210 IQ Is Not Enough

https://taylor.town/iq-not-enough

by surprisetalk • 8 months ago

177 279 8 months ago

taylor.town

wiz21c• 8 months ago

FTA:

Instead of competing in real games,

Define real games.

airstrike3• 8 months ago

War.

Aperocky7• 8 months ago

There are no such thing as 210 IQ.

It correlates to 7.3 sigma, meanwhile 7-sigma event has a probability of approximately 1 in 390 billion. We only have 8 billion humans on Earth.

These absurd claims about IQ is almost evidence that the claimant are nowhere close. For starters, any IQ tests are not going to be normalized to that range because it is impossible to normalize to that range as there are 0 realistic samples.

paulddraper2• 8 months ago

That assumes a normal distribution.

Aperocky7• 8 months ago

There is no assumption, that is the definition of IQ.

Is human intelligence a normal distribution? Probably not. But IQ is extrapolated as such, and probably useless anyway. Which make absurd claims like this even more laughable.

airstrike3• 8 months ago

I thought IQ was specifically designed to be normally distributed?

volkk3• 8 months ago

It correlates to 7.3 sigma, meanwhile 7-sigma event has a probability of approximately 1 in 390 billion. We only have 8 billion humans on Earth.

why can't you use historical population? like, the total amount of humans that ever existed? rough google shows around 100billion. seems legit that in the history of humanity, we could pop out someone so intelligent? But I do agree that IQ is probably a decent signal but entirely meaningless as sole measurement.

JohnFen2• 8 months ago

The other problem with IQ is that it's not a fixed scale, so you can't really compare IQ scores across time. An IQ of 100 is average by definition. Even if the average "intelligence" (or whatever IQ measures, because it doesn't seem to be intelligence as people think of intelligence) rises or falls over time, that average will always be a 100 IQ.

Aperocky7• 8 months ago

That one person in our entire history somehow got tested accurately (is that even possible? there isn't any sense or point for any IQ test to even go into that range, because what would you be baselining and verifying the test against?) and is advertising about it? Count me skeptical.

airstrike3• 8 months ago

We only have 8 billion people on Earth _today_. Over 100 billion have lived through history, they say.

Also just because it's statistically unlikely doesn't mean it can't happen.

All else being equal, the very first human is just as likely to have had 210 IQ as the one born this morning.

alternatex• 8 months ago

How can person have 210 IQ in isolation? The whole points system is based on standard deviation. What is this first person's IQ deviating from?

mr_mitm• 8 months ago

It's more likely that someone screwed up on the test, or that he cheated somehow. Maybe he's articulate and good at solving logic puzzles, but his Wikipedia article clearly shows that the guy has a screw loose.

Aperocky7• 8 months ago

You can solve every one of the logic puzzles and it should not give you any score that high, unless it's a specifically designed bogus test to make certain person look and feel good.

It's like saying your regular thermometer returned a reading of 1000C, sure buddy.

marginalia_nu3• 8 months ago

That's not really how statistics works.

It is not impossible to roll two sixes on a single roll of two dies because it is more likely you won't.

Aperocky7• 8 months ago

It's not impossible, but improbable.

nonethewiser4• 8 months ago

That's right. If the event has a 1 in 390B chance, and there are 8B tries, you would expect to observe the event 2% of the time you conduct the 8B tries. So if you did 8B tries 50 times you would expect it to happen once. And its something higher than 8B - current population isn't the correct sample size.

jcranmer• 8 months ago

IQ isn't some intrinsic property that we can measure that has a probability distribution. It's something we construct to have a specific probability distribution. Essentially, you have >145 IQ not because 0.1% people happen to have that high of an IQ but because we define 145 IQ to be the cutoff between the smartest 0.1% of the population and the dumbest 99.9%.

As a consequence, an IQ above ~3 standard deviations is basically unmeasurable with more tests, and by 6 standard deviations I'm not sure is even possible to theoretically construct since I don't think what it's trying to measure can be meaningfully defined to discriminate the order of just 8 people on the entire planet.

smilliken• 8 months ago

Practically speaking, it's impossible to roll 6 one hundred times in a row on fair dice. Not technically impossible, but we each get to calibrate our skepticism based on how far out the probabilities are.

In this case we can be sure the dice aren't fair because there's significant motivation for them not to be, or at least it's easy to imagine a manufacturing defect in the dice.

kbelder• 8 months ago

It's absolutely possible, but it means that you need a lot of good evidence for a 210 IQ to outweigh the odds that the score is a mistake or a lie.

Viliam12345• 8 months ago

Everyone who actually studied psychometrics has to upvote this.

(Which is why it stays at the bottom of the HN comment thread.)

827a4• 8 months ago

The "world's smartest man" very recently predicted on X that Bitcoin would hit $220k by the end of the year. [1]

Here's the thing: IQ probably doesn't mean much of anything. But it is one of only a handful of ways we have to benchmark intelligence. The training of AI systems critically requires benchmarks to understand gain/loss in training and determine if minute changes in the system is actually winging more intelligence out of that giant matrix of numbers.

What I deeply believe is: We're never going to invent superintelligence, not because its impossible for computers to achieve, but because we don't even know what intelligence is.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-smartest-man-predicts-b...

__s• 8 months ago

tbf you started with what intelligence is in rejecting their claim of being the smartest: ability to predict the future

Levitz• 8 months ago

This isn't even that. If I'm a person others may take as a reference and I hold Bitcoin, it is in my interest to publicly state that Bitcoin is going to increase in value, because that in itself makes it increase in value and it's good for me.

827a4• 8 months ago

True: A shadow take that I have been noodling on is that "ability to correctly predict the future" is actually the only true characteristic of intelligence. All other things we might label as intellect are either expressions of that, or something different that is more accurately categorized under a different label.

stavros2• 8 months ago

As World's Highest IQ Record Holder, I expect #BITCOIN is going to $220,000 in the next 45 days.
I will use 100% of my Bitcoin profits to build churches for Jesus Christ in every nation.
“For with God nothing shall be impossible.” (Luke 1:37)

Something tells me maybe he doesn't actually have an IQ of 276.

HappySweeney• 8 months ago

Don't legitimate IQ tests top out at 160 for adults?

jagged-chisel• 8 months ago

You’re assuming he’s not playing at the Next Level(R)

maeln• 8 months ago

While it seems unlikely, I wouldn't find it impossible (edit: learning more about IQ score, yeah 276 is definitly BS). You can be "intelligent" as in very good at solving logic puzzle and math problem, and the most obtuse and subjectively dumb person when it comes to anything else. It might be less likely but definitely happened. I have met people working in very advanced field having the perspective and reflection of a middle schooler on politics, social challenges, etc. Somewhere also clearly blinded by their own capacity in own field and thought that it would absolutely transfer to other field and were talking with authority while anybody in the room with knowledge could smell the BS from miles away.

lnxg33k1• 8 months ago

“What about second breakfast?” (Tolkien 27:3)

fn-mote2• 8 months ago

Something tells me maybe he doesn't actually have an IQ of 276.

Con artist skill of 276, maybe.

Aunche• 8 months ago

Every 15 iq points makes you 1 standard deviation above the median. That means if you legitimately have an IQ of 276, you would 1 in 2.3 * 10^31, which is many orders of magnitude greater than the number of humans in history.

herval2• 8 months ago

IQ probably doesn't mean much of anything. But it is one of only a handful of ways we have to benchmark intelligence.

IQ means a lot of things (higher IQ people are measurably better at making associations and generating original ideas, are more perceptive, learn faster, have better spatial awareness).

It doesn't give them the power to predict the future.

Ekaros• 8 months ago

It somewhat indicates better pattern recognition so I might give them advantage on predicting things in general. Not that it will make them prophets or oracles. But Prediction from higher IQ person is more likely to be correct. Not that world cannot be illogical and go against those predictions.

codingdave• 8 months ago

It is less meaningful than that. It identifies who does well at tests for those things. That is not the same thing as being "better" at such things, it often just means "faster". IQ tests are also notorious for cultural bias. In particular with the word associations, they often just test for "I'm a white American kid who grew up in private schools."

And I say this as one of the white amercian kids who did great on those tests. My scores are high, but they are not meaningful.

greener_grass• 8 months ago

How would you measure these?

- making associations

- generating original ideas

- more perceptive

...

"spatial awareness" I can see though

voidhorse3• 8 months ago

Exactly. We don't have a good definition of intelligence and I don't think we ever will. Like all social concepts, it is highly dependent on the needs, goals, and values of the human societies that define it, and so it is impossible to come up with a universal definition. If your needs don't align with the needs an AI has been trained to meet, you are not going to find it very intelligent of helpful for meeting those needs.

programjames14• 8 months ago

You're quite literally babbling. If a word has no good definition, it ceases to be a word. All you really mean is you use the word "intelligence" very loosely, without really knowing what you mean when you use it. You just use it to point at a concept that's vague in your head. That does not mean you could not make that concept more precise, if you felt inclined to be more introspective. It also does not mean that the precise idea I think of when I use the word "intelligence" is the same as your idea. But they'll often be close enough or even equivalent mathematically, as long as we both have precise definitions in mind.

raincole• 8 months ago

his self-reported IQ of 276

In other words, this news is a completely irrelevant piece of information.

dragonwriter• 8 months ago

It's relevant, just not in terms of assessing good actual IQ.

r_lee• 8 months ago

This guy is a fraud, he isn't measured by any legit institute, only by some random one which stated he is intelligent and he claims he was measured at 276 IQ.

He's low-key just trolling at this point, aaying he wants asylum in the US and making videos about how jesus/God is real with some scientific methods etc.

Just go check out his YouTube you'll see what I'm talking about.

programjames14• 8 months ago

What I deeply believe is: We're never going to invent superintelligence, not because its impossible for computers to achieve, but because we don't even know what intelligence is.

Speak for yourself, not all of humanity. There are plenty of rigorous, mostly equivalent definitions for intelligence: The ability to find short programs that explain phenomena (compression). The capability to figure out how to do things (RL). Maximizing discounted future entropy (freedom). I hate how stupid people propagate this lie that we don't know what intelligence is, just because they lack it. It's quite convenient, because how can they be shown to lack intelligence when the word isn't even defined!

axxto3• 8 months ago

How do you measure the capacity for improvisational comedy? How do you measure a talent for telling convincing lies? How do you measure someone's capacity for innovating in a narrative medium? How do you measure someone's ability for psychological insight and a theory of self? How do you measure someone's capacity for understanding irony or picking up subtle social cues? Or for formulating effective metaphors and analogies, or boiling down concepts eloquently? How about for mediating complex, multifaceted interpersonal conflicts effectively? How do you measure someone's capacity for empathy, which necessarily involves incredibly complex simulations and mental models of other people's minds?

Do you think excelling in any of these doesn't require intelligence? You sound like you consider yourself quite intelligent, so are you excellent at all of them? No? How come?

Can you tell me which part of an IQ test or your "rigorous, moslty equivalent definitions for intelligence" capture any of them?

  > I hate how stupid people propagate this lie that we don't know what intelligence is, just because they lack it. It's quite convenient, because how can they be shown to lack intelligence when the word isn't even defined!

How's this: "I hate how stupid people propagate this lie that we know what intelligence is, just because they do well within the narrow definition that they made up. It's quite convenient, because how can they be shown to lack intelligence when their definition of it fits their strengths and excludes their weaknesses!"

soiltype6• 8 months ago

Honestly not sure if this is a bit, it's so on-the-nose... Taking it at face value, you are literally claiming to know precisely what intelligence is? You would be the first to know if so. You should probably publish quickly before someone steals your definition!

In your post is demonstrated one of the deep mysteries of intelligence: How can a smart person make such a dumb assertion? (I'll give a hint: consider that "intelligence" is not a single axis)

jdefr89• 8 months ago

Ok.. Let’s ask a different question. Assuming development of super-intelligence is possible.. How do you measure it? What criteria satisfies the “this is super intelligence”? You honestly sound like most pseudo-intellectuals I hear discussing this very topic..: Ironic how you think you’re the brilliant one and it’s others who are stupid… Actually not really ironic a fool doesn’t know he is a fool.

827a4• 8 months ago

If you want to have a discussion in good faith, then you need to work on your rhetoric. People are unlikely to want to engage with you, here or in your real life, if you regularly talk like that. Seek help.

Arch-TK2• 8 months ago

This is a weird argument.

First off, we don't have a good way to actually measure an individual's intelligence. IQ is actually meant to correlate with g which is a hidden factor we're trying to measure. IQ tests are good insofar as you look at the results of them from the perspective of a population. In these cases individual variation in how well it correlates smooths out. We design IQ tests and normalise IQ scores such that across time and over the course of many studies these tests appear to correlate with this hidden g factor. Moreover, anything below 70 and above 130 is difficult to measure accurately, IQ is benchmarked such that it has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. Below 70 and above 130 is outside of two standard deviations.

So, in summary, IQ is not a direct measure of intelligence. What you're doing here is pointing at some random guy who allegedly scored high on an IQ test and saying: "Look at how dumb that guy is. We must be really bad at testing."

But to say we don't know what intelligence is, is silly, since we are the ones defining that word. At least in this sense. And the definition we have come up with is grounded in pragmatism. The point of the whole field of research is to come up with and keep clarifying a useful definition.

Worth also noting that you can study for an IQ test which will produce an even less correlated score. The whole design and point of IQ tests is done with the idea of testing your ability to come up with solutions to puzzles on the spot.

827a4• 8 months ago

My point is to state that one of two things must be true: Either IQ does not really measure Intelligence, or Intelligence (being the thing IQ measures or correlates to) isn't much of a desirable quality for agentic systems to have. I suspect its a mix. The people on the upper end of the IQ spectrum tend to lead wholly uninspiring lives; the 276 guy isn't the only example, fraud or not, there's a couple university professors with relatively average publishing history, a couple suicides, a couple wacko cult leaders, a couple self-help gurus... and the goat, Terrance Tao, he's up there, but its interesting how poorly the measure correlates with anything we'd describe as "success".

The apologists enter the chat and state "well, its because they're frauds or they're gaming the system" without an ounce of recognition that this is exactly what we're designing AI systems to do: Cheat the test. If you expect being able to pass intelligence evals as being a way to grow intelligence, well, I suspect that will work out just about as well as IQ tests do for identifying individuals capable of things like highly creative invention.

malfist• 8 months ago

Perhaps 210 IQ isn't enough because IQ isn't a meaningful measurement.

FrustratedMonky2• 8 months ago

That is the point, isn't it?

voidhorse3• 8 months ago

The gauge I use for intelligence is how much stock a person puts into an IQ test.

In my view, people who are able to question the legitimacy or applicability of IQ as a general measure of "intelligence", an idea that is highly contextual, are probably intelligent. They are at least smart enough to question social conceptions and to recognize the contingent nature of such conceptions. People who uncritically view IQ as some kind of unassailable proof of "intelligence" may be good at solving certain classes of known problems but, I really am not surprised that they may lack the imagination to contribute meaningful things to society, as a blind faith in a measure developed by fallible human beings is indicative of limited thinking /creativity.

Obviously someone can score well on an IQ test and question its validity as a signifier of intelligence, just as one can score poorly and place a strong degree of faith in it—but the way someone approaches it, in either case, is a very telling indicator of their own intellectual biases and limitations.

mrweasel• 8 months ago

Some years ago some TV show found presumably "the smartest man in Denmark". The title is disputed, obviously. Turns out he's basically some redneck type person who tinkers in his workshop, never held a job, just sells inventions/solutions to people who comes around asking for them. He put no value on IQ, but admitted that it might be what allows him do make a small living of his tinkering.

Then there's my wife's co-worker, member of Mensa and self-proclaimed intelligent person. She's barely functional in normal society, completely locked in a "I'm smart, so I'm right" mentality. Even if she may be technically correct, she completely fails to understand that rules might be wrong or needs to be bent to make society work. Yet somehow she also manages to overthink things, needlessly complicating things and designs procedures that requires a higher than average IQ to understand and gets upset when those procedures aren't followed. You'd think that smart people would design simpler and easier solutions, but apparently that's not a given.

bewo001• 8 months ago

IQ tests are a bit absurd if one looks at the changing definitions of intelligence over the past century.

