I don't deny I have an ego, nor do I deny that in some ways it's outsized. And I don't deny that part of this is an ego-collision. And I know that there's nothing I can say to you to convince you of something you don't want to be convinced of.

But there's a reality about Masque's posting. I see a lot of revisionism in how he portrays events in a thread. I see him say things that make him look like he's playing victim. Instead of addressing things head on, he skates to the side and creates other issues that are irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is a common way that people with big egos avoid having to face the fact that they've made a mistake.

I also stand 100% by my claim that he would be a better poster and make better contributions to conversation if he were to take the time to be more concise in his writing and to avoid rambling on extremely tangential topics. I do not believe that the integrity of a Mensa puzzle in an airline magazine is logically connected to the integrity of international IQ tests.

I'm not making a big deal about it. Just think it's an interesting point in itself and important if it comes to tests that matter.

Understanding problems is a way to help excel at tests and to avoid tests with problematic problems. Solid area knowledge of whatever sized deal.

This is why to score high in IQ tests sometimes you can benefit from knowing fewer things (ie imagine younger versions of ourselves that didnt have all these advanced math sequences in mind to bother them as search directions or to force to tune out and waste resources to contain/restrict imagination lol). At some other cases experience may help boost imagination too.

You can also benefit from having meta-intelligence lol and empathy. Ie the study of IQ test logic and the audiences they target will restrict the ways you have to think to methods available to most people regardless of education. This is why i always know that mod solutions etc are not the answer for them but i do them for fun to mock them which is in fact an even harder effort that takes stronger intelligence if you need to recreate a potent alternative solution that maintains plausibility. That is meta meta intelligence lol. Very hard to prove successful of course it's like a complexity class hard problem lol.

Measuring intelligence is a process that should take days in my opinion.

All people also can vastly improve their intelligence with better education, rich experiences across cultures, proper nutrition and emotional creative boosting and overall optimism. Sleeping and day selection of the month can influence results too, even for men. I observe significant fluctuations and boost after substantial sleep. I think fruits and nuts may help too but thats a guess because they affect mood. So does chocolate. They all take you to a happier more creative place it seems.

So, what's your IQ?

Mine's

It only appears to be revisionism if you always assume the worse about other people and only attack them to score points and exaggerate perceived failures and conveniently stay silent in all the good moments which is seriously looking petty behavior uncharacteristic of self confident people.

Do you want them to make your near smearing effort easy now or protest to such obsession? Its the inspector Javert syndrome in action it seems. Intelligent people do not engage in such friction, they move on to better things and they are not concerned with reducing the perceived value of others. They offer better examples of their own instead. Such examples however require a genuine interest in cooperation and good will/friendship.

You need to let Aaron go. Right now!

Nooooooo! I NEEEEEEEEEEEEED THIS!!!!!

I only need to point to the first sentence of your first response to mine. You don't have the moral high road any more than I do.

I have never measured it in some official administered IQ test center under appropriate third party controlled conditions, only though decent magazines, online tests etc over the years and i have seen results from 145 to 157. Its certainly smaller than i would love it to be for Physics. You have to supplement that with more effort and persistence ie not giving up when something doesnt come fast enough as a solution. Stand up and fight again.

In my opinion true tests are typical Math Olympics type of problems say 6 hours to do 4 of them (or the international format of 6 problems over 2 days). There you can undoubtedly see that a true genius is 3.5 to 4 out of 4 very often (or the corresponding out of 42 as in 6x7). You know the kind of really rare brains. Other good brains are 2.5-3 (or 25-30) where i tended to be. That is still very good but the difference between 3 and 4 even 3.75 is astronomical.

We have to live with being subordinate. And I have a lot more to compensate for than you.

But focusing on the "relevant" helps.

If you work on some hard problem or try to understand something you can kind of see how smart you are from week to week or day to day depending on sleep and mood. So even if you dont measure it officially its the problem itself and the quality of your ideas that is doing the measurement for you internally.

All you can do when you hit a wall that requires superior IQ is to supplement your education and have faith that over time you can understand something if you work on it and try to free your brain from biases and rethink some approach. Sometimes i have found that a true technological black out can boost creativity. We have too much noise daily. If you dont have the pure high IQ you need time and internal focus.


Here is a true brilliant brain in action lol (say type 4 lol funny too); (watch more videos from this guy he is cool)





or maybe start here (intelligence can be funny, friendly and inspiring)



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9dric_Villani

masque, what would be an IQ to be comfortable with as a physicist? Regularly getting above 160 in the AA kind of tests? Maybe even up to 175 on a good day?

That topic may depend on personal perspective significantly. So here are my own thoughts as i have experienced that world in myself and others.


The absolute determination of these threshold comfort numbers is kind of hard/less meaningful to be honest. This is why i referred to the math Olympics that will never fail to detect great brains and verify quality brains (without ever producing any such numbers just by the results and proofs seen alone) (if you only pay attention to the positive results and do not eliminate those that for some reason did not do great at some point and keep offering them more chances to shine until they do).

I think 140 (say 2-3 sd above avg) and higher is ok (to feel relatively ok) depending what you do and then it becomes a process of knowledge and discipline. You can of course contribute a lot to science with even less. Anything over 165 is super lucky of course. Its another world. 175-180 if you trust these numbers is borderline abnormal brain basically that somehow benefited from a rare combination of Biology or early development. You generally can still have a discussion with people up to 170 and not feel they are disconnected. But you can certainly feel something is different with people higher than that. This is how you would feel to talk to Ramanujan, as if something is alien.

