the Mensa tests are made artificially easy, since they want people to pay trhem money.

It's quite easy for people to improve their IQ scores by practisingf the questions. I once took an IQ test from a book (I think it was by Eysenck) and then did another test from the same book a few days later. On the second test I scored 27 points higher, so by definition my IQ was 27 points higher; I doubt if I was any cleverer in any meaningful way.

I suspect that part of the Flynn effect (that IQ scores have been increasing over time) is due to people being more familiar with those sorts of puzzles.

Having said all that, I suspect that being able to learn from experience (and therefore get higher scores on similar tests) is a pretty large factor in intelligence.

huherto2• 16 years ago

"I was not a loser, but I just wanted to live ordinarily" Perhaps this is the best proof of his extraordinary intelligence.

jraynor• 16 years ago

I would be very interested in reading comments elaborating on this stance by people that agree with it, since my view is a bit different.

In the interest of human progress, I would prefer that people with great ability are encouraged by society and their peers (which I assume the great minds at HN are likely to be among). I mean this in terms of what I see should be encouraged and done so through morals and not laws (e.g. in no way promote the violation of a person's freedom or liberty).

python1235• 16 years ago

Quit trying to suck up to the people on here. They are not talented people. This would be obvious to you if you had any talent at all. These people are mostly 30-some career software engineers who fantasize about becoming entrepreneurs and like thinking of themselves as hackers even though they lack the skills to justify that term. There's some good domain technical knowledge here, but very little actual intelligence. Just read any math links (everybody upvotes to look good, but nobody comments because they don't really understand - or they write really dumb comments).

If you can read Outliers and not understand the horrible science and generalizations behind it then you are an idiot. 120 IQ?? Are you kidding me? Maybe it makes you feel better because you only have a 120 IQ, but that precludes you from achieving anything meaningful in math and science. High IQ does not mean you will be a high achiever, but only those with exception IQ's are able to achieve in certain fields.

This is the problem with America. This is why America will lose to China in the next decades. We are trained to feel better about ourselves be devaluing those with superior intellect and ability.

metamemetics• 16 years ago

Having a high IQ can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Sometimes the pressure is too much and you want to try and stop thinking and just observe.

kls2• 16 years ago

--I would prefer that people with great ability are encouraged by society and their peers

While in concept it is a great idea, the realities are usually much harder for the exceptional gifted. I have a really good friend with aspergers syndrome who has as slightly higher IQ (190's) than mine. He is very well liked but his perception of reality is quite distorted due to his hindrance, unfortunately high IQ is many times coupled with some other form of mental or physical impairment, there are a lot of theories as to why this is, but sufficient to say not all of them are a joy. My point being these impairments are usually the target of ridicule at formative points in an intelligent persons life and some times bitters them from the pursuit of their potential and in extreme cases like my friend bitters them from helping better mankind at all.

huherto2• 16 years ago

Being the smartest man in world(or at least) can be a big burden. Can you imagine that? Every body expecting you too be perfect; every little sentence you make analyzed; everybody trying to see how smart you really are; everybody trying to prove that they are smarter than you; everybody criticizing that you haven't contributed more. Being the smarter man in the world was given to you; you didn't ask for it. Besides, there are plenty of things that are important, and intelligence should be also about living a full filling life.

DaniFong2• 16 years ago

There are many happy ways to live, but to each their own.

I wrote an essay on my experience, a bit of a similar topic.

http://daniellefong.com/2008/05/15/advice-to-the-bright-and-...

wallflower• 16 years ago

Terman's Kids (the most famous longitudinal study of IQ and life achievement).

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2000/julaug/arti...

pw0ncakes15• 16 years ago

I wonder if he's going to tell us to put toilet water on the crops, instead of Brawndo.

gwern2• 16 years ago

Why would he do that? Brawndo has what plants crave.

Vicarious• 16 years ago

Is it possible that the higher the IQ is at birth the faster the brain degenerates? Not just from a built-in process but also from stress due to lack of social acceptance. This algernon process could imply that by 25, a physics PhD at 16 can only manage civil engineering.

koenigdavidmj• 16 years ago

I'm not sure that I would be so willing to call a guy who's published 90-ish papers in CE a dummy.

aswanson• 16 years ago

Similar to the story of William Sidis.

JeffJenkins• 16 years ago

Is there any evidence to verify the claims in that article aside from his IQ? This is all very suspicious looking, and I couldn't find anything about the timing of the Phd he got or that he worked for NASA.

sausagefeet• 16 years ago

I agree, I remain skeptical of all those [citation needed]'s. William James Sidis > * still.

mburney• 16 years ago

He was writing poems and showing an aptitude for languages at a very early age -- I wonder why as a child he was pushed into only doing physics rather than a wide variety of studies? We seem to believe that since physics is the most difficult subject to master, that means the most intelligent people have to do physics. That is pretty poor reasoning; I would think people with higher IQs may be better off as polymaths with a wide exposure to arts AND the sciences (and engineering).

Goethe, for example, had a very high IQ and even though he wrote about science, his greatest contribution to humanity was his literature.

mquander3• 16 years ago

What do you mean, he was "pushed into only doing physics?" Are you reading another source? In the Wikipedia article, it doesn't imply that he was pushed, and it doesn't imply that he gave up other pursuits.

elblanco• 16 years ago

IQ is a measure of capacity, not a measure of the current amount.

IQ is a bucket. Even if you have a 5 gallon bucket, you can still only put 1 gallon of stuff in it.

Kim Ung-yong: The man with the highest IQ

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