Someone in the 1920s/30s would call the ability to solve equations or play chess well as signs of high intelligence. Not so long ago, translation of natural languages was considered a task requiring a good level of intelligence.

Each progress in AI changes the definition of intelligence as we realize that a machine finally able to do task X is not really as intelligent as we thought it had to be.

And today the AI/robotics industry struggles to build a machine that can perform the job of a room cleaner. Beating grand masters at chess was far easier.

pxc2• 8 months ago

Kim Ung-yong (the one from the article with 210 IQ sounds like a good guy with a respectable career and a healthy self-conception. He even describes himself as happy!

It seems like 210 IQ has proven to be plenty for him, although measurement of his IQ and intense childhood pressure may not have been beneficial to him.

ux2664782• 8 months ago

It is entirely possible he would not have reached where he is in his life without all of that negativity. No life is complete without deep and woeful strife.

pxc2• 8 months ago

Maybe. From one¹ of the articles quoted in OP:

According to reports, he was working at NASA at the age of eight, and in 1978, his name was recorded in the Guinness Book Of World Records for the highest IQ at 210.
While his career as an academic genius was soaring to unprecedented heights, Kim Ung Yong decided to pull the plug on it abruptly. He returned to South Korea in 1978 and decided to pursue higher education at Chungbuk National University where he obtained his Ph.D. in civil engineering.
The reason behind this decision was his growing dissatisfaction with the life of a genius. According to Mr. Kim, he missed out on many things in life while excelling academically. He spent his days couped up, deprived of the finer joys of life. His lifestyle also drew in some nasty rumors from the media.
So, he left that life behind in pursuit of his own identity and a normal life with his family and friends. Though the media labeled him as a “failed genius”, a living proof of how things can go horribly wrong with gifted kids, Mr. Kim has no regrets about his decision. In a society that puts academic intelligence on a pedestal, he is adamant that a high IQ really doesn’t determine anything about a person’s character.

It seems like indeed he learned some valuable lessons. But it's also clear that he felt the extreme pressure was ruining his life at that time, and it took him off the (more prestigious— you can decide if you think it's "more valuable") path of science in favor of engineering.

If you asked him, he'd probably say that the most vital decision he ever made was rejecting the "deep and woeful strife" that came from his ultra-disciplined, intellectual, and otherwise profoundly empty childhood.

It also seems like he'd probably reject the notion of measuring him by "where he ended up in life", even if that judgment is favorable. If the more relevant question is "could he have wound up contented and emotionally healthy with some other kind of childhood", it seems hard to argue that the painful childhood he rejected is the only way that could have happened.

----

1: https://www.koreaboo.com/stories/south-korean-professor-once...

ekianjo3• 8 months ago

if IQ tests are designed by people with lower IQ what does it say about high IQ scores?

dahart5• 8 months ago

Why would it say anything? The 100 meter dash wasn’t designed by the fastest 100 meter runner, but it’s still perfectly capable of identifying a winner.

notahacker3• 8 months ago

Sure, but setting questions you theoretically need a certain threshold of ability in pattern recognition to pass without actually having that ability feels like trying to design a 100m dash whilst not really knowing what a sprint or a metre is. You might end up selecting for outlying distance runners instead...

ekianjo3• 8 months ago

Bad analogies are bad analogies. Intelligence is much more complex than running.

bena3• 8 months ago

Part of the test is the speed at which you get the answers.

So while one may not be able to solve the entire suite of questions within 10 minutes, we can know that someone who can is smarter than someone who can't.

ekianjo3• 8 months ago

So while one may not be able to solve the entire suite of questions within 10 minutes, we can know that someone who can is smarter than someone who can't.

If you can try yourself to get better at the IQ questions, this is just about memory and pattern matching, not actual intelligence

l5870uoo9y• 8 months ago

What is the biggest problem: that smart people achieve too little, or that dumb people achieve too much?

65• 8 months ago

If they're dumb and achieve a lot... are they really dumb? Should intelligence be correlated with success?

Agraillo2• 8 months ago

I'd choose "smart people achieve too little." The reason is that, looking at the world around me (more or less) sustaining the lives of more than 8 billion people, I'm sure it's because of the scientific and inventive revelations of a few, not just the hard work of millions. (Sorry, millions, your work is important, but without those few, 99% of us would still spend much of our time just seeking and growing food). If the problem is fixed, maybe those 8 billion (or more) people would have much better, healthier lives without the risk of the upcoming climate fiasco. Just my two cents.

stego-tech4• 8 months ago

A really good litmus test of individual perspective and maturity, here. Already seeing comments nitpick specific arguments or points, which is itself the trap to shine a light on those individuals more obsessed with arbitrary external measures of their personal definition of success, rather than self-reflecting on said definition and asking whether or not this definition fits who they are or want to be as a person, or their desired achievements and goals in life.

It’s a sonnet of sorts about the curse of intelligence in an increasingly insane world, a reminder that brilliant people can be absolute monsters, and that the only person who can bring you contentment in life is yourself.

mattgreenrocks2• 8 months ago

I always love the articles that end up holding mirrors to some of the commenters. :)

jebarker4• 8 months ago

What does that say about you? :)

gessha• 8 months ago

High int, dump stat wis

tetris112• 8 months ago

Dunno - I think it's hard for a lot of us who rolled the dice on our interests early on, picked the winning combo of CS + Finance, and then just raced ahead in the career ladder over our peers as software work consumed the world.

Now it's ten years later, those ladders have disappeared, many of us seeing the writing on the wall, and wondering whether we were anything special at all.

(The answer of course is no, but it's a tough pill to swallow)

amfarrell617• 8 months ago

But isn’t being special rather… lonely?

stego-tech4• 8 months ago

As a former gifted kid who has had their fair share of struggles around identity, competency, and success, having to redefine each multiple times as the world shifts around me and ladders are either yanked up or burned down just as I arrive to climb them:

It sucks. It sucks ass. It has lead to many a night shouting in rage, anger, depression, and malaise. It continues to incense me as I see reprehensible actions receive phenomenal rewards in the short term for inflicting harm, and ignorance of their consequences of the long-term. It sucks.

You’re not alone, at least, and acknowledging that reality helped me rally around more social causes as I accepted that individual success was more luck than talent or effort, at least at present. It doesn’t really get easier to accept that reality either, even as I work to create a better one that’s built more around objectivity than individuality. Still, I’ve been far calmer, more productive, and even happier as I acknowledge the reality around me instead of reject it out of some notion of “specialness” or exceptionalism.

Acknowledging the reality around you is, in its own way, quite liberating, even if it’s also frustrating and lonely at present.

gh0stcat2• 8 months ago

I sort of relate. I suspect the misplaced confidence one can develop from early successes in one's career eventually manifests as a lot of beliefs needing to be unlearned later in life (especially when facing challenges requiring resilience). I think I am a better person for it (and that is the point).

treis• 8 months ago

I've watched those ladders disappear at least twice and come back over my life (Dotcom bubble and the Global Financial Crisis). These things are cyclical and for somethings we are at a low point. But in the long run there will always be opportunities for talent to florish.

jacquesm2• 8 months ago

I think the big mistake is to assume that the landscape remains static during your lifetime. This hasn't really been true for a hundred years now (and possibly a bit more than that), and that rate-of-change is only accelerating.

nonethewiser4• 8 months ago

The observation in this article is part of a more general principle: Happiness isn't a single variable equation. It directly parallels the observation that "money doesn't buy happiness." 210 IQ will never be enough. $20M dollars will never be enough.

This article is interesting to me because I see people falsely equivocating money with happiness all the time, and pretty much never see it with IQ. I didn't realize it was a thing.

stego-tech4• 8 months ago

Bearing in mind that my lived experience is entirely subjective, and that your mileage may vary accordingly:

I find that when people associate money with happiness, what they fail to observe is that they actually want the presumed stability such money would afford them, at their current lifestyle. Failing to acknowledge and plan around that leads to “lifestyle creep” as income rises, which simply perpetuates the same grievances they currently have around instability or insecurity, just with higher price tags and consequences for failure. I strongly suspect that billionaires engage in wealth and asset hoarding for this very reason: a terror of status, security, and stability collapse.