If you trust the estimates they give for Einstein (~165) many modern Physicists have similar level IQs and certainly many in the past and especially famous mathematicians then and today have had much higher than that. Also many gold medal winners in math Olympics at 16,17,18 who later had a good career may be smarter than Einstein and yet far less famous across world populations (Eg maybe Terence Tao is smarter).

So that should tell you that its not exactly impossible to be involved in something spectacularly interesting, in some discovery or synthesis without being extraordinarily abnormal in intellect. I consider Einstein still a normal human but not at all someone like Ramanujan. It also feels Von Neumann or Godel might have been even smarter than Einstein and kind of abnormal. Certainly Newton is up there too but not abnormal yet.

It appears that eg Feynman, Dirac, Heisenberg had similar IQ to that of Einstein. It might be possible that Witten and certainly many modern Fields Medal winners are smarter even (they certainly are handling much more complex math than Einstein ever did then). That should tell you how harder science is today than back then too. World class chess players are also out of this world more intelligent in raw terms of abstraction and speed. Some pretty abnormal brains there.

But it should also tell you that success in science is a lot more than pure IQ. Its passion, heart, motivation, love for knowledge , connections, environment, timing, luck etc.

Of course intelligence is such a multidimensional monster, its hard to use a score for all of it combined, possibly crude and naive. Some elements of intelligence in some rare brains may be extraordinary and in other areas they may be missing a lot compared to other smart or even avg people.


I am of the opinion that if you took any child that is not suffering from some condition that inhibits normal brain development and educated them properly and controlled their environment positively you could get over 140 even if they were 115 or 120 on their own left to deal with the world randomly.

But you cant create someone like Ramanujan, you can only discover and help them.

I expect in a better world that cares more for its members most people could be much smarter and happier by understanding better the world/nature and by having received opportunities to grow their imagination early on at very young age by a caring, stimulating environment.

I also think that there are personal fluctuations of creativity and mood and the effective IQ one notices is a function of many things that can lead to some remarkable days above the normal for that person.


In my opinion what is more important is coherent core education without gaps. A mind that has solid education can attack complex topics and not fall for basic mistakes or ignore connections that stem from missing some detail or being unable to detect inconsistencies. In a way a lack of coherence makes imagination harder to prove potent. It needs some understanding of the rules of the game in order to prove creative. Getting results leads to more results. It is a self feeding miracle once started. Success also makes one even more obsessed and confident as long as a core problem still remains an unrealized objective. The strong reason to live and work is there to stay. You love your work when it shows results.

I see the success of Einstein more as a result of a very well organized methodical thinking that cared to not leave gaps in the basic knowledge of the topics he worked on.

It is more like a dedicated honest effort to earn the capacity for synthesis even if you are not super intelligent. Love and effort wins kind of miracle. Just like you would expect from a true hero that didnt receive an abnormally rare brain but put to good work what they had. They made every day matter. Its hard to make every day matter without a stream of successes though.

The euphoria one has when they understand a topic is a significant motivating factor to further progress because the brain stays engaged/busy within this well understood system of ideas and the limits and objectives emerge naturally. You can depend on your tools. You feel like that at 17 in terms of basic topics because up to that point school has done a very methodical thorough job to introduce you to basic math and proofs that enable a form of conviction that nothing is impossible within that system of knowledge if you try hard enough. For most people gaps start to accumulate after that period because modern science and math is so vast and impossible to cover properly in our institutions. Life makes a mess of things too.

Good understanding of a topic makes you fearless and stimulates your imagination constantly because you constantly generate connections and decent trial ideas/proposals and eventually some will produce a positive development. Compare now with a fuzzy picture of someone smart but lazy that doesnt take effort to fill the knowledge gaps, discover the true limits of understanding, and the resulting capacity to deliver a synthesis is diminished significantly.

Give someone 140+ and a good program that cares for their education for a couple decades and the results will be much better than today where most are left on their own random walk. It wont generate an abnormally smart human but it will substantially enhance and discover natural gifts often left inert in many. Of course AI will change the game soon.

This reminds me of basketball

www.nba-allstar.com/players/lists/players-by-height.htm

It appears that basically the taller the better. But you are starting to get out of people when talking about 7-0 or above. First of all: they are really becoming rare. And secondly: naturally they often don't have the other talents and skills and the motivation necessary.

Maybe you could say the same about IQ in physics and math. Basically the higher the better. But you are getting into the same trouble: you have too few. For making a basket ball team and a league, alternatively a university and the total research community, you need all those with less. You even have Michael Jordans with the modest 6-6. That could be compared to Einstein with his IQ of "only" 165.

Ah yes, always clawing for that moral high ground. Reminds me of the politics forum. Good reason to stay away.

I think Mark Twain had something to say about this. You can laugh if you want.

Twain_Presidential_Candidate

There are plenty of smart people. The problem is that most of the smart people, in addition to being gifted in academics are also highly skilled in optimizing how hard they work. You have to be a strange sort of bird to both be able to get away with minimum effort and to be so blind as to not realize it.

Personally, the thread mostly reminds me of this: