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Many people seem to think there’s a perfect correlation between IQ and academic achievements. So for example, if you achieve some great academic accomplishment, you are declared brilliant in perpetuity and no amount of evidence to the contrary can rob you of the title. So you often hear people make comments like “there’s no correlation between IQ and money; I know a PhD who’s on welfare” or “there’s no correlation between IQ and brain size; that famous math professor has a brain the size of an apple. Do your research!” Never once does it occur to people that the PhD welfare recipient and the apple-brained math professor, while probably both intelligent, are significantly less intelligent than normal PhDs and math professors.
Ted Kaczynski is a good example of why a more holistic view is tenable. Ted Kaczynski was clearly spectacularly accomplished academically; one of the youngest Harvard educated STEM professors in America…I’ve previously estimated that the average professor has an IQ around 130. STEM professors would probably be closer to 140. Precocious Harvard educated STEM professors should be around 150. And yet, Kaczynski ended up dirt poor, struggling to live off the land like a homeless man with no running water or electricity.
Now many people would say “obviously there’s no correlation between stratospheric IQ and money, since Kaczynski was clearly above IQ 150 and lived like a homeless man.” But Kaczynski’s IQ wasn’t anywhere near 150, and that’s the point. Kaczynski, is actually an excellent example of just how robust the IQ income correlation really is, because his IQ is not what you’d expect from the typical precocious Harvard educated STEM professor, his IQ is what you’d expect from a homeless Harvard educated former STEM professor.
Let’s say there are 600,000 homeless in America at any given time, and that Kaczynski was the most academically accomplished homeless type person in America. That would make Kaczynski about 4.7 standard deviations (SD) above the homeless mean. The correlation between IQ and academic accomplishments is about 0.65. One might expect it to be smaller in a restricted sample like the homeless, but the homeless appear to be a little more cognitively variable than the general population so perhaps not. Thus Kaczynski’s IQ should 4.7 SD (0.65) = 3.1 SD above the homeless mean. A recent study found that the WASI full-scale IQ distribution of the homeless has a mean of 84.3 and an SD of 15.7. The WASI was published in 1999, and the study was published in 2011, so we should probably subtract 3.6 points for old norms which expire at a rate of 0.3 points a year, so let’s say the homeless have a mean IQ of 81 (SD 15.7). This mean may be further inflated by the fact that the WASI was normed on the U.S. population, not on an exclusively Nordic ancestry population (as per the current convention in peer reviewed IQ articles) so for simplicity, let’s just say the homeless have a mean IQ of about 80 (SD 15.7), which makes Kaczynski’s expected IQ (3.1 SD above the homeless mean):
3.1 SD(15.7) + 80 = 129
So the most academically accomplished homeless type person in America should have an IQ around 130. As I previously discussed, Kaczynski scored a full-scale IQ of 136 on the WAIS-R, but the norms were about 15 year old at the time he was tested, making his actual IQ 132. Subtract another couple points for the fact that the WAIS-R was normed on the U.S. population, and he would be hovering around the 130 mark, exactly as simple regression would predict for a homeless Harvard educated former STEM professor, and much lower than expected for a typical precocious Harvard educated former STEM professor.
So instead of Kaczynski being an example of IQ having no, or even negative correlation with money among the brilliant or hyper-educated, he’s an example of how financial success provides useful independent information about a person’s IQ, even when they’re a precocious Harvard educated former STEM professor. This demonstrates that IQ tests really do measure intelligence, and not just narrow book smarts, because people who have spectacular book smarts, but lack the street smarts to adapt to the real world have much lower IQ’s than those who are stars in both school and life.
Some might object that Kaczynski was poor by choice, as an ideological statement, and that such adherence to principle, may demonstrate extraordinary brilliance. But the fact that money and IQ are correlated is just a statistic, and statistics don’t ask how or why. One could argue that given the endless benefits of money in modern society, choosing to be poor, when you have the option of being rich, shows even less intelligence than being unable to make money despite being hyper-motivated. Though I’m not sure I’d go that far.
All you child prodigies stick together 🙂
Based on my analysis of WISC-R norms, roughly 1% of 10 year olds perform like 16.7 year olds psychometrically, if if I recall. So a ratio IQ of 167 at age 10 is commensurate with his WAIS-R score, & the Binet probably had old norms when he was tested which further inflated the score.
