Given that Bill Cosby rose from humble beginnings to become one of the richest, most beloved, and most influential people in America, during an era of great racial discrimination, it’s interesting to ask what his IQ is. An article in tvguide.com provides a clue (emphasis mine):
Though Cosby is a prominent education advocate, he was a terrible student in school, opting to be the class clown instead of studying up. Because he never opened his geometry book, Cosby, who had the highest IQ in his grade, once took 12 pages to work out one of four problems on a test. He ended up getting that one right, but failed the test because he didn’t have time to attempt the other questions. The SATs? He scored a 500 total.
Critics of IQ tests (and even supporters like the Lion of the Blogosphere) often claim that IQ correlates with success, not because high IQ people behave intelligently in real life, but because you need to score high on the SAT (a disguised IQ test) to get into a good college to get into a successful career. In other words, test scores become a self-fulfilling prophecy, skeptics charge.
But Cosby is an example of someone who had the highest IQ in his grade and went on to become the richest and most popular African American of his generation despite flunking the SAT and attending a crappy college. In other words, he did well on the IQ test that didn’t matter, yet flunked the IQ test used for college admissions, yet still achieved spectacular success. This would indicate that IQ scores predict success because they predict intelligence, and not because they predict all important SAT scores.
An interesting study would be compare the future incomes of kids who flunked their SAT but did well on a regular IQ test with kids who flunked a regular IQ test but did well on the SAT. If the SAT > regular IQ test group was not more successful, then the “IQ scores are a self-fufilling prophecy” theory is debunked.
Here once again is Bill Cosby talking about his SAT scores:
Why do you assume he has a high IQ? So he may have had “the highest IQ in his grade.” His Wiki says he went to a mostly black high school in a poor part of Philadelphia, where he flunked out in the 10th grade. Thus he had the highest IQ in a pool where the average IQ was probably about 80, maybe even 75. From seeing and hearing him over the decades, I’d guess his IQ is about 105-110; in all those years, I’ve never heard him make a sharp observation that transcends conventional wisdom. And when I saw him on the Jimmy Fallon show about a month ago, he sounded almost retarded, or maybe it was early signs of dementia. In any case, he doesn’t seem like an exceptionally smart person. His (exceptionally) low SAT would seem to confirm that.
pp is “credulous”.
she doesn’t understand that biographers and journalists simply make things up to sell.
there are internet sites claiming Bill O’Riley scored near perfect on his SAT.
that didn’t happen.
but Gates, James Woods, Stiglitz, Bernanke, and Spitzer did.
Bill Cosby himself has been saying for years that he scored high on an IQ test. This is the same man who tells everyone he scored 500 on the SAT so if he’s honest enough to admit that, I doubt he’s fabricating his IQ score.
Assuming his school had an average IQ of 87 and an SD of 12.4 and about 1000 students, it’s totally believable that he got the highest score. It would imply an IQ of 125+ which sounds quite plausible.
Yeah I’m pretty suspicious of the O’Reilly claim….but then again he eventually went to Harvard.
he said the exact opposite on Letterman in the same interview where he talked about his SAT.
he said after he was given an IQ test he was put on probation at the hs for kids with high IQs, Central HS.
His comment on Letterman was ambiguous. My understanding is that a high IQ score got him admitted to Central HS, but then he flunked out (perhaps by doing poorly academic exams, not formal self-described IQ tests)
his comment was no more ambiguous than your sexual preference peeepeee.
It’s weird how you have all thee stories of people in professions that are considered to be ‘un-intellectual’ having really high IQs. It could be math/engineering people score average on IQ tests earlier in life and then ‘catch up’ by pursuing harder fields, and then the precocious kids who sore high do drama and stuff like that.
But keep in mind that I usually talk about people who made it to the absolute pinnacle of their field. Of course a one in a million entertainer should be smarter than the average engineer, but the median engineer will be smarter (and richer) than the median entertainer (some starving actor).
But most people don’t look at it that way.
I’d say the average working entertainer probably has more smarts than your average engineer. the entire field is chaos, and navigating that field requires smarts.
I think most entertainers – those who live by acting, singing, telling jokes, etc. – have an ability that’s akin to athletic ability.
Either you have a face the camera loves or you don’t. Either you have the comic’s gift for timing or you don’t. Either you can carry a tune or you can’t. Professional training can enhance your gifts, but not create them.
The comedian Ron White used to joke that his brain was only good for turning out two or three jokes a week. Other than that, he said, his mind was useless. I suspect that White is more typical of most successful comedians than is Cosby.
Perhaps the average working standup comic is smarter than the average working engineer, but the overall average for working entertainers would be dragged down by all the singers, dancers, reality show cast members, bad screenplay writers, bad actors, etc
Overall they’d be about 115 at the most ; engineers 120 at the least
‘ have an ability that’s akin to athletic ability.’
Are we differentiating now? According to you and yours, IQ/G/Whatever is like athletic ability anyway in that it is mostly innate.
Having a good voice may be like athletic ability, but it takes smarts to hit the right notes at the right time with your own interpretation (accents and dynamics).
‘The comedian Ron White used to joke that his brain was only good for turning out two or three jokes a week’
Go try and churn out “two or three” successful jokes a week. It’s an abstract process.
‘the overall average for working entertainers would be dragged down by all the singers, dancers, reality show cast members, bad screenplay writers, bad actors, etc’
It takes knowhow to get to a professional level. A working dancer needs to know how his or her body looks in various positions/poses/etc. It’s not just “the moves.” It’s “the line.” It’s the sync.
And even bad screenplay writers, so long as they are getting paid, are probably at least as smart as the average engineer.
