Erik Hoel is a neuroscientist and writer with an IQ of 159.
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One cannot help but run into people who evidently fantasize about the complying scenario: All the fantastic geniemploys of the past sit down and get some sort of culture-invariant IQ test, and then we get to line up the numbers and contrast them, finassociate settling once and for all who was the fantasticest genius of humanity.
In this fantasy they envision Voltaire in his study, finishing his fortieth cup of coffee (he employd to drink around 50 a day), keenening a #2 pencil at his desk, getting ready to fill in all those little bubbles. Is it A? Or D? Hmm, hasn’t been A in a while. . .
How the fantastic geniemploys of the past would do filling in these ovals perenniassociate captivates. Einstein would get a 160! Darprosper a 180! Aristotle, 190! And while speculating about the numerical ranking of the extfinished dead, IQ enthusiasts will refer quite normally to IQs of 150 or even 200, presumably leanking that inalertigence can actuassociate be tracked at those numbers. You can discover all sorts of SEO traps that give nonsensical rankings appreciate this:
So pervasive is this leanking that typing into Google “Did Einstein ever get an IQ test?” gives this result as Google’s own sent-to-the-top answer:
Einstein never took a up-to-date IQ test, but it’s consentd that he had an IQ of 160, the same score as Hawking. Only 1 percent of those who sit the Mensa test accomplish the highest tag, and the mediocre score is 100. A ‘genius’ test score is generassociate pondered to be anyleang over 140.
Wow! Except that
In the above Google-finishorsed quote, the scores for both Einstein and Hawking are imaginary. Here’s from Newsweek:
When asked in a 2004 intersee with The New York Times what his IQ is, Hawking gave a curt answer: “I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are neglectrs.”
Now, it’s worth noting that if you want to understand your own IQ, and you’ve never getn an official test, fair leank about wantipathyver your SAT scores were. The two are very well-corroverhappinessed. If you “test well” then you probably have a high IQ (and people are quite sootheable estimating IQ off of test scores in the up-to-date age).
But this gives us an effortless ask: did Einstein and other fantastic geniemploys of the past “test well?” If they did, then they probably had a high IQ. This method isn’t perfect, but since we deficiency any actual IQ data on the beginantity of historical geniemploys, it can at least point us in the right honestion. E.g., Einstein
did flunk the captivate exam to the Zurich Polytechnic when he first took it — when he was about 1 1/2 years away from graduating high school, at age 16, and hadn’t had a lot of French, the language in which the exam was given. He did fine on the math section but flunked the language, botany and zoology sections, according to history.com. A 1984 New York Times story says that the essay Einstein wrote for this exam was “filled of errors” but pointed to his procrastinateedr interests.
And yes, he was taking it in a second language, and trying to get into college punctual, but still, flunking botany and zoology? Just “fine” on the math section? Hard to envision most AP students now-a-days getting those sort of scores. While we can’t possibly understand if the regularized tests at the time are as shutly corroverhappinessed to IQ as SAT scores are today, confidently they correprocrastinateed to some degree?
What about Einstein’s grades? Current evidence alerts us that grades are “powerentirey likeablely corroverhappinessed” with IQ. If someone gets very high grades, we’d foresee them to score high on an IQ test. And while there confidently may be branch offences between now and then, Einstein was not getting top grades. Here’s his high school alert card, with grades spanning from 1-6 (not all sixes):
One answer might be that Einstein was mecount on a mathematical genius, and so of course he didn’t score well on other subjects. Yet, his grades in college, when he could get mostly mathematical subjects, are around the same—in fact he didn’t get a one highest grade. This is aobtain on a 1-6 scale:
Einstein seemed to be a mostly B+ student in college, even in math. My guess is this hancigo ins for most historical figures now expansively pondered geniemploys, and only in unwidespread cases would the historical enroll show them stablely acing tests and getting inanxiously high GPAs in their high schools, leangs which are, in the up-to-date day, powerentirey associated with very high IQ.