There’s not a perfect correlation between IQ & math talent, let alone math accomplishment. The IQ’s of math prodigies would be normally distributed with a very high mean, but there are always those who are several SD below the mean, just as he’s several SD above the homeless mean
I think you’re underestimating how bright a 130 can be, especially with nutrition raising the average intelligence so high in recent decades. An IQ of 130 is the mental equivalent of a man being 6’4″ tall
“I think you’re underestimating how bright a 130 can be, especially with nutrition raising the average intelligence so high in recent decades.”
More like you have no clue how smart a tenured stem professor at a top school is. Look at Steve Hsu’s Roe data (google it). Your Math prodigy IQ is normally distributed is amusingly misguided too : it’s not a symmetric distribution for a start. Look at Steve Hsu’s data on hard iq thresholds for math and physics undergraduate gpa to educate yourself a little more.
Please stick to not posting comments on Hsu’s blog as you’re messing up the signal to noise ratio there. Thank you!
More like you have no clue how smart a tenured stem professor at a top school is. Look at Steve Hsu’s Roe data (google it).
Google it? I’ve BLOGGED about it:
http://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/the-iqs-of-academic-elites/
Your Math prodigy IQ is normally distributed is amusingly misguided too : it’s not a symmetric distribution for a start. Look at Steve Hsu’s data on hard iq thresholds for math and physics undergraduate gpa to educate yourself a little more.
I’m aware of Hsu’s excellent research. He found that in order to do well in math, you need to be above a certain threshold on the math SAT. That is admittedly evidence against my normal distribution assertion, but not especially so, because he only found the threshold effect on the very talent that math achievers are my definition good at. If math prodigies were administered global IQ test like the WAIS-IV, you might get a much more normal distribution, though the WAIS-IV probably doesn’t have sufficient ceiling unless you tested them when they were older.
Please stick to not posting comments on Hsu’s blog as you’re messing up the signal to noise ratio there. Thank you!
Or maybe just you could post there so the ratio could be zero. 🙂
Kaczynski might have been partly forced into poverty in the sense that he had trouble adapting to his job as a professor. His students gave him low ratings because he stuttered & mumbled too much during lectures causing him to quit his position.
And even if his poverty were entirely voluntarily, that in and of itself tells me his judgement might have been a little impaired, because who in their right mind would volunteer for extreme poverty, when they could be a prestihous professor…though perhaps given his personality, motivation & values, it may have made sense
170 seems more probable than 135. A discovery special many years back said his IQ is 170 and he skipped numerous grades, as well as being a prodigy..
But the putative 170 was probably a childhood ratio IQ (using outdated norms) which can be ridiculously high at age 10. For example, Marilyn Vos Savont scores 228 at age 10
How can you completely ignore the idea that. Some people believe in the Bible? This verse Matthew 19:24. Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Therefore some of the very most intelligent people do not care about earning money. Maybe Ted found Jesus, and denounced love of riches.
OH DANG
But Ted Kaczynski was not homeless he lived off the land and perused what he thought was the lifestyle he wanted to pursue. A lifestyle not only helpful to the environment but also to make up for his lack of social skills. They could possibly have a falsified IQ score but it’s hard to find somewher on the internet where this 170 IQ does not pop up and I find it hard to believe that no where has his legitimate IQ
What i always said, the idea of nutrition affect intelligence, out of womb, don’t seems make sense to me, specially when we are talking about adults. Your not-so-older post in ”Brain Size blog” about ”victorian english was a 75 iq” compared to modern iq tests. I try to understand what it’s mean, sorry. Explain me this part of psychometrics.
Kaczynski was or have polish or jewish ancestry?
What i always said, the idea of nutrition affect intelligence, out of womb, don’t seems make sense to me, specially when we are talking about adults.
Nutrition affects IQ within the womb. Babies today are born with larger head circumferences than they were in past generation and perform better on mental tests.
Your not-so-older post in ”Brain Size blog” about ”victorian english was a 75 iq” compared to modern iq tests. I try to understand what it’s mean, sorry. Explain me this part of psychometrics.
IQ tests are normed so that the average score for a Westerner is 100, but when you give people old IQ tests, they score above 100, suggesting that test performance is improving at a rate of about 2 to 4 points a decade (depending on the test) since the Victorian era. This is known as the Flynn effect. There are many theories as to what’s causing it. Some people believe better nutrition is improving brain size and complexity and making people genuinely smarter; others believe the greater test performance simply reflects better schooling & test sophistication in modern generations.
Thanks for explanation!!!
But, i think if this statistical and psychometric differences is true, so, is much probable iq will lost most of its fiability in the future (or not), because is absurd to imagine people in London with iq 75 in REAL iq 75, in 1800’s. No make any sense.
Head circumference seems related with iq only 0,3, right?
This statistical noise about iq scores in the past and today, seems explained predominantly by sofistication of tests, because older tests was strongly cultural biased and not measure pure intelligence or g but general knowledge.
Ted was completely Polish
So you mean the highest IQ homeless in US has around IQ 130s…Actually Kaczynski was not homeless, as far as I know, he had a cabin near Lincoln, Montana. Or?
I would like to add that criminality and intelligence correlation is -0.2. Not that high.
Number of friends and IQ have also a negative correlation. Ted Kaczynski was a recluse.
However, the highest correlation to his IQ, is his mathematical ability and writings, which are more reliable than his homelessness or his height (5′ 9″).
I think the fact that with such a high IQ, he chose to live that unusual life, should actually inflate his IQ estimate rather than depressing it. But this is more of a feeling rather than science…
I wonder, if there is a method to combine different correlations for a person, and come up with a combined estimate. I mean, if we know standard deviations for the correlated parameters for that person, could we add them or average them…and how to combine a negative correlation with a positive one,,, You are combining his homelessness with his academic accomplishment, and that he is a US citizen, but you are doing it differently, having the base as his homelessness. Would we get a different result, if we had the accomplishment as the base, and adding other lower correlated qualities on that…
I wonder if the correlated qualities should be independent of each other, I mean, without having correlations among each other.
I am only wondering…
So you mean the highest IQ homeless in US has around IQ 130s…Actually Kaczynski was not homeless, as far as I know, he had a cabin near Lincoln, Montana. Or?
No, assuming 600,000 homeless on a given night, the smartest homeless should be 4.7 SD above the homeless mean. Since the homeless have a mean IQ of about 80 and an SD of about 15.7, the smartest one should be:
80 + 4.7(15.7) = 154
But we don’t know if Kaczynski was the smartest homeless type person, but we can be reasonably sure he was the most academically accomplished one. So he would be 4.7 SD above the homeless mean in academic accomplishment, but since academic accomplishment only correlates 0.65 with IQ, his statistically expected IQ would be 0.65(4.7 SD) = 3.1 SD above the homeless mean:
80 + 3.1(15.7) = 129
Actually Kaczynski was not homeless, as far as I know, he had a cabin near Lincoln, Montana. Or?
True, he wasn’t technically homeless, but my math predicted his WAIS-R IQ so beautifully that I just figured he was close enough…he lived without running water or electricity, trying to live off the land but with no exploitable land around him to live off (hence his resentment of modernity). His standard of living could not have been much better than in a homeless shelter.
I think the fact that with such a high IQ, he chose to live that unusual life, should actually inflate his IQ estimate rather than depressing it. But this is more of a feeling rather than science…
That’s possible…The smartest person I’ve ever corresponded with felt that the optimum IQ for conventional success was 130 and that people who were above 150 were at risk of being total losers by society’s standards. It could be that my simple linear model is too simplistic, and that the actual correlation between IQ and money is curvilinear or something, but seeing as my equation so elegantly predicted his WAIS-R score, I’m inclined to prefer a more simple linear perspective; but that’s just my personal bias.
I wonder, if there is a method to combine different correlations for a person, and come up with a combined estimate. I mean, if we know standard deviations for the correlated parameters for that person, could we add them or average them…and how to combine a negative correlation with a positive one,,,
Yes, it’s called multiple regression. A member of Prometheus society suggested it to me because I was interested in estimating people’s IQ based on various physical & demographic IQ correlates. I used it here to estimate Oprah’s IQ based on income, brain size, and ethnicity:
http://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/multiple-regression-predicts-oprahs-iq-using-income-brain-size/
Thank you very much! I am learning a lot.
During his psychological evaluation after being caught Ted took the WAIS IQ test. The WAIS-R results were Verbal Score of 138, Performance Score of 124, and Full Scale Score of 136. Here is the psychological report: http://www.paulcooijmans.com/psychology/unabombreport.html
So you’re whole post is based on the authority of that last iq test he took under trial that involved proving awareness or unawareness of actions. And, the assumption that ted can be categorised as “homeless” which you validate as reasonable using the statement you are trying to prove. I could have taken average iq for 10 different categories of things that fit ted with less assumptions and each will return a different iq. For exame men with Ted’s socioeconomic background during childhood + black hair.
What a ridiculous post with a bitter taste of ego in both the post and the comment section. Just delete this.
I picked “homeless” & Harvard because they’re the most salient categories he belonged to & I liked the alliteration , but I agree he technically wasn’t homeless
You are combining his homelessness with his academic accomplishment, and that he is a US citizen, but you are doing it differently, having the base as his homelessness. Would we get a different result, if we had the accomplishment as the base, and adding other lower correlated qualities on that…
In theory it shouldn’t make a difference because it’s essentially like a multiple regression equation where the two variables predicting IQ are academic success and financial success. But in terms of how I was doing the math…
I suppose I could begin with the fact that he was a precocious Harvard educated tenured math professor. I suppose the average IQ of such people would be somewhere above 150. But he would be many standard deviations below their mean in income, however the correlation between IQ and income within this hyper-specific demographic might be small, or even negative., in which case I might indeed get a very different result. But doing the calculation would require too many guesses at this point.
“I think the fact that with such a high IQ, he chose to live that unusual life, should actually inflate his IQ estimate rather than depressing it.”
I agree with this statement. Part of the reason Ted seems to have hated technology is because a lot of it was loud like he hated airplanes due to there noise. Ted had very sensitive senses. I think he is what you call a Highly Sensitive Person. For him lights are brighter and noises are louder than they really are to the normal person. This is one of the reasons he isolated himself. He also was very avoidant of people. These eccentricities seem common among some geniuses. The chess genius Bobby Fischer also had this problem. When he played the one Russian for the chess championship Bobby complained that the cameras were too loud and the lights were too bright. Both Ted and Bobby are INTJ’s on the MBTI personality types and this is common behavior among the INTJ. INTJ’s make up like 1-2% of the world.
Ted was a visionary who understood the technology, not for itself, but in the hands of idiots, would become extremely oppressive.
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Look you are putting too much faith into IQ tests.
Ted got into Harvard at 16 years old. And was at that point the youngest professor hired by Berkeley
His thesis was so complicated that one former professor quoted that only around 10-12 people in the entire world could understand it. And many of his peers at Harvard admitted that they didn’t understand it.
These achivements do not seem like “130” IQ to me, all the evidence suggests that he was probably in the 5%-10% of his peer group of 140 average IQ.
Godslayer,
I may indeed be putting too much faith in his WAIS-R IQ; and indeed in my most recent post, I argue that his SAT scores probably would have equated to an IQ around 150.
But the reasons I was putting so much faith in his WAIS-R score were:
1) The WAIS-R is incredibly g loaded because it consists of 11 subtests, making it like 11 different IQ tests rolled into one.
2) I’m concerned about circular reasoning. Everyone is always talking about how incredibly certain brilliant math geniuses are, but their primary evidence is the fact that they’re great at math. One needs independent evidence because although math talent is extremely g loaded, it’s not perfectly correlated with intelligence, so just as there are some extremely intelligent people who suck at math, statistically there should be some mathematically brilliant people who lack spectacular IQ’s; don’t you agree?
3) All scientific theories must be FALSIFIABLE but it seems the theory that all math geniuses have spectacular IQ’s is not falsifiable, because every time a math genius (whether Richard Feynman or Kaczynski) fails to score in the stratosphere on an IQ test, the score is dismissed as invalid. If it’s not possible to falsify the claim that all math geniuses have IQ’s above 150, then it’s simply an assertion of faith, rather than a scientific claim. On the other hand, I do agree that many IQ scores are indeed invalid, so it would be equally foolish to take all test scores at face value.
1. Theres no real evidence that the WAIS can measure extreme intelligence.
There is a reason why the IMO (international math olympiad) limits the age of the participants. And why they don’t have a adult version for adults to compete. Because math problems that can challenge adults take years of thinking to solve.