Once I let go of lifestyle creep and found contentment and gratuity in what I had, I began realizing that stability is shockingly affordable even under modern policies and economics. Releasing yourself from this forced societal obligation to “Keep Up with the Jones’” is a key step towards objectively reflecting on your life as it’s lived, and identifying what’s of genuine import to you. Only by doing that do you find what is actually needed for personal fulfillment, and thus, happiness.

Viliam12345• 8 months ago

210 IQ will never be enough. $20M dollars will never be enough.

At least, $20M dollars exists, while 210 IQ is mathematically nonsense -- it means "one out of several trillions", which exceeds the human population. You would have to colonize the entire galaxy, and then be the smartest human in that galaxy. If even that is not enough, I am giving up.

srid• 8 months ago

arbitrary external measures of their personal definition of success

You say 'external' meausures, but these do manifest as internal identities - all of which collectively form your social identity: https://srid.ca/identity/social

sureglymop2• 8 months ago

How is Langan thought of as a smart guy? I can't read further because this guy to me is either a grifter or suffering from mental illness. The linked interview doesn't surprise me at all, daily wire readers/listeners are just as gullible and exploitable as people who would think that Langan is smart.

Every smart person I've met in life so far has known that humility is key if you want other smart people to take you seriously. And to let your work speak for yourself.

It's somewhat similar to those YouTubers who help homeless people on camera. It's a paradox where if it's done on film it seems more self serving than generous but if it wasn't on film no one would know.

But there is a difference. Instead of going on film, smart people can produce actual works for others to read and validate.

graemep• 8 months ago

It's a paradox where if it's done on film it seems more self serving than generous but if it wasn't on film no one would know.

What is wrong with no one knowing?

Its not really a problem, and its old - its mentioned in the Bible (obviously not videos, but doing good publicly for status).

sureglymop2• 8 months ago

Nothing is wrong with no one knowing technically. Which is kind of the point. The desire to tell everyone how smart/generous you are is what makes others think you're a grifter and fraud (even if not), which is what an intelligent person would know and thus avoid.

ninininino• 8 months ago

humility is key if you want other smart people to take you seriously

Why assume he wants other smart people to take him seriously more than he wants to be authentic?

klodolph• 8 months ago

Langan has not produced any acclaimed works of art or science. In this way, he differs significantly he differs significantly from outsider intellectuals like Paul Erdös, Stephen Wolfram, Nassim Taleb, etc.

Paul Erdős is the only outsider intellectual on that list, IMO.

(Also note that ő and ö are different!)

WJW3• 8 months ago

Can you even be called an "outsider" when everyone who recognizes the name associates it with "eccentric but well respected mathematician who was well liked enough in the community that people would regularly let him sleep in their homes for days on end"? According to his wikipedia page, Erdős collaborated with hundreds of other mathematicians. That's the very opposite of being an outsider IMO.

mattgreenrocks2• 8 months ago

What you worship owns you, and everyone worships something.

The modern world makes a lot of money off psychological vulnerabilities. Better to know yours than be unaware and played.

spacecadet3• 8 months ago

Its a failure to be the smartest person in the room. Or, if you think you are- you are likely not, and thinking about yourself instead of listening...

aleph_minus_one3• 8 months ago

Or, if you think you are- you are likely not

In my experience the gut feeling of being the smartest person in the room is often true. Many highly smart people don't have the social position that they are surrounded by like-minded or even smarter people.

spacecadet3• 8 months ago

red flag.

MrBuddyCasino• 8 months ago

PSA: Chris Langan has never achieved a super high score on a real IQ test.

Since the 90's he is feuding with Rick Rosner, when they both edited the Mega Society’s journal Noesis, over the title of smartest guy. They both took an untimed Richard Hoeflin test (that maybe only a few hundred people have actually taken and therefore impossible to norm) with completely arbitrary scoring criteria and self-assigned “record setting” IQs.

Neither has any outstanding intellectual contributions to their name. They are weirdos who have made "being smart" their identity.

keiferski• 8 months ago

Everyone always interprets this guy's situation to mean that IQ tests aren't actually that accurate/are flawed as a tool.

But I think it's much more likely that intelligence itself is just a bit overrated amongst "intellectual" / white collar types, as in, people that define their identity and self-worth by how smart they are, or think they are.

At the end of the day, being disciplined, sociable, focused, or even just having a narrow set of interests is probably more of a recipe for success than mere raw intelligence. And ironically I think there are a lot of people that would be more successful – in careers, personal relationships, etc. – if they were a little bit less intelligent.

wavemode• 8 months ago

Intelligence is a lot like height. The world is designed for people of a certain level. If you're far below that, you're going to struggle. If you meet a certain threshold, you'll be fine.

And if you're far above, it may give you a slight boost, but is not going to magically propel you to success. You can do math in your head? Okay, your competitor will just use a calculator. You have impeccable spatial reasoning? Okay, the other guy will just draw himself a visual diagram.

There are only a few narrow domains where the raw processing power of your brain is going to automatically cause you to become richer or more successful than your peers. For everything else, luck, people skills, creativity and hard work are the dominant factors (in roughly that order).

Yossarrian22• 8 months ago

Bullshit on an IQ of 170 or 210

mlhpdx• 8 months ago

So the lesson is that IQ tests are unreliable? Weird.

Smart comes in a lot of flavors.

froobius2• 8 months ago

See also: "Major IQ differences in identical twins linked to schooling, challenging decades of research" [1] [2]

I.e. the idea that IQ is some innate fixed quality has evidence against it. It seems obvious that this is the case, given that people get their children tutors so they can do better at IQ tests to get into schools...

[1] https://www.psypost.org/major-iq-differences-in-identical-tw...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000169182...

zahlman2• 8 months ago

There isn't an idea that "IQ is some innate fixed quality". There are two separate actual ideas being conflated there: that intelligence is an innate fixed quality (which is more or less definitional), and that IQ accurately measures intelligence (it doesn't, and we already knew that, but it's the best we have).

froobius2• 8 months ago

There isn't an idea that "IQ is some innate fixed quality"

Actually yes there is; I have come across many people who believe this, specifically saying that IQ is fixed.

that intelligence is an innate fixed quality

I would also disagree with this — intelligence can be increased, (e.g. through education, training, and practice), and also decreased, (e.g. by lifestyle / environment).

Agraillo2• 8 months ago

The most striking finding came from the 10 pairs with “very dissimilar” educational experiences. In this group, the average IQ difference was 15.1 points. This gap is approaching the average difference seen between two randomly selected, unrelated individuals, which is about 17 points
The authors note some limitations to their work. The group with “very dissimilar” education contained only 10 twin pairs. While this represents all such published individual data from the last century, it is a small sample size

Thanks, the study is interesting, but needs further research.

doe88• 8 months ago

With age and experience I learned that intelligence has a lot of axis, IQ test is only one of them, it is meaningful but narrow. My favorites questions I like to ask people I know or I don't see often are: what are you passions, what do you like in life? It's often much more interesting about what it reveals of the person, than their ability of solving logic puzzles.

seanalltogether• 8 months ago

I like to think that Robin Williams was as intelligent as Stephen Hawking, but they both excelled at very different types of information to process and express insight on. Also some of the best athletes in the world are processing information and making decisions in ways those 2 never could.

moi23884• 8 months ago

I mean.. I don’t think Stephen hawking’s information processing was the issue here..

numbers_guy• 8 months ago

IQ by its own is not enough. A higher than average IQ is probably the result of a larger than average working memory, and maybe also some ability to make more "long-range" connections between concepts in the brain. That's raw processing power. But raw processing power isn't everything. You also need an otherwise healthy mind, the sustained motivation to accomplish great things and the ability to focus to dedicate enough time towards those goals.

For example if you read the biography of Von Neumann, it's remarkable that he was able to focus and work in the most noisy and distracting environments.

nis0s• 8 months ago

Be wary of success measure games, a lot of people with a lot less intelligence/capability are doing so much. Luck and network effects trump intelligence, ability and so on. It’s better to always just reflect on yourself…unless you’re some unlucky schmuck that someone took time out of their precious life to personally disadvantage somehow.

