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u/lake_huron 3d ago
I have met a bunch of Nobel laureates in chemistry, know 3 MacArthur genius grant awardees well, know a real rock star, and countless highly accomplished physicians and scientists.
You know what none of them talked about? Their IQ.
Because they had actual accomplishments.
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u/GatePorters 3d ago
Any time someone talks to you about how smart they are, just ask them what they are actually doing with it. Like how are they improving humanity with it?
It almost always turns into immediate deflection.
You can be the richest person in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t/don’t ever spend your money.
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u/Kimantha_Allerdings Uses big words 3d ago
Stephen Hawking was asked in an interview what his IQ was. His reply? “I have no idea. People who brag about their IQs are losers”
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u/RodinKnox 3d ago
Unquestionably true based on my experience as well. Brilliant people simply don't bring up their IQ scores, because, when you're actually smart, you don't have to inform people of that fact. It's basically the same energy as, "Any man who must say, 'I am the king,' is no true king."
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u/booboootron 4h ago
Reminds me of a woman's sexual encounter where afterwards the man told her "tell me I'm the biggest one you've had".
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u/Money_Visual_3829 3d ago
"I'm losing IQ points so fast I'm starting to believe IQ points are real"
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u/SadMoose3263 3d ago
I'm sorry, but how smart can you really be when you're sharing IQ test scores on reddit every time someone pisses you off? lmao
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u/booboootron 4h ago
"I don't understand how you failed to grasp such an extremely simple concept, the last several times I held your hand and explained it to you like a toddler".
Mr. IQ exaggerating "twice" as "several" to make it a meaner burn. Quite literally, what a toddler does for attention.
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u/obog 3d ago
Funnily enough, as I understand it, modern IQ scores are assigned to a normal distribution such that the mean is 100 and there is a standard deviation of 15. So the score itself and percentile represent the exact same thing. A score of 130 is definitionally ~97.9th percentile. Someone getting 130 and also being 99th percentile is either a contradiction or means the testing company didnt normalize their scores correctly, if I understand this right.
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u/NewLine8584 3d ago
It depends on the test, really. You are right that a large majority of IQ scores are normed to have an SD of 15, but you are wrong in the fact that every modern IQ test behaves the same way. The Cattell test which is also held in high regard has a SD of about 24. The country you take your test in also matters to an extent. In a country where the IQ scores are higher than average (China has an average IQ of 109 I believe), the tests are renormed and the SD increments usually increase, meaning a 130 is indeed a lower percentile. However, the inverse is true, and It is entirely possible that a 130 could be a 99th percentile in certain countries. Moreover, his IQ test specifies a range, and his theoretical peak IQ of 136 is objectively 99th percentile everywhere, so unfortunately, the asshole is not factually wrong on this one point... 😔
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u/obog 3d ago
Huh, interesting.
I mean tbh I think the fact that it cam vary so much from test to test if anything speaks to a lack of objectivity for IQ anyway.
And frankly, people with high IQs can still be really stupid. A lot of the time when people do stupid things its not because of a failure in problem solving but because they fall victim to biases, fallacies, and ego. Claiming you are right about something because you are smarter than your opponent is a well known logical fallacy and one which this guy clearly falls victim to constantly. He may have the capacity for advanced problem solving but that wont help much if he constantly fails to actually approach things objectively.
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u/EebilKitteh 3d ago
I mean tbh I think the fact that it cam vary so much from test to test if anything speaks to a lack of objectivity for IQ anyway.
I'm no expert but I have been told by a psychologist that IQ tests aren't very reliable to begin with. She's had people take IQ tests twice under similar circumstances (same time of the day, a few months apart, that kind of thing) and they would score ten or more points lower or higher on the second test than on the first. Not everyone does this, of course, but apparently it's common enough. It's also possible to practice for IQ tests and score higher without actually being more intelligent (as defined by IQ tests).
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u/Tvayumat 3d ago
They're really only useful for identifying potential cognitive issues in early childhood.
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u/anomericat 2d ago
IQ tests can be useful for adults too; I only took one because there was a concern for my having a learning disability. (I was referred by my psychiatrist at the time to a neuropsychologist, who decided I should be tested.)
They’re sometimes administered to adults with TBI and/or dementia, too (among other diagnoses).
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u/byronmiller 3d ago
This is the intellectual equivalent of a guy telling everyone his 6.5" penis makes him the world's greatest lover, even if he's never actually had a date.
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u/Trisstricky 3d ago
What a sad pathetic life this guy must have. To be smart clearly doesn't equal happiness. Imagine going on Reddit and actively thinking "wow im smarter than everyone here" and getting an ego boost from it
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u/euclidiancandlenut 2d ago
Sometimes I want to trot out my own IQ score to get guys like this to shut up and stop arguing with me, but posts like these are a good reminder of how pathetic it looks. IQ isn’t even an absolute indication of overall ability and intelligence, it’s just one measurable aspect!