I am not saying the WAIS is useless. The WAIS is very good at predicting gifted children who don’t have a lot of crystalized intelligence to work with. And specific personality types and crystallized intelligence do effect WAIS scores. I would imagine that someone who spends a lot of time playing logic games would be inadvertently gaming for the WAIS and would score higher than top mathematicians.
2. If you ask the public how intelligence is defined. They would most likely say it is the ability to learn something and use it.
I would say that there is physical intelligence and mental intelligence.
Someone with a high physical intelligence would be able to replicate a physical action perfectly after minimal practice.
Likewise someone with high mental intelligence would be able to learn a new idea quickly and comprehensively to the point where he is able to use it.
In the extreme end imagine a guy picking up a math book, speed reading through it in a few hours and then later when presented with a math problem is able to solve it using mathematical tools that he just learned as well as using a new mathematical tool he just created.
This is what intelligence is defined as the ability to learn ideas, use and understand ideas and create new ideas.
Therefore there shouldn’t be any real reason for a disconnect between math and humanities other than crystallized knowledge. Mathematics is without a doubt the most abstract and complicated of ideas in academia. Any intelligent person with an interest in it should be able to learn it till they hit their limits.
3. Clearly there is something wrong with the test if it consistently underestimates top scientists while losers like langan and rick rosner are hailed as the second coming of Einstein based on their ability to solve brain teasers.
Logically it doesn’t even make sense that the WAIS is testing the intelligence that I defined in #2 above since it doesn’t teach anything or test the ability of the person in using that knowledge.
And is easily gamed by people who know the principal ideas behind the question.
You should read what godslayer says below. He is absolutely right.
You have no real knowledge of psychometrics. No understanding either. No capacity for complex reasoning on the subject because of this lack.
Again, you miss the point.
The WAIS is a test that has selected measures. These measurements are not measures of deep reasoning and logical reasoning. The WAIS has a .60 correlation with a certain test of critical thinking, which is more close to reasoning than a test that involves memory, cultural knowledge, digit span and all of that.
Ted would have soared on a test that measures matrix reasoning, abstract spatial skills and so on. These are “genius” traits. WAIS doesn’t measure genius. Probably school aptitude.
You say that it’s g-loaded. No one says that the traits of genius are found in these 11 sections.
That this section tests a wide range of non-reasoning and non-analytical skills just *dilutes* its ability to measure what we understand as intelligence for genius ability.
K was not homeless in the conventional sense.
He lived on land he owned and was almost entirely self-supporting.
Montana on $50 a year.
Was it mentioned that he went to Harvard at age 16?
And if non one’s mentioned it yet, K didn’t come from the best background, especially compared to the average Harvard student.
And so he may simply be an example of one who never had peers or people similar enough to him to develop in a “normal” way.
But that said his manifesto is total lucid, totally sane. It’s conclusions are radical, but they aren’t crazy. They have an ancient predecessor in Diogenes and others.
And, in a manner of speaking, even his terrorism was demonstrated to be sane even though evil, in that without it no one would ever have heard of K or read his manifesto.
At my university there were stickers on trash bins with the words “Unabomber for President”.
Kaczynski was autistic. There’s a significant correlation between ASD’s and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia tends to manifest in men at two age ranges. Late teens/early twenties. And early forties. He was early twenties when he went off the rails. My speculation is that he developed schizophrenia. That doesn’t mean he was completely bonkers but there’s no denying he was very odd. He was very odd even before he went off the rails. That’s why all the number games about this guy are meaningless. You can do all the regression analysis you want but Kaczynski was an individual not a statistic.
On some dimensions schizophrenia is like autism, but on other dimensions, they’re opposites :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18226-autism-and-schizophrenia-could-be-genetic-opposites.html#.VDc9yfq9Kc0
They’re not “genetic opposites”. They’re caused by similar genetic mutations that manifest in different ways due to unique gene complexes.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/276081.php
That’s why early onset schizophrenia in a sibling was associated with roughly a 12 times greater risk for autism in a sample of Israeli military conscripts.
http://www.futurity.org/autism-and-schizophrenia-may-share-root-cause/
Well my theory is that they’re opposites when it comes to life history, but similar when it comes to executive dysfunction:
https://pumpkinperson.com/2014/06/03/autism-schizophrenia-social-class/
Since executive function is genetic and life history, while also genetic, can vary within the same family, you’ll often have one sibling who is autistic and another who is schizophrenic, especially since the two conditions are often confused since they both involve executive dysfunction.