The other thing that’s occurred to me lately is how some “impressive” resumes and experience just won’t be possible about nation state level backing. So yeah, if you’re going to talk about games, be aware that there’s always more than one at play.

jebarker4• 8 months ago

I wholeheartedly agree with the point of the article, but the phrase “You are enough” really grinds my gears for some reason. Enough for what?

gh0stcat2• 8 months ago

I tend to agree, most platitudes are less impactful simply because your mind inserts what it already knows/autocompletes the phrase meaning because it's something so commonly heard. I read it as something like... you have enough resources to lead a life that has prosperity relative to the limited faculties of a human organism. That seems less catchy, and if you're too literal in your phrasing in writing, then you get the opposite problem where the reader limits their thinking to just what is written. Do you come to a different conclusion?

jebarker4• 8 months ago

This phrase comes up alot in mindfulness and self-esteem related writings. I interpret it to mean that you don't have to do anything to justify your existence on the planet or prove your worth. I agree with this. But the phrasing of "you are enough" implies that it is possible to not be enough, but I don't think that's true since there's no bar that you have to meet, you just are.

koakuma-chan2• 8 months ago

According to Yoo, by the time he was 1, her son learned both the Korean alphabet and 1,000 Chinese characters by studying the Thousand Character Classic, a sixth-century Chinese poem.[5]

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

Is that true? How is that even possible? Like, biologically.

ip262• 8 months ago

Not sure it is, so I assume a lot of stretching of the truth is involved. Most twelve month olds struggle to support their head, are just learning to shape their mouths to form syllables, and have only had eyes capable of resolving letters on a page for a few months. IQ won’t make blurry images sharp, or your neck muscles stronger.

dmd• 8 months ago

If a 12 month old can’t support its head that’s a big problem. That’s a 4-6 month milestone. 12 months is starting to walk.

yossi_peti• 8 months ago

Most twelve month olds struggle to support their head

I don't know about the other claims, but this one is false. It would be somewhat concerning if a 6-month-old struggled to support their head.

lordnacho3• 8 months ago

Most twelve month olds struggle to support their head

Skill issue. Needs more belly time!

nonethewiser4• 8 months ago

Bullshit detectors are blaring. Asian parent embellish the intelligence of their child without any verification. From what I understand Kim Ung-yong himself said many of the stories about him when he was young were misunderstood or exaggerated.

I guess it's not clear what they mean by learned the alphabet. Could point to the character and say the sound I guess? Know their meaning (you couldn't verify this easily if they cant talk)?

It's considered prodigious to be able to read at 3. I guess recognizing characters is short of that, but barely. And at 1? Im open to more information but I see no reason to think its true.

swid• 8 months ago

My nephew was reading at age two… he is obviously a very special kid, but no one really pushed him to do that. Apparently this would kind of freak people out in public.

I’m not sure if reading before age one is biologically possible, but I have a surprising data point in my life, so who knows.

testing22321• 8 months ago

My daughter turns two today, and she points out about half of capital letters when we’re reading a book. “That’s A”, etc.

jimmygrapes• 8 months ago

Age reckoning in South Korea (and other east Asian countries) is quite different than what you might expect. Age 1 in this context could be up to 3; if year 1 is your birth date and you age up at the new year, you could be "2 years old" while being alive for only 3 days. It could also work the other way around if they follow one of the other methods. Pretty interesting and not yet fully standardized!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning

koakuma-chan2• 8 months ago

Thanks, I'm gonna start using East Asian age reckoning to indicate how many professional years of experience I have.

cmiles8• 8 months ago

IQ and EQ are two different things often not found in the same individual. IQ is being smart enough to know that something is happening. EQ is being smart enough to be able to convince other humans to do something about it.

High IQ low EQ folks often struggle in careers and life because they’re “right” but can’t get anything done.

The most successful tend to be high-ish IQ but with enough EQ to get things done. Those folks are unstoppable.

Retric• 8 months ago

IE and EQ do however positively correlate with each other.

hshdhdhj4444• 8 months ago

IQ and EQ are different things that we have labeled.

There are probably a very large number of skills along other vectors that we haven’t identified/labeled that are equally, more or less important.

BergAndCo2• 8 months ago

High EQ correlates with manipulativeness and sociopathic behavior. So maybe their success can be chalked up to their willingness to sell out and kiss evil's ass.

fn-mote2• 8 months ago

The title of the article is obnoxious.

The first part of the article puts down a person whose IQ is in the 140-180 range. If you read about the person, that part makes sense as an opinion.

The second part of the article explains that the person referred to in the title, the alleged 210 IQ, has chosen a middle manager job because it makes them happy.

I'm trying to tell people that I'm happy the way I am.

The author never explains the problem they have with this person.

Instead, I think the title should be more along the lines of "an IQ of 176 does not make you a good person". I guess people would not engage if the conclusion was obvious? The baiting title is totally misplaced.

Actually, the whole treatment of Kim Ung-yong is even worse than I make out in this comment. I am left with a really negative impression of the author.

FrustratedMonky2• 8 months ago

"author never explains the problem they have with this person"

As far as I can tell, the author doesn't have a problem.

The article is using common societal opinions on these people, which are demonstrated with quotes from those same people.

Joeboy2• 8 months ago

As I read it, the author is presenting a positive assessment of Kim Ung-yon's life in contrast to his negative assessment of Christopher Langan's.

lostmsu3• 8 months ago

The first part of the article puts down a person whose IQ is in the 140-180 range. If you read about the person, that part makes sense as an opinion.

It's worse. In both cases the IQ scores are basically fake. The first one probably does not reach moderate 130 required for Mensa based on the report of repeatedly trying the same test and not passing some not-too-high bar the first time (the first _known_ time; the test is only valid when taken once).

The second one does not have any credible backing to their IQ score whatsoever and for all we know could be under 100.

Joeboy2• 8 months ago

Maybe, but what the article is really about is how these two people responded to being marked for greatness at a young age. I don't see a reason to disbelieve that part.

sram13372• 8 months ago

I think you misunderstood the article. 210 IQ isn't enough. The man with 210 IQ is happy not because he has 210 IQ but because he made the choice to be happy.

Having a high IQ isn't enough - you must also choose to be happy.

zephyrthenoble• 8 months ago

Reading the text of the article, and not just reacting to the title, I do think this article has a kernal of truth to it that resonates with me. It's not really talking about intelligence, but MEASURES, and how individuals contort themselves into what they believe is valuable.

But at the end of the day, we do not have an inherent value. I wonder if people that get hung up on these metrics and what value they seemingly hold either that a person is a whole person, not just some measurement about them. The world's tallest man also has a favorite food, favorite color, and hobbies. He has friends and family. The metric you assigned to him is not the totality of the man.

I say this because recently I've been struggling with work and I feel like I have to say to myself sometimes, I am more than just a source of income and health insurance to my family. To someone who isn't in my situation, it might seem silly, but it has been scary and stressful and in some ways I did say to myself, you have value because you provide. But we have money saved, and are in a stable situation, and I could always find a new job, but my ego assigned value to the job regardless despite my best efforts at pretending that I don't play games with corporations. The stress that keeping a 9 to 5 causes in my mind is entirely self-inflicted by me.

I guess what I'm saying is that I should value other things about myself more highly, or maybe even not value anything about myself if that makes sense. What value is there in in measuring my success, as long as I am honest about my efforts and happiness?

I will never conquer the entire world by 25, or have a billion dollars, so maybe I need to learn to measure less and focus on true personal accountability and happiness instead. Hopefully that's a simple task...

BurningFrog• 8 months ago

When I was at Google a long time ago, the hiring criteria were simple: Smart, and gets things done.

A lot of people are smart, but don't get much brilliant work done. Even more people do a lot of work, but aren't very smart about it.

To be a genius with important contributions, you need to have both the brains and the work ethic.

abetusk• 8 months ago

To be clear, if the quality and quantity of output of the hard worker exceeds someone who works hard and is smart about it, smart and hard would be preferable?