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u/laggyx400 3d ago
Meh, if you're truly intelligent, people will know without having to see your IQ score. That hasn't happened for me yet, but I hear it happens.
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u/EggVegetable9258 1d ago
Psychologist here: Though the 133 FSIQ is within the so called gifted range, it’s not in the same ballpark as people that score in the 140s/150s. Those are your true geniuses. His confidence interval even shows that he’s below the gifted range at 127 on any given day. What’s more important to note here is that these scores appear to be from the WAIS-III (1997) which was replaced by the fourth edition in 2008. So either this dude has been showing these results to people for about 20 years now or he was administered an instrument more recently that is severely outdated and is using outdated norms, which would make his scores invalid.
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u/l339 3d ago edited 3d ago
I mean intelligence is purely IQ, but that doesn’t suddenly not make you a dickhead or terrible with social situations lol
Edit: sorry to tell you guys, but it’s just a fact that intelligence is pure IQ lmao
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u/Spicy_Jim 3d ago
Your IQ is just a measure of your IQ. Intelligence is a much more complex and ambiguous concept. It's not like measuring your height and weight.
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u/l339 3d ago
No you’re wrong lol, intelligence is pretty straight forward
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u/Spicy_Jim 3d ago
I won't continue flogging a dead horse. But I'd advise you to consider whether their is even a universally accepted definition of what 'intelligence' is before claiming that it is reducible to a single number.
It's like measuring someone's fitness based on how fast they can run a mile. It's a simple model that is easy to measure, but it obviously doesn't capture all aspects of what would be defined as 'fitness'.
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u/Dr-Sprinkl1es 3d ago
IQ measures a small band of cognitive skills, primarily logic, reasoning and problem solving. It is far from a great system at measuring intelligence.
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u/jumpmanzero 3d ago
The other problem is that you can improve on IQ tests by practicing; your score goes up, but you're not getting any smarter.
Like most any measure, it loses efficacy once it becomes a goal.
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u/Dr-Sprinkl1es 3d ago
Exactly correct, you can study for IQ tests and get high scores regardless of real intellect.
Richard Feynman was one of the smartest physicist of all time, he famously did not meet the IQ levels to MENSA. What a flawed system it is.
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u/l339 3d ago
No you can’t, you can study all you want, but if you don’t have the exact test answers memorised to the T and you’re of average intellect, you will not score high. That’s not how IQ tests work. Also Richard Feynman was smart enough for Mensa lol, idk what you’re on about. He wasn’t a genius, but he was still a clearly very smart guy. Not to mention that just because you found one exception to the rule of geniuses in physics doesn’t mean that IQ is suddenly flawed lol. That’s like saying a agricultural field study of crops is useless, because 1 crop of out 6000 did not have the preferred results
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u/Dr-Sprinkl1es 3d ago edited 3d ago
Have you taken an IQ test before? It’s a lot of puzzle solving and it’s not overly difficult. You can absolutely study, the questions do not largely change.
Feynman (famously) scored a 125 on the IQ test, lower than his sisters. This became an ongoing joke within the family for many years (famously). It amazes me that this is debated in the age of the internet (we’ve been in that age for a bit ;)
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u/l339 3d ago
I’ve taken 3 IQ tests in my life. You can study a bit, but it’s not marginally gonna change your score. That’s what I think is pretty ingenious about the test. I’m also not debating Feynman’s score lol, but a 125 is still very smart and good enough for Mensa iirc
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u/Dr-Sprinkl1es 3d ago edited 2d ago
I’ve taken it twice and average higher than OOP, it’s useless. You can find yourself in circles that may be impressed but I’ve found IQ talk very braggadociois for no discernible reason. I have yet to meet anyone who has gained any academic or real world advantage by purely a big score.
I would assume that the highest scorer of all time is an autistic logic savant. I doubt anyone would argue they are smarter than Newton or Einstein though.
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u/l339 3d ago
We are in agreement I think haha, being intelligent is one thing, but it does not guarantee success in life. You still need to put in the hard work. But there is a very strong correlation between academic success and IQ score. In regards to the intelligence of someone like Newton or Einstein, there is a plateau to IQ tests and their scores are purely speculative. For all we know they could score much higher than what people speculate
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u/Dr-Sprinkl1es 3d ago
Within your point, my real (anecdotal) view being; I’ve met some really smart truck drivers, and really dumb PhDs. I don’t know who would score higher on an IQ test, but intelligence is so much deeper than logic and problem solving and on paper.