Lol, just because Ted was awake in a precocious age about bullshit of society, he turn schizophrenic….
And other thing. Autistics and many schizophrenic are not this hopeless people what you little mind is thinking. In fact, a lot of people here don’t know what is talking about.
Autistics on average are very sensitive-perceptive and schizophrenic too. The problem about schizophrenia is about the problem of difficult to separate reality from fantasy, combined with tendency to lower quantitative intelligence. But some hyper mentalistic people who are heterozigotic can be very perceptive, real ultimate intelligence.
During his psychological evaluation after being caught Ted took the WAIS IQ test. The WAIS-R results were Verbal Score of 138, Performance Score of 124, and Full Scale Score of 136.
Here is the psychological report: http://www.paulcooijmans.com/psychology/unabombreport.html
I think Pumpkin Person just likes to deflate the IQ of others to make himself seem more intelligent. He obviously has some issues with self-confidence and dominance.
It is probably true that Ted was demented by the time of assessment.
Ted has high abstract reasoning. The WAIS is not a good test of this deep ability. Another WAIS 136 is less intelligent than Ted. The intelligence qualities that his work required are not what the WAIS assess.
These comments are giving me cancer. Dr. Kaczynski tested at 167 as a young teen. He CHOSE his lifestyle. It is the way humans lived for thousands of years. He was not homeless. He owned his land and built his cabin. His lifestyle was consistent with the beliefs he espoused.
Refuse to profit the richer or seek approval from those with more power than you.
You will be homeless.
i am homeless with an IQ of 135. every day that goes by i get stupider. lately i am forgetful after 4 years. will never be the same again /bd
only way out of homelessness is a student loan.
I don’t know if makes a difference but Ted Kaczynski wasn’t homeless he lived in a small cabin he and his brother built by hand in the middle of nowhere. He chose to live free of industrial technology because he believed it made us drones and stole our freedoms. It seems to me a real scale of IQ would be based on education and practical application not opinionated analysis that’s hindered by personal beliefs. Also from what I’ve heard his IQ was actually around 162.
According to his childhood scores, he scored a 170 or a 168.
He had strong incentive to rebel against the test given him as he even rejected psychiatry but used psychiatric diagnoses in his manifesto , the chapter of ” Feelings of Inferiority”.
He was trying to rebel against the system.
Your argument implies Ted did not get tenure, he got tenure at 25 when most would not be done with their PhDs. He left of his own accord. He went to Harvard at 16 and was solving cutting edge bounded harmonic function problems in high school, publishing in undergraduate year. His peers said he was writing poetry while they were learning grammar. (Mathematical)
Kaczynski is a hero, and you are correct.
IQ is not enough alone. To succeed in many fields, you must be a being of pure sociopathic evil. Ted wasn’t, and isn’t. Heil Ted. Heil Hitler. Heil Victory!
This article is moronic. Kaczynski was mentally ill AND brilliant. Ted K showed some clear signs of paranoia, and there is a definite correlation between paranoid mental illnesses and either very high OR very low IQ (rather than average IQ levels).
His decisions and station in life had much more to do with his mental illness than his IQ. The fact that he was able to function enough to achieve so much academically is more of a testament to his incredible intellect overcoming extreme mental illness.
This article is a clear demonstration of intellectual gifts hindering reasonable conclusions.
Boy oh boy. Talk about not seeing the forest through the trees!
Many with next level IQs are heavily deficient in other areas including social communications. There appears to be a price the brain pays for such one sided gifts. Your article is a man forced into a room with the door slammed behind him. In front of him is a complicated puzzle of gears and pulleys leading up to vent in the ceiling. You savor the puzzle and get to work……. I just turn around and walk out the unlocked door.
Sometimes, people lust to overthink things.
This article is a clear demonstration of intellectual gifts hindering reasonable conclusions. OXYMORON.
Boy oh boy. Talk about not seeing the forest through the trees! FOR THE TREES FUCKTARD.
Many with next level IQs are heavily deficient in other areas including social communications. IG g IS A THING THERE ARE NO OTHER AREAS FUCKTARD There appears to be a price the brain pays for such one sided gifts. OXYMORON.
“And yet, Kaczynski ended up dirt poor, struggling to live off the land like a homeless man with no running water or electricity.”
This article ignores a huge factor in his life.
I suggest editing your title: From Harvard, to guinea pig for hallucinogenic and psychologically torturous experiments, to homeless
OR maybe your next article could be about Christopher Reeves entitled “From Superman to wheelchair: The legs of Christopher Reeves.” Maybe your conclusion can be that having legs has little to do with success in walking?
Wow! I’m not understanding all this blah blah blah about wether his IQwas 130, or 140 or 134. Oh my! He none the less was a Harvard student at age 16. That in it self says something! I do not believe the “average” person could pull that off. All I’m hearing is was the test accurate, was it not. What the variations to this or that!! BLAH BLAH BLAH! He achieved what most others could not – FACT! He “chose” to be poor – NOT FACT, unless he specially told someone he did, and even at that, his mental capacity would have to be considered. IQ does not test for mental stability, mental illness or a persons social aptitude to live in this world according to others rules. Maybe he chose his life style, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he had no choice but to conform to a life style his mental and social abilities allowed. And perhaps, just perhaps, he truly enjoyed a private lifestyle. Who is judge and jury of what a meaningful, fulfilling life should be? Smart people can be financially unstable just like financially unstable people can be smart. IQ does not determine our personalities, our mental and emotional well being. Truly genius people usually don’t make sense. At least not to the “average” population. People will guess, hypothocize, drum up answers, solutions, equations, rhymes and riddles as to why or how the genius mind works. However, no one will ever truly know!
I am homeless, and I have an IQ of 141. I live in a small boat, though
Ulysses are you in this kind of predicament ?
Or, is your boat your property ? Why can’t you have an IT or accounting or tax job ? Do you have mental problems ?
Good luck
There is no continuous, linear correlation with IQ and Financial success as in more IQ means more money. The reality is, as I believe, that to be financially successful
you have to be above average so you can organize and process information at an above average level. I have been around freaks of nature and often they are
societally spurned. Normal people are lost by High IQ people because they have a mental inter dependency chain where they can see a solar system of
interrelationships in their mind that most can’t see. The upshot of this can be a disconnection from the mainstream which would diminish relationship
adoption so often necessary to adopt business relationships. Actually, from my perspective money making is about having a product and/or service that is in high
demand. You can be brilliant and not find that product or service and therefore not be among the wealthy. Anyone reading this “TRUST” me when I tell you I
have been in presence of people who could plot polynomials in their head of significant order and were never wealthy nor did they care and if they did, they
may not have had the social acumen to achieve it. These guys can dance circles around most anyone inclusive of the wealthy. People have a difficult time dealing with
super smart people because they can get jealous of them and attempt to roadblock their success and unless you have a proverbial colonel parker who had the guns to perpetuate and marshal great Charismatic talent they can often not do well at all and could end up in poverty because of a series of preconditions. IQ and Poverty are not necessarily related either. This is a deep topic. There may be a sovereignty component to wealth too and the bible clearly indicates this and I am not pushing the bible. I believe in God and i will tell you one thing. You can’t beat God at Chess. You can be magnificent but God can order such that what your want does not come to fruition. God does not drop word documents on the doorstep so my advice is never to give up on your passions and follow them.
I’m a theoretical physics student and my dream is to rid myself of smartphones, the Internet and all that technology because it disrupts our dopamine system and attention span. Look at kids today, they spend 8 hours a day tapping on their phones, because they literally can’t stop doing it. They can’t go to bed because their brains scream for more funny videos and memes. So they go to bed with their phones, in secret from their parents, and pass out at 4am when they physically can’t look at any more memes.
Honestly, if you have a decent brain you will deduct that every piece of tech makes us dependent on it and weakens us. When we started wearing shoes, we lost the ability to walk with our own feet. They got too soft. High IQ people are rich? The wisest don’t need to be rich. While I’ve always loved physics, every day I see these signs that we’re living a life that is unsustainable and technology won’t fix that. Going backwards is the only solution. We need to live in the woods, with no Internet.