BergAndCo2• 8 months ago

Right, the reason a certain demographic can't get hired right now is because they aren't smart or hard-working.

chaostheory• 8 months ago

This a great intro to an article or even a book, but alone it kind of leaves you hanging. He should pair this with something

yoz-y• 8 months ago

The curse of intelligence is being able to see the world as it is. And (as TFA points out) the benefits is that then you also have the choice of what to do about it.

But talking about intelligence always brings visceral reactions. While we readily admit that someone can be stronger, or taller, the need to somehow negate that people can be genuinely smarter is somehow evil.

Also I disagree with comments saying we don’t have a good definition of intelligence. We have several but to me the most important is to plan ahead, and then be able to successfully improvise when the plan goes wrong.

kypro• 8 months ago

Self-awareness is so much more important than IQ for real-world success in my opinion. IQ tests measure an individuals personal intellect, but in the real world what matters is how we're able to pair our mental capacity with that of others.

Redirecting an unhealthy obsession with being the smartest person in the room, to just being as self-reflective as possible is far healthier for well being, but I think also it improves outcomes.

Of course you need a base level of IQ too, but if you're reasonably smart just being able to take a step back and ask if you're being reasonable, if you might be wrong, why someone feels the way they do about you, this makes you much better at any task that involves some level of collaboration – which the vast majority of tasks do.

People who just have high IQ might on average be good at reasoning on their own, but their ability to reason with others – playing into their strengths and knowledge and into that of others is what allows them to exceed beyond their IQ in terms of outcomes.

For what it's worth, I find Langan really interesting. He's clearly a smart guy, but also delusionally self-confident in himself.

And I kinda get that honestly. I've had a few official IQ tests in my life and I'm pretty confident I have a fairly high IQ. I know I've found in most cases I'm well served to not pay much attention to what the average person thinks about most things, but when I find people who think well, especially if they have more knowledge in some area than myself I become obsessively self-critical when I feel we're unaligned on something. Generally speaking in these cases I'm likely to be wrong.

My guess is that Langan doesn't do this. Perhaps he feels (mostly correctly) that trusting himself is generally the better strategy than trusting what anyone else thinks. Still, it's surprising he hasn't worked this out. Maybe there's more going on there.

lordnacho3• 8 months ago

People think of intelligence as some sort of magic. They ascribe all sorts of ability to intelligence, as if being smart should make you influential.

But why should that be? If you're a scientist, you are dependent on getting funding to do experiments, and the experiment showing something interesting. Neither of these things is very connected to intelligence, beyond that low IQ people will not be likely to get to the start line.

If you're an entrepreneur, you also have to do a bunch of things that are more social than smarts. Basically your life is going around meeting people and getting them to either invest or build something or buy something. Is it useful to be smart? Sure. But it isn't as useful as, say, having the right connections from school, or a family with a sensible budget so you can concentrate on building rather than finding food.

Pretty much the only area where being super smart works is pure maths, and even there you really want to be born in the parts of the world where the economy can support a young person on that path.

Then there's the transmission to suit your engine. A super smart person still needs to be mature enough to consume the intellectual royal jelly that develops them towards where they will make the greatest contribution. You won't just know what to do just because you're smart, you need to be shown what the interesting problems are. You need to have motivation, and motivation is often what you actually see when you meet someone impressive.

The way I think of it, the smart and useful people are plenty. Courses are taught so that universities can get a sensible number of people through some amount of content. Being smarter than your average student at a prestigious college is nice, but it mostly buys you some free time. Being at the cutoff is terribly stressful, but that guy is still pretty accomplished and useful for most things that we consider elite.

hackingonempty2• 8 months ago

Hear Hear! If you have the Social Intelligence and work hard to cultivate relationships you can become President of the United States, even if you think you have a good idea to stop a respiratory virus by injecting disinfectant.

danans2• 8 months ago

If you're an entrepreneur, you also have to do a bunch of things that are more social than smarts

High social aptitude is "smarts". It has arguably been more central to our evolution, survival, and even advancement than "book smarts".

jacquesm2• 8 months ago

It would be highly surprising if it was any different, given that books have not been around long enough for us to begin to adapt to their existence in an evolutionary manner. They'll be long gone before we could have.

ghostpepper2• 8 months ago

I like the car analogy for IQ. Having an engine with 50% or more horsepower above the people around you is only useful if you know how to handle it, how to steer, etc.

The transmission is another great analogy, IMHO for communication skills. Applying full power to the tarmac from a dead stop is a great way to spin your tires.

bithead• 8 months ago

The very notion of IQ reduces the mind to a receptacle for some ineffable thing called 'intelligence'. One may as well have a CQ - Comedy Quotient and start speculating who has a higher GQ - Robin Williams or Dave Chapelle.

Jensson• 8 months ago

I like the car analogy for IQ. Having an engine with 50% or more horsepower above the people around you is only useful if you know how to handle it, how to steer, etc.

And its not useful at all in a typical traffic situation, you are still limited to the speed of the one in front of you. Intelligence is only useful in environments that allows it to be, but most places are designed for typical people.

armonster• 8 months ago

This seems like a very flat view of intelligence. In my mind a sufficiently intelligent person isn't just "good at math" and is capable of understanding the landscapes you've laid out above and would also understand how to improve in them and to navigate them, assuming they're sufficiently motivated. Even then, intelligent people are better at parsing themselves, their own drives, knowing what they want and are motivated by and move towards it. I also think many of the most intelligent people I know are (gasp) extremely mature as well, as if those often go hand-in-hand.

This sort of feels like a cope-comment trying to say that smart people aren't ACTUALLY smart, but I'm not sure the motivation for that.

lordnacho3• 8 months ago

This seems like a very flat view of intelligence.

Yes, because the article leads with that. But I think we're actually in agreement.

I make a distinction between intelligence and wisdom, something I thought about from D&D.

Intelligence is having accurate models. Quick thinking, and correct predictions.

Wisdom is about making good decisions. Risk control, understanding rewards.

Both are a mental qualities we appreciate in people, but often we are more dazzled by intelligence, and we often mistake wisdom for intelligence.

aleph_minus_one3• 8 months ago

They ascribe all sorts of ability to intelligence, as if being smart should make you influential.

By just applying some common sense it is obvious how absurd this statement is (and I thus rather have difficulties understanding how people can come to such a hypothesis):

Just look at your daily life: how much highly intellectual or academic content (for the latter: e.g. lecture recordings of complicated scientific lectures) do you watch on YouTube? If not: which kind of content do you then watch on YouTube?

This should make it insanely obvious which kinds of people are influential and which ones are not.

DrScientist3• 8 months ago

Indeed.

Most of life is like a 100m race where it's allowed to turn up and start early. ie anybody can easily beat Usain Bolt by just starting a few seconds before him.

There are some things which are perhaps a bit more like the highjump - where I'm never going to beat the worlds best no matter how many attempts I do - however these kind of things are very much the exception, not the rule.

WJW3• 8 months ago

Most fields which are like highjumps have considerable incentives to develop tools to aid in performance. Even the greatest high jumper can't beat a muggle with a ladder, after all. Nor is any weightlifter a match for a forklift.

comrade1234• 8 months ago

I supposedly have an iq of 140+ (I don't believe it though) and there's been two experiences where I've been in the presence of someone that just blew me out of the water. (Fellow graduate students in my program)

I don't think I'm that far away intelligently from my friends and other people, but these far outliers were amazing. Not alien, but almost.

viralpraxis• 8 months ago

I don’t know, 210 is a lot. I’d expect him to solve the P =? NP problem during his morning coffe

whatgoodisaroad• 8 months ago

intelligence is an abstract concept, and sure, iq is a lossy way to measure it. but the idea that you could quantify intelligence into a scalar is absurd on its face and impossible to take seriously

thr0waway001• 8 months ago

It never was.

I can’t think of one genius that became really famous and successful that also didn’t have to work their friggin’ as s off or who had everything handed to them, or who didn’t have to collaborate with or appeal to normies to get ahead in this world.