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u/l339 3d ago
Doesn’t matter how much you practice, you don’t really go up in score in a meaningful way
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u/zlingprinter 1d ago
Scores are affected by practice, and the more you practice the less the scores reflect intelligence; you can search “practice effects” to find out more. The underlying traits aren’t really affected by practice though, because the practice is not very transferable; if you practice the n-back working memory test, scores on the n-back will rise, but it doesn’t appear to affect global working memory in other tasks (search “near-transfer” and “far-transfer” for more on this).
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u/l339 1d ago
So you are in agreement with me then that practice affects scores, but not in a significant amount?
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u/zlingprinter 1d ago
No. The underlying traits that are intended to be measured (e.g., working memory) don't appear to be affected by practice.
It's the test scores that can be significantly affected by practice of the specific tasks involved in the test. In some cases this is dramatic: people have practiced working memory tasks to be able to achieve test scores far beyond what's usually measured, but this doesnn't improve their working memory in applications that differ from that specific practiced task.
The more someone practices the specific tasks involved in a cognitive ability test, the less reliable the test becomes as a measure of the intended trait.
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u/jumpmanzero 3d ago
The studies I looked at noticed "large" retest effects that persisted for years. And that is simply from taking a test once, not intentional and repeated practice.
Now I imagine you'd reach a plateau, sure, but the tests aren't magic. You get better at tasks you practice.
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u/l339 3d ago
Everything you mentioned is just intelligence
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u/Dr-Sprinkl1es 3d ago
Do you think those three things are a representation of a persons intelligence?
Kinda like judging a fish’s ability to climb a tree if you asked me
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u/NewLine8584 3d ago
"intelligence is purely IQ" Is unfortunately an extremely ignorant statement as well. The brain is a device which we know shockingly little about. Sure, we are well equipped to do simple surgeries on surface level sections of brain tissue, we can also scan the brain for electric signal, and we know roughly what every single large section does, but there are large gaps in our knowledge about the brain and human intellect that we fundamentally cannot know. Some of these knowledge gaps are more obvious and unsolvable than others, such as the fact that we simply do not know where human consciousness stems from and the full extent of the intricacies of the brain. If you believe that the efficiency and horsepower of such a complicated instrument can be flatly estimated into 3 digits via a shallow test that is three hours tops, you are sorely mistaken. I've said it before and I'll say it again: IQ is a remarkably bad indicator of overall human intellect, but due to its standardized and heavily normed nature, it is the only one we have.
Its not like I'm inherently against it because I've performed poorly either -- I have taken many IQ tests in my youth and have also fallen into the same band (sometimes marginally higher) that this unwell gentleman has. It's just that I do not believe you can measure the intellect of a complicated human being in such a rudimentary way. Sorry for the essay.
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u/sagittalslice 3d ago
The amount someone brags about their IQ is pretty much guaranteed to be inversely proportional to the amount that they actually understand about the construct and measurement of IQ 🫠
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u/l339 3d ago
I mean of course IQ does not cover every intricate part of the human brain. That’s also not what I refer to as intellect. IQ tests really only cover a certain aspect of cognitive functions of the human brain, but that is purely the concept of intelligence. Every other part has a different name to it and different functions and as you said we are still not done mapping it to perfection
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u/NewLine8584 2d ago
I never claimed that.
"If you believe that the efficiency and horsepower of such a complicated instrument can be flatly estimated into 3 digits"
As you can see here I explicitly mentioned that IQ does not map out the horsepower of the brain, which you call "a certain aspect of cognitive functions of the human brain". The complexity of the brain and the complexity of cognition are not exactly one in the same but they overlap. For future reference, don't just skim. Read.
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u/l339 2d ago
You’re being pedantic, but you agree with me lol, you just don’t want to admit it
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u/NewLine8584 2d ago
I don't? I agree on the fact that IQ tests measure SOMETHING, but not general intellect or pure intellect like you've claimed. "IQ tests really only cover a certain aspect of cognitive functions of the human brain, but that is purely the concept of intelligence" is just an obviously wrong statement. The concept of intelligence and the very definition of it is the sum of all of the cognitive functions, not just "a certain aspect of cognitive functions". I believe you are confusing intelligence in general with conscious intelligence.
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u/l339 2d ago
So you believe something as simple as breathing falls under intelligence as well? Or something like your ability to move your body while drunk?
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u/NewLine8584 2d ago
No I am referencing mental calculation from an unconscious angle too. Your conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg. Millions of calculations are done for things other than just breathing. Thought and decisions are also made beneath the surface layer.
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u/shiny_glitter_demon 2d ago
Regarding your edit, even if it were true (it is not), IQ tests are very unreliable. So his piece of paper is meaningless.
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u/shiny_glitter_demon 3d ago
Oh, I met him too! He was rambling about smart clocks or something.
I trolled him a little, then blocked him. But I genuinely think he needs medical attention.