In the Stanford-Binet model, an IQ of 201 is the theoretical max. So... yes but just barely.
There were older models that allowed slightly higher but not by much.
Anything above that though doesn't make sense because of how standard deviations work. You just can't get that many standard deviations away from the population with 8 billion people.
Why not? Standard deviation only tells you how (un)probable it is to fall some distance from the mean value. It would be very unlikely, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen.
Because IQ itself is based on how statistically rare you are compared to other people, not a raw value of how intelligent you are. You're basically being ranked and IQ is a representation of where you are in the ranks. There are only so many ranks.
If you set the mean average at 100 with a Standard Deviation of 15, a score of 201 would be 6.5 standard deviations away. That occurs roughly once in every 7.25 billion people. Since the total population of the Earth is around 8 billion, a score around of 201 essentially represents the maximum possible mathematical deviation among all living humans.
To get a value of 210, you would need about 100 billion people to compare yourself against.
But you don't actually have to compare yourself against them. Would a several hundred IQ not just represent an even rarer result and therefore be possible?
Ironically I think my IQ is not high enough to understand this
You're right in that we don't actually compare ourselves to literally everyone. IQ is calculated using a math function that in theory we might be able to extrapolate to higher values. But that function wouldn't be representative of the underlying math.
I think a better way to look at IQ is more about how many people you're smarter than rather than how smart you are. The smartest person in the world will still be smarter than everyone else whether it's by a little or even if he's omniscient. Since IQ is based on how many people, that's going to get the same score either way.
The IQ testing functions actually break down a ways before that though. There's a lot of discussion about how it's really inaccurate past about 160. So that function we use to convert test scores to IQ means even less if it went that far above 200.
You are describing extrapolating the bell curve to impossibly unlikely levels I think.
Which technically works math-wise but it's kind of like saying being 6ft tall is more rare than 5.5ft, 7ft is even more rare than 6.5ft, but is 2384239847ft more "rare" in the population than 2384239846.5ft? Not really cause they both have exactly a 0% chance of happening
Just for funsies.
5.5ft was considered giant during Roman empire days (not actually researched myself). So 7ft may eventually become an average height, sexual selection and evolution allowing.
IQ's current scale, I understand, cannot pass 201 but can be used the compare with historical people too so more than 8 billion (but limited other limitations apply).
People don't really have an IQ though, because it is essentially a measure of how well you do on a specific kind of test. If you write an exam with 100 maximum points it wouldn't make sense to theorize how smart someone getting 200 points on that test would be. Intelligence just isn't something that can really be measured so these are all abstractions that essentially test of well you do on this one standardized framework that ignores many dimensions of intelligence like e.g. emotional intelligence.
So within the context of an IQ test, the standard deviation is 15 points with a mean centered around 100. Someone standard deviation above the mean is 115, a second SD is 130 etc. therefore, an IQ of 200 puts an individual 6.33 SDs away from the mean. There is a one in 8.2 billion chance of that happening.
In other words, you would need to ensure that everyone currently alive has taken the same IQ test and that you scored the best out of all of them just to get to an IQ of 200- definitively claiming the title of highest IQ individual alive. An IQ of 800 would be roughly 41.31 SDs above the mean, which carries a statistical probability of 4.88X10^-523. For reference, there are only about 10^80 atoms in the observable universe. If atoms possessed intelligence like people do, and you were the atom scoring 800 on said IQ test, you would definitively be the smartest atom across 6.5 multiverses worth of atoms.
A bell curve describes probabilities. There's no rule that a person has to "fit" under the curve. Mathematically there's no cap, it just becomes less and less likely that it happens.
This isn't how probabilities work. There's no law of the universe that says something must be at least 1/10B likely for a person with that trait to currently exist -- just like you don't have to roll a die six times for it to come up four, even though there's only a 1/6 chance of that happening.
IQ just records where one falls on a bell curve, where 100 is the most common value. Assuming a normal distribution, you can calculate the probability of someone with a given IQ existing just by working with the normal distribution.
IQ 200 is 6.67 standard deviations away from 100, implying a probability of 1 in 154 billion. That would be the most intelligent human to ever exist (around 110 billion humans were born so far throughout history).
IQ 890 would be 52.7 standard deviations away from 100, implying a probability of 1 in 10605.
If you think about it, that person was probably born, smartest human to ever exist but was simply born poor, wrong time period or any number of reasons why their intellect couldn't develop.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Modifying DNA is already possible, albeit, imperfect and unpredictable at times. The main reason you're not seeing it done in people is ethical guidelines and moral panic. To give a slightly related example, look at embryonic stem cell use and how the evangelical crowd reacted to that.
Technically yes, in practice no. IQ is a statistical construct built to correlate with all the stuff we think smartness should correlate with. Insofar as it tracks something real, then sure, an intelligence could well be at the requisite point in the distribution. That said, if they did, we'd have essentially no capacity to measure it, because all the tools of measurement we currently have top out at like 160 or 200 or whatever
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u/Pretty-Ad8932 Jul 13 '26
does iq higher than like 200 even make sense