“It’s a long way to the top if you want to Rock ‘n Roll”

thechao• 8 months ago

There's always someone else just as smart, willing to work harder. On the other hand, there's an inexhaustible amount of work & new ideas to work on. If you don't want to do new things, most "old ideas" have been poorly executed: go redo them well.

blfr• 8 months ago

The fact that you can do poorly (by external measure) despite high IQ doesn't really mean much. It correlates well with a swath of positive outcomes and I'd still take legitimate 150 IQ (for myself, for my kids) over virtually any other real-world ability. I think only looks are even in the running here.

It's not just that IQ allows you to succeed. It allows you to navigate the modern world. I see people having trouble with pointers, simple abstractions, basic diagrams, or statistics and wonder: what am I missing? And I'm no von Neumann to not miss anything.

erikerikson• 8 months ago

If I could choose for myself and family, I'd suggest something more like 120, maybe 125. More IQ is frequently worse for well being. The benefits from correlations with positive factors get overwhelmed by emergent negative factors. Consider the stupid statement many smart people make "people are so stupid" (when in fact they are normal and the smart person is saying that they are on the upper end of the distribution). It reflects a fact of aloneness; a lack of peers; exclusion from socially controlled circles of success; endlessly watching struggle and underperformance; being stuck in a world that is dysfunctional because making it more functional is "too hard" for others; unlocking "because you're smart you have to do it for them"; and so many more little tortures and asynchronous social bullshit.

guywithahat• 8 months ago

The premise of the article is Langan has a high IQ, but is a bad person because he's conservative? Major political parties you disagree with are not "poisonous rhetoric", and political articles like this really don't belong on HN. People may know things you don't, and they base their world view on experiences you may not have had.

AaronAPU• 8 months ago

If you disagree with my opinions, it means you aren’t as smart as me.

jmull2• 8 months ago

IQ has an enduring mystique, but before getting to excited by it, people should ask themselves a question:

Does "IQ" measure something particularly useful or meaningful?

(I think, at best, it's a very incomplete measure of something quite vague and ill-defined.)

moi23884• 8 months ago

Yes. It correlates strongly with problem solving abilities on most tasks, predicts health outcomes, educational outcomes, career outcomes and finances all pretty significantly.

jmull2• 8 months ago

I don't see the particularly useful/meaningful part here.

Who knows what you're referring to, but generally IQ tests measure general mental abilities on things society generally finds good. That's fine, but general education does the same in far more detail and comes with a robust achievement measurement (grades, and graduation/degrees).

IQ competes with other measures that exist anyway and comes up short.

juancn• 8 months ago

IQ without emotional intelligence is like racing car with no tires.

All that raw power and no way to direct it in a useful manner.

wslh• 8 months ago

I never get tired of telling this story about high IQs. One of my employees was in Mensa. Brilliant guy, incredibly humble, with Windows Internals knowledge so deep Microsoft acquired a company where we developed an entire product that big companies thought was impossible. I'm convinced he joined Mensa mostly as a hobby, like some people do crossword puzzles, he took IQ tests.

He used to come back from the local Mensa chapter meetings with the best stories. According to him, watching a room full of geniuses try to solve basic organizational issues was exactly like attending the annual meeting of a very dysfunctional condo board. Same arguments, same confusion, just with a higher average IQ.

gdubs• 8 months ago

Intellectual horsepower is just one element. If you're trying to build the world's fastest car, you can't just grab the world's most powerful engine and call it a day. If you can harness it, sure – it could provide an edge. But there are a lot of other elements that come into play.

I often think about exposure to music, and the fact that Einstein liked to play around on his violin. My suspicion is that this was more than just a hobby – and that these context switches, and exposure to different types of creative thought, all played into his discoveries.

MichaelZuo• 8 months ago

It’s probably even simpler… they simply don’t have that much “intellectual horsepower” in the first place.

It just’s an artifact of testing methodologies that can’t resolve very lumpy or spiky intelligence.

And therefore ends up being confused with genuine supergenius which is more correlated to the total area under the curve, so to speak.

quuxplusone• 8 months ago

From TFA:

But Langan is clearly a smart guy. He probably cleared 140+ on an IQ test. He speaks like a book.[1]

where that last sentence is a link to a local-TV segment

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-788Upky2Y

Langan's only recorded lines in that TV segment are:

Bonjo! 'Mon, boy! I think it's about, uh, 20 horses, two llamas, two cows. This particular paper's on something called a conspansive manifold. It's a-a theory that studies the relationship between mind and reality. In other words, what's out there in the real world, how does the mind relate to it? Yes. [/] You don't. [/] It's not that simple. I happen to know there's a heaven, because I know you can use your will to create things. In other words, do you continue to exist after you die? Absolutely. Nothing in this universe is wasted. Nothing ever ceases to exist, not really. The essence always remains preserved. We, ah, didn't have a lot of money. And the old man was always in need of money, so we had to go with a worklist. Well, as a matter of fact, I had to fight my way through high school. There's the foal, and there's Star, his mother. I mean, why am I not a famous politician, or a, a, a, financier? filthy rich? Ah, some of the business things don't mean that much to me. I'd rather have some meaning in my life, and this is how I get it. [/] In construction, ranch hand, farmhand, cowboy, firefighter — I worked for the forest service about four years. Um, just anything I could get my hands on. Jeannie was very very taken with the beauty of the place. As a matter of fact she started crying, she was looking at it, and I realized then I couldn't say no. No, it can't be done. There's a sort of mind that I call a garbage-trap sort of mind. [/] Usually that kind of mind does not belong to a person who is capable of deep thought. Sometimes it's hard to find the words when somebody expresses love. When I went to visit my mother, for instance — she's been a little bit ill lately — I had to tell her that I loved her, and she told me that she loved me, and, and then there was a long period of silence, because what can you follow that up with?

That doesn't qualify as "speaking like a book" in my book. I'd be interested to see videos of people who do habitually speak in well-formed sentences; I'm sure such people exist, although (from that one five-minute TV segment) Langan doesn't seem to be one of them.

I was recently asked, "Did people in the past really talk like that?" (i.e. in complex sentences like they do in the dialogue of your average 18th- or 19th-century novel) and I unfoundedly opined that while the answer was probably "no, the literary style is always an exaggeration of the natural speaking style; 21st-century people don't speak exactly like their novels, either," it seemed plausible to me that when all your educated people start their careers studying Latin grammar and rhetoric for several years, they do end up with more unconscious respect for grammatical structure and therefore more of an ability to generate complex yet well-formed sentences on the fly. I'd be interested to see what the experts think.

bena3• 8 months ago

Tangent: It's interesting that the author linked to an article that linked to Sirlin's article about "scrub mentality" rather than linking directly to Sirlin's article.

But I agree with what the author is trying to say: Intelligence is not enough to be successful. No one is going to pay you to "be smart". You have to do something with that intelligence that is worthwhile.

Which is why you have people like Richard Feynman who famously had just "an above average" IQ while contributing greatly to several fields of math and science.

Now, it could be that Feynman just didn't care about the test when he took it. Because he intuitively knew that "being smart" wasn't enough. You had to apply yourself. You have to put in the work and there are no real shortcuts.

Being successful is a multifaceted thing and there are many pitfalls. And the real trick seems to be avoiding as many pitfalls as possible. Being smart helps, but it's not a guarantee.

lordnacho mentioned people think of intelligence as magic, and that's a good way to put it. Every other quality we have as people is not really disputed. If you're taller, we acknowledge it. If you're faster, we can test it. If you're stronger in your arms, we can test it. Etc. And we accept the results. And we accept that if we want to change things, we have to do the work.

But not intelligence. For some reason, no one can be smarter than anyone else. And everyone has to be smart in something. And if you're smart in one thing, you can't be smart in others. We invent things like EQ, street smarts, book smarts, etc to try and put everyone on equal footing. But a lot of times, people who have higher IQs also have higher EQs. And when people talk about "street smarts", what they're really describing is a sort of institutional knowledge that can only be gained by living in an area as often these "street smarts" are highly local to a certain subset of streets. And people often mistake trivia for intelligence. They think knowing a fact makes one smart. It makes one knowledgeable. And often having a lot of knowledge can be beneficial to those with higher intelligence. But high intelligence is often apparent even in those with little knowledge. For instance, my wife is a special education teacher and she has a non-verbal autistic child in her class. He clearly does not have a lot of knowledge, but he's apparently very intelligent. He can work things out. He can make references. He grasps concepts quickly. He gets frustrated by his own inability to articulate his thoughts.

neuralkoi• 8 months ago

This reminds me of Liu Zhiyu who won a gold medal for China at the IMO in 2006 and was offered a full scholarship to MIT but turned it down to become a monk.