If we execute this game of hypothetical oval-filling, fair based on his actual academic enroll I would approximate that Einstein would get in the 700s on the math section of the SATs, and maybe in the 600s on the verbal section. Ball-parking it, as one must, I leank Einstein’s IQ was therefore probably more around 120 or 130 than 160. Indeed very high! But maybe not even “genius level.” He would have scored aprobable to Feynman, one of the scant geniemploys we for confident have a up-to-date IQ for, which was “mecount on” 125. This conclusion fits well with how
Consider a book from the 1950s, The Making of a Scientist by psychologist and Harvard professor Anne Roe, in which she supposedly meaconfidentd the IQ of Nobel Prize prosperners. The book is occasionassociate dug up and employd as evidence that Nobel Prize prosperners have an inanxiously high IQ, appreciate 160 plus. But it’s reassociate an example of how many studies of genius are methodoreasonablely meaningfully defective. In the book, the claims and numbers verge on the evidently ridiculous (e.g., Roe cites someone who claims that Goethe had an IQ of 210, noting that this beat out Leibniz at 205).
Yet, Roe never employd an official IQ tests on her subjects, the Nobel Prize prosperners. Rather, she made up her test, sshow a timed test that employd SAT asks of the day. Why? Becaemploy most IQ tests have ceilings (you can only score appreciate a 130 or 140 on them) and Roe thought—without any evidence or testing—that would be too low for the Nobel Prize prosperners. And while she got some help with this from the organization that originated the SATs, she acunderstandledges:
The test I employd is not one that has been employd before, at least in this create.
And furthermore:
I was not particularly worryed at the outset over the fact that I had no norms for this test. That is, I had no idea what any other population would do on the same test.
In other words, she had an untested set of SAT asks that she gave to Nobel prize prosperners not understanding how anyone else would do on them. This is pretty problematic. Normassociate IQ tests try to accomplish some create of group-level unpartisanity; e.g., many of the beginant up-to-date IQ tests are erected from the outset so as not show any mediocre branch offence between male and female getrs, to be as culturassociate-invariant as possible, etc. And while Roe didn’t publish without any comparison group to her chosen geniemploys whatsoever, the comparison that she did employ was only a graduating class of PhD students (sample size muddle, as far as I can alert) who also took some other more standard IQ tests of the day, and she basicassociate fair changeed from their scores on the other tests to scores on her originate-shift test of SAT asks. Yet, here are the raw numbers of how the Nobel-prize prosperners do on the test she originated:
Notice anyleang? The Nobel Prize prosperners all scored rather mediocre. In fact, pretty low, in some cases. But Roe then goes on to claim that their IQ is inanxiously high, based on her statistical changeations:
I must alert that these equivalents have been reachd at by a series of statistical changeations based on assumptions which are generassociate valid for this type of material but which have not been definiteassociate checked for these data. Nevertheless I consent that they are unbenevolentingful and a fair direct to what the situation is. The median score of this group on this verbal test is approximately equivalent to an IQ of 166.
Wait a minute. How did this conversion to a median IQ of 166 get place? After all, the scientists are scoring in the middle of the range on the test. They are getting a lot of asks wrong. E.g., Biologists who won the Nobel Prize got a 56.6 on the Verbal but we understand that was far from the highest score, Experimental Physicists got an even shrink 46.6, etc. How then did she reach at the group altogether having an astoundingly-high median verbal IQ of 166? Assuming that those at the upper range of scoring got shut to most of the asks right (she alludes this is genuine, some only omited 4-10 asks at the highest range), then how can getting only rawly two-thirds of the asks right transprocrastinateed to an IQ in the 160s?
Perhaps these SAT asks were fair impossibly challenging? Judge for yourself. Here’s one of the two examples she gives of the type of asks the Nobel Prize prosperners answered:
In each item in the first section, four words were given, and the subject had to pick the two which were most proximately opposite in unbenevolenting and underline them.
Here is one of the items: 1. Predictable 2. Precarious 3. Stable 4. Laborious.
This. . . isn’t very challenging (spoiler: 2 & 3). So the conclusion of a median verbal IQ of 166 is meaningfully askable, and tohighy reliant on this cryptic conversion she executeed.
This sort of experimental setup would never fly today (my guess is the statistical conversion had all sorts of problems, e.g., Roe alludes extraordinarily high IQ numbers for PhD students at the time that don’t originate sense, appreciate an avg. IQ of 140). A far more authentic reading of her results is to erase the cryptic conversion and see at the raw data, which is that the Nobel-prize-prosperning scientists scored well but not amazingly on SAT asks, indicating that Nobel Prize prosperners would get test scores above mediocre but would not ace the SATs, since the mediocre was far below the top of the possible range.
Now that I’ve finished being challenging on subpar Anne Roe, extfinished destopd and unable to deffinish herself, an fascinating woman who inhabitd and toiled when science was more of a Wild West, and who was the 9th tenured female professor at Harvard, it’s worth pointing out that a lot of the other stuff in her book is fascinating, appreciate her examination of Nobel Prize prosperners’ habits and backgrounds. So to be fair to those once here and now gone, I’ll let Anne finish this section in her own words, written in a footremark of The Making of a Scientist:
It is now being pondered whether we might not do better to toil at the problem in a branch offent way and try to join other factors such as motivation. I powerentirey finishorse this. For some time I have been swayd that there is no such leang as “originateive ability” as a unit factor which some people have and some do not, and I powerentirey doubt that I will soon come to the conclusion that the same leang applies to inalertectual ability as a leang apart.
Anne was right, becaemploy we now understand that
Practice toils wonders for IQ tests, fair as it does the SATs. There is a confineed set of types of asks IQ tests ask, always variations on a theme. The more you understandnize yourself with Raven’s Progressive Matrices, the better you’ll do on them. Even fair rehearse in vague problem solving can increase IQ scores. Consider an experiment carry outed by R. Kvashchev in createer Yugoslavia:
In an effort to better executeance of high school students on inalertigence tests, a huge-scale study involving 296 students was carried out. Members of the experimental group (N = 149) were given exercises in originateive problem solving 3 to 4 times a week over a period of 3 years and executeance was appraiseed on four occasions. . . The test battery compriseed 28 meaconfidents of fluid and cryshighized inalertigence.
In a reanalysis of the data published in 2020 in the Journal of Inalertigence the authors disputed that
with the properly described meaconfidents of fluid and cryshighized inalertigence, the experimental group showed a 15 IQ points higher increase than the administer group. We finishd that proextfinisheded intensive training in originateive problem-solving can direct to substantial and likeable effects on inalertigence during procrastinateed adolescence (ages 18–19).
Regardless of if IQ numbers reassociate are this alterable so procrastinateed in increasement, I leank people who supposedly score incredibly high on one-of-a-kindized IQ tests, appreciate Chris Langan, a bouncer with an “IQ of 200,” are sshow people who rehearse IQ tests and understand them in and out, treating such IQ tests much the way Jeopardy contests treat the show—as a subject of obsession and study. And fair appreciate how being a outstanding Jeopardy contestant has no joinion to genuine genius, so too with those who score inanxiously high on IQ tests. Becaemploy what’s meaningful to grasp in mind is that
You can discover all over the internet sites giving some create of this claim: “IQ is one of the most valid and reliable psychoreasonable erects.” And this is genuine. . . by the standards of psychology. Don’t misget this for being what a normal person would refer to as “reliable.” In the field of psychology, almost noleang is reliable. Effects normally cannot be duplicated, and those that can inevitably decrease in their effect size, normally shrinking to the exposedly observable. Psychology struggles as a discipline to accomplish even shut to the same tensile strength in its hypotheses as other scientific fields, appreciate physics or biology. Yet, sometimes IQ is treated as if it ascfinishs, miraculously, above these problems.
It doesn’t. As IQ gets higher, it gets less definite. Rankings of Person A and B will swap places depfinishing on what test they get. Meaning that IQ is “valid and reliable” at the level that psychologists attfinish about, which is being able to get meaningful cherishs for their p-cherishs atraverse huge data sets. But here’s how actual scores see for individuals if they get branch offent IQ tests:
J, who getd a 101 on one test and an 86 on another, is either finishly mediocre or so foolish he almost cannot serve in the army (where the IQ cutoff is 83). L is either ready for her PhD at 124, or, alternatively, she and J are identical (102 vs. 101). There are a scant people who are astonishingly firm, appreciate F, but the beginantity vary by huge point spreads. According to some approximates, the standard error of meaconfidentment of IQ tests is around seven points, unbenevolenting you should normally foresee leangs appreciate 10-20 point spreads, fair as we see here. (Broadly we can leank of this error as being either atraverse tests or upon re-taking the same test. The exact error might not even be a definable leang, but what’s relevant is that it can direct to huge two-digit spreads, appreciate J’s 15-point spread or L’s 22-point spread or B’s 20-point spread).