I think wisdom and peace is more valuable than raw IQ and I think Zhiyu and Ung-yong and even Langan realized this, wanted nothing to do with "The Machine", and chose their life trajectories accordingly.

lostmsu3• 8 months ago

Liu Zhiyu

From Google, that bro is back, married, and runs a (probably quite profitable) psychiatry business now.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 8 months ago

My wife's nephew is the smartest person I've ever met (and I've met a lot of really smart people).

Aced the SAT as a teen, and interned at JPL, etc. Got a free full ride, wherever he wanted. He got his undergraduate at CalTech. Ph.D at Some midwest college -a good one, but can't remember which one -may have been Urbana-Champagne.

His mother was adamant that he have as normal a childhood as possible. She deliberately kept his K12 at a normal pace.

He's now a regular professor at a fairly good college (but not an Ivy League one).

He's married, has a kid, and two cats. Has a great life.

Part of me wants to say "What a waste!", but that part needs to get smothered with a pillow.

He's quite happy, and is doing something that he really wants to do.

Most of us could be so fortunate.

I've found "I.Q. smart" to be overrated. It opens a lot of doors, but it can also get in the way.

Many of my heroes have 2-digit IQs.

aatd862• 8 months ago

Wondering what being 'smart' means? Is it:

1. being right most of the time?

2. knowing a lot (breadth)?

3. knowing a couple things in depth?

4. knowing in breadth and depth?

5. understanding new things fast (which is only measurable by someone who knows more?)?

6. solving puzzle and brainteasers easily?

7. being able to speak multiple languages?

8. being self-taught in what people may claim to be complex subjects?

9. being able to derive truths that other people fail to see?

10. being less prone to cognitive biases?

11. Mental clarity and easier data acquisition and processing?

Or something else?

sram13372• 8 months ago

I've heard it defined as the ability to learn quickly. Not just in the narrow, academic sense, but also by observing the world and people and drawing conclusions about them. It has to do with pattern recognition and abstraction.

Usually these people are knowledgeable because they are constantly learning. Eventually they become wise.

What do you think of that definition?

WhyOhWhyQ3• 8 months ago

Why would that be a waste? The average professor at any college would probably be as smart as your friend. Professors (at least in the field I did my PhD in) are smart as hell.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 8 months ago

I have a fairly Ivy-League family, including a number of teachers and professors (I'm the redneck engineer).

This guy is in a league of his own. Pretty stunning.

I would be quite surprised if "any college professor" is at the same level.

That said, I am also very much a "maker and doer." I spent my career amongst folks sort of like him, but focused on producing stuff. He would have knocked most of them, into a cocked hat.

HardCodedBias• 8 months ago

Well of course it is not enough. This is well known.

"Success" is hard to nail down. Is it academic success? SES succes? Job performance? It's all over the map.

However we know that :

IQ is correlated with the above somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5, with many definitions and studies being near the top of that range.

Conscientiousness is correlated with the above somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3, with many definitions and studies being near the top of that range.

Low neuroticism is correlated with the above somewhere between 0.1 and 0.2, with many definitions and studies being near the top of that range.

And there are other "personality" metrics that have been studied. It is very easy for someone who has an exceptional IQ to be sert back by neuroticism for example and exceptional IQ is near useless if the person does not have the conscientiousness to follow through on tasks, these people will likely be exceptional a "shallow" tasks.

I think this is well trodden ground.

nailer• 8 months ago

Yes, he actively promotes poisonous rhetoric -- ignore that for now.

Saying someone is poisonous (watch this two hour YouTube video for why) is cheap.

froh2• 8 months ago

210 on a standard IQ scale (15 points per std dev) would mean more than 7 std deviations, order of 10^-12

it's hard for me to not reject the article already for it's click bait headline...

ps: 170 is 4.666 std dev, about 10^-6. that's very rare, hard to measure but at least real.

crazygringo• 8 months ago

Yeah, IQ tests don't really go above 160 precisely because there's no way to statistically validate the result. There aren't enough people.

Someone can design a test and claim it determines IQ up to 210, but there's no way to statistically validate that so it's simply meaningless.

froh2• 8 months ago

yes, and there were other scales with other std deviations, decades ago. but that really shouldn't be a headline any more.

to me the 210 simply signals a certain distance of the author to the topic. that may be unjust, but I can't help it.

Lerc3• 8 months ago

As a New Zealander, I have often wondered about the standard deviation of sheep intelligence.

user_of_the_wek2• 8 months ago

If you just take the statistical definition of IQ and run with it, AFAIK the smartest person alive will be at something like 190 IQ. If you really run with it, the smartest person that has ever lived should be around 200.

hackingonempty2• 8 months ago

Chris Langan is a fraud, and not even a good one, he claims to have discovered a revolutionary new neural network architecture but lost the napkin he wrote it on.

This is my favorite video mocking Langan, made by someone smarter than him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57IN9sBhYyg

Lerc3• 8 months ago

Yes, but focusing on that is pretty much the opposite of the intent of the article.

noirscape2• 8 months ago

It keeps astounding me that people assign value to a score whose purpose was mainly intended to find outliers in the education system as being anything besides that.

Or to quote the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking: "People who boast about their IQ are losers".

sp4cec0wb0y• 8 months ago

The whole "Heaven is real because this guy with high IQ said so" is extremely cringe. They treat him like a show pony lol.

xtracto• 8 months ago

I've never understood IQ tests. Granted, i have only seen the beginning of some of them where they show you those 3/4 figures and tell you to choose the "next one" ... I have never had a clue of what am I supposed to look for.

Maybe I am just extremely stupid. But then I'm a walking example that you can be averagly successful even being dumb as a rock, if you are stubborn enough haha.

rdiddly• 8 months ago

Is it me or was that somewhat incoherent?

nurettin• 8 months ago

Worked in education sector for a few months, and noticed that the aptitude tests that I've seen always lack one thing:

They don't check your memory association skills. You mostly solve patterns and logic puzzles, but future questions don't refer to the previous ones.

moi23884• 8 months ago

Christopher Langan does not have an IQ of 210.

He took a custom “iq” test of 48 questions, scored average, then retook the test knowing the questions, and got 47 right.

CyberDildonics• 8 months ago

People do well on a test of short term memory and pattern recognition and other people think it's a super power.

Nassim Taleb's book starts out as self indulgent, self aggrandizing nonsense. It's basically summed up as "probability won't help you when something happens that hasn't happened before". You don't say, what an incredible insight for the first 40 pages.

silexia• 8 months ago

This reads like it was AI generated, was it?

Balgair• 8 months ago

You are allowed to like yourself.

Yes, of course, but how?! I don't right now, how do I go about doing that? Play more golf/chess/adult-tag/leetcode/etc? Talk to chaGPT/therapist? I ... I just don't even know where to start.

You will never have enough IQ, nor money, nor time, nor energy. It's no excuse. You are enough -- no, no, you are plenty.

What the hell does this mean? Is this not a contradiction? What, probably obvious, thing am I missing here?

But this is still about you. There exist no certificates nor trophies nor titles that can quench your thirst for permanence. If you worship human intelligence, 210 IQ is not enough. It is only plenty if you let it be.

I am so confused here! I'm not permanent! Only my works will survive me, and even then only the really good ones, and even then only the ones that the flukes of history deem passable.

What does plenty even mean here?

Man alive! This is hitting hard to me and I don;t even know why it does. Is this some sort of Escher-AI-scissor-statement thingy?

rini17• 8 months ago

> You are allowed to like yourself. Yes, of course, but how?! I don't right now, how do I go about doing that?

You can start by deliberately being bored a bit, that allows some of the the inner noise and judgements to pass. And then there's also self-compassion.

RYJOX• 8 months ago

This made me laugh, just because you have a high IQ does not mean you are granted an easy passage.

210 IQ Is Not Enough

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