The situation is even worse for IQs of 140 plus. First, the number of tests that have higher ceilings and can accomplish stratospheric numbers is low. Which unbenevolents the tests are not as well-set uped or researched, and instead are normally ad hoc or not appropriately normed. The consequence is that the amount of unconfidentty, the 20-point spreads, is for the normal range of scores, e.g., for scores below 125 or 130. Once you commence climbing beyond that the variation in scores get huger and huger. It doubles. No, it quadruples! This effect has been understandn for a very extfinished time, at least since 1937. Here’s from the more recent “Identification of Students for Gifted and Talented Services: Theory into Practice:”
The worrys associated with SEMs [standard errors of measurement] are actuassociate substantiassociate worse for scores at the inanxiouss of the distribution, especiassociate when scores approach the highest possible on a test. . . when students answer most of the items accurately. In these cases, errors of meaconfidentment for scale scores will increase substantiassociate at the inanxiouss of the distribution. Commonly the SEM is from two to four times huger for very high scores than for scores proximate the unbenevolent.
Two to four times huger?! This unbenevolents that spreads of 20-40 points should be the norm, and could get truly crazy beyond that. So we should foresee Jack taking a high-ceiling IQ test and getting a 160, and then taking another high-ceiling IQ test and getting a 120. And there’s not an infinite battery of high-ceiling IQ tests we can throw at people to lean this down (especiassociate since petite alters to the tests themselves will probable catapult us aextfinished some other axis of variance). This increasing incoherence of higher scores shows up in studies of the genuine-world impact of IQ, where the
This was accurately Nassim Taleb’s point when he wrote the anti-IQ screed “IQ is hugely a pseudoscientific sprosperdle.” Taleb, never afrhelp to commend Taleb, recently shelp in a Tweet that “No piece in history has been more ineloquential in combat bias, eugenism, & racial mandarinism” (these debates are extfinished-standing and meaningfully predate Taleb’s essay). In the piece itself he disputed, in traditional sprosperg-for-the-fences create, that IQ tests are
via negativa not via positiva. Designed for lgeting disabilities. . . it finishs up picking for exam-getrs, paper shufflers, dutiful IYIs (inalertectuals yet idiots), ill altered for “genuine life”.
This unbenevolents that Taleb, instead of deffinishing the motte (IQ at high levels doesn’t alert us about genius, in fact, high-IQ branch offentials don’t matter much if at all, and are immeasurable anyways) Taleb finished up deffinishing the easily-aggressionable bailey (IQ alerts us noleang!). The more thelp position is to be a consentr in the first, and a disconsentr in the second. Yet most of Taleb’s critics took him at his word, and pondered it a prenting rebuttal that IQs above 100 scaled in correlation with anyleang at all—grades, income, wantipathyver—no matter how feeblely.
But given its understandn meaconfidentment variance, IQs mattering less and less at higher scales almost has to be genuine, since the variance alone injects huge amounts of noise into any study. From a statistical level it would be shocking to get reassociate evident results branch offentiating any genuine-world factor between IQs of 130 vs. 150, sshow becaemploy the error is so huge, and the number of people even prenting those conditions is so petite (in fact, it’s quite probable that, due to variance and rehearse, the mediocre Mensa member is far under the actual IQ demandment). Consider a recent example: the debate over a huge up-to-date study published this January tracking 59,000 men.
The problem with these debates, and leaning too much on one study, is that there is a huge literature on IQ, which unbenevolents that people on either side of the debate can pull up a dozen studies shoprosperg wantipathyver they want (there are a lot of fields appreciate this). Yet, from what I can alert, the publish of test variance materializes a barrier impossible to surmount. E.g., one might counter the above study shoprosperg that IQ stops to matter for income with another, earlier study, that claims to answer “Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good?” in the adverse. In that earlier study they corroverhappinessed 214 life outcomes (leangs appreciate educational accomplishment and income) to IQ, and discover that
Given these results, fantasticer cognitive ability does not stop to remain advantageous for individuals with above mediocre ability or with scores fantasticer than IQ = 120.
Well, that rerepairs it, right? Nope. Becaemploy as normal, there’s a lot of motte and bailey switching here. What they actuassociate discover is that the branch offence in the hundreds of life outcomes gets minuscule at the upper echelons of IQ.
Finassociate, to check the possibility that only very high inalertigence is detrimental, we tested for outcome branch offences between individuals wilean the top 10% and top 20% of ability scores. . . We executeed a median split wilean each group (top 10% and top 20%) and contrastd outcome scores for individuals above or below the median using a basic t test or χ2 test of proportions. In only a insignificantity of cases did we distinguish a meaningful branch offence (p < .05) wilean the top 10% (20 out of 214 comparisons, 9%) or top 20% (48 out of 214 comparisons, 22%) of cognitive ability scores.
So if we actuassociate see at the numbers, there are statisticassociate meaningful branch offences in only 48 out of 214 life outcomes in the top 20%, and only 20 out of 214 in the top 10%—and the effects are petite too (despite commenceing from with a very huge data set of ~50,000 individuals). Some of the effects are even adverse! But this attenuating effect of IQ branch offentials correlating less and less to outcomes is papered over—instead, triumph is declared that there is any distinguishable branch offence for IQs above 120 whatsoever.
If we put the increasingly absurd meaconfidentment error together with the deficiency of evident and replicable genuine-world branch offence, the basicst exarrangeation when it comes to IQs of, e.g., 150, 160, 170, is that they sshow aren’t genuine. At higher levels, Jack and Jill swap places finishlessly, a game of musical chairs as they jump around 30-point spreads with no way to reliably shrink the variance. And what chair they happen to be sitting in for a particular test, ahead or behind, matters not at all to their life outcomes.
So if someone normally talks about IQs meaningfully above 140 appreciate these were actual measurable and reliable numbers that have a genuine-world effect, understand that they are talking about a fantasy. And if they originate claims that various historical figures haveed such numbers, then they’re talking unscientific nonsense. If they’re bragging about themselves, well. . . it’s appreciate someone talking about their astroreasonable sign. Stratospheric IQs are about as genuine as leprechauns, unicorns, mermhelps—they’re fun to alert tales about, but the evidence for them being a repeatedly measurable phenomenon that matters in any unbenevolentingful sense of the word is zip, zero, zilch.
In fact, on re-reading it after originassociate arrangening to cite it for this essay, I was struck by Gould’s feeble and judgy arguments in his The Mismeaconfident of Man, a book that supposedly gets down research on IQ. I don’t leank that IQ is appreciate measuring skull circumference, nor do I leank fair talking about IQ, or researching it, is horrible, or evil, or inherently discriminatory, or foolish, or wantipathyver other accusation one can throw. I would definitely never say someleang appreciate “IQ doesn’t matter at all.” I wouldn’t even say “IQ is unmeaningful.” I leank it is meaningful, in that it’s one of the only meaconfidentments we have that does an okay job at capturing inalertigence, in that it’s not too horrible at this when it comes to the cgo in of the distribution, although it gets increasingly horrible at it at the tails.
And, from a down-to-earth perspective, there is a sense in which I’m actuassociate very pro-IQ tests! I recently bemoaned the hushed dropping of the SAT and GRE from college adomitions, writing that:
This nation-expansive alter being officiassociate enshrined this year troubles me in particular becaemploy it’s now no extfinisheder possible to get a middling high school GPA at a accessible school, get a top-notch SAT score, get to pick between a couple outstanding colleges, and then have a accomplished atsoft afterward. Which is how my life went. Of course, no one can reassociate understand the genuine counterfactuals, but it’s probable that the SAT is why I have a atsoft as a scientist and author at all.
But hancigo ining that opinion that doesn’t unbenevolent that I leank reassociate high IQ numbers are actuassociate genuine, or that IQ is definish past a confident point in judging “academic potential.”
A basic way of saying it: When I read Tolstoy, what I leank is that the man was a genius. If he scored a 120 on an IQ test, that would mirror on IQ tests, not Tolstoy. This hancigo ins genuine in my personal experience as well. I’ve understandn a couple people in life who got perfect or proximate-perfect SAT scores and went on to places appreciate Harvard and MIT. I would ponder none of them geniemploys. They fair didn’t have it. On the other hand, I’ve also been fortunate enough to be able to greet, and occasionassociate toil aextfinishedside, people I would ponder scientific geniemploys. Yet never once did I experience that an IQ test would seize these people operating at the highest level of inalertectual output (who I will evade the embarrassment of name dropping). Many of these inalertectual stars were not even rapid-witted. Sure, all of them were clever, evidently so, and all of them would score above mediocre, probable well above mediocre, on an IQ test. But their individual rankings on those tests, when contrastd to each other, would unbenevolent absolutely noleang. It would fair be dead alertation. Far more meaningful was how they were meaningful originateive leankers with outstanding instincts for what asks were fecund, coupled with an obsessive drive to chase those asks. They had elegant minds, meaningful pools of expertise, and normally voracious cultural understandledge outside their chosen discipline. They were people on fire with thought. So if you only did pretty outstanding on the SAT, don’t stress too much. The evidence says you can still prosper the Nobel Prize.