Bad actors might drag it down…but to be an actor without the talent (smarts) for acting requires a healthy dose of attractiveness. And attractive people in general are, on average, smarter.
Reality show stars are just playing characters that they know people will tune in to see.
“Perhaps the average working standup comic is smarter than the average working engineer…”
I doubt it. Most comedians today just aren’t that smart.
A case could’ve been made back when the Borscht Belt was still thriving, and most jokes were verbal zingers that took some intelligence to craft.
But a lot more humor now is either physical – sight gags, physical mimicry, etc. – or the flouting of conventions. I don’t think either skill is highly correlated with IQ.
‘Overall they’d be about 115 at the most ; engineers 120 at the least’
If the average college grad’s IQ is 105, I don’t know why I’d think that the average engineer’s IQ is a full SD above that. the average engineering major LSAT score is 156, which is a good chunk less than IQ 120 ( ~ 160 according to some speculative chart based on high IQ society entrance requirements). average engineering major gmat score 593 — not so high. Even adding a little for supposed ‘bad-selection’ (only dumb engineering majors take the lsat or gmat) still brings us to around maybe 115.
swanknasty, i think you’re right. you have screenwriters and professions like that which require the syntheses of words, structure and creativity. It’s probably very hard skill to master and one that requires a lot of intelligence, maybe even more than most engineering. Most kids out of high school, many of whom have IQs in the 90-100 range, struggle with writing essays and can’t read well either. I would say writing a good screenplay would be harder than learning any calculus
‘I doubt it. Most comedians today just aren’t that smart.’
The studies 40 years ago suggested they were smart, and this little study indicates that they’re still smart.
‘Overall, the results of this study suggest that professional stand-up comedians are a distinct vocational group: they score higher on all humor styles, on humor ability, and on verbal intelligence than college students’
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/humor-sapiens/201312/comedians-smarts-humor-and-creativity
‘It’s probably very hard skill to master and one that requires a lot of intelligence’
Yeah, I understand why they’re dismissive. It’s because it seems easy. And it’s one thing for you to do a personal artistic thing and have everyone tell you ‘wow that was so amazing, you’re so good at x,’ and another for someone to say ‘wow that was good, I’m going to pay you to do x.’
Writing a good screenplay probably is as you say. And what’s probably infuriating is that if your screenplay is too good…about half of your critics will NOT understand it.
Christopher Nolan has this problem. Many negative reviews of Interstellar discuss “plot holes” that the film addresses indirectly.
“verbal zinger” = low IQ.
buddy hackett vs steve martin.
with the exception of Seinfeld and David, Jews are bad comedians, though enormously over-represented.
pink martinis is wrong as usual.
swank is right.
comedy doesn’t just happen for most comedians, including the good ones.
it’s hard, hard work. and if in the end you can’t do it, it may be too late to do anything else.
read Born Standing Up.
Seinfeld’s advice to comedians…”Just work.”
Will Ferrell’s interview on Charlie Rose was held for weeks because it was so boring.
and of course those two putatively most heritable of athletic abilities sprinting and jumping have Valery Borzov and Stefan Holm.
Macaca writes:
No, physical humor is low IQ. Jim Carrey talking through his butt cheeks, Chevy Chase’s pratfalls, Carrot Top’s props, etc.
True of any field, from athletics to chess.
the ultimate poke in the eye to hereditists:
‘No, physical humor is low IQ. Jim Carrey talking through his butt cheeks, Chevy Chase’s pratfalls, Carrot Top’s props, etc.’
Jim Carrey talking through his butt was funny because of the PUNS he made. “I’d like to ass you a few questions,” “Afraid I’d make a stink?!” “Do you have a mint, perhaps some binaca?” “Asshooollooomio, ooooh soooodoommmmy–aaaah,”
There’s also a -way- to fall that is funny. You can’t just fall -any- way and have it be funny. People do not like falls that indicate pain. You have to fall in a way that indicates humiliation without pain.
These forms of humor require imagination. Contrast that with the humor most writers have who are not comedians. A lot of it is lazy and the punchline is left to the reader.
My favorite example is: Really? I mean….really?. That is your average person’s humor versus the comedian’s. World of difference.
If the average college grad’s IQ is 105, I don’t know why I’d think that the average engineer’s IQ is a full SD above
On a scale where the average American has an IQ of 100 (SD = 15), the average college grad has an IQ of about 113 (SD 13.5) if I correctly recall the stats from the WAIS-III norming.
that. the average engineering major LSAT score is 156, which is a good chunk less than IQ 120
If I recall the LSAT population has a mean LSAT of 150 with an SD of 10. Assuming the LSAT population is equivalent to the college grad population, that would make 156 equivalent to IQ 121. It should be noted that Rushton found white South African engineering students scored IQ 118 on the Raven. And I’ve personally tested two professional engineers last winter and they both scored IQ 120. So everything seems to point to engineers having a mean IQ of 120.
At my university the engineering students all had leather jackets that said “engineering” and looked down at other students.
take my wife…please!
as Steve Martin said:
enough with comedy, let’s tell jokes.
‘On a scale where the average American has an IQ of 100 (SD = 15), the average college grad has an IQ of about 113 (SD 13.5) if I correctly recall the stats from the WAIS-III norming.’
The only data point for 115 I know of is as of ~1960’s.
‘If I recall the LSAT population has a mean LSAT of 150 with an SD of 10. Assuming the LSAT population is equivalent to the college grad population, that would make 156 equivalent to IQ 121.’
Mensa accepts 95th percentile on LSAT(GMAT too, incidentally), which ~ 167. Something’s got to give.
‘At my university the engineering students all had leather jackets that said “engineering” and looked down at other students.’
This sort of attitude is real.
and it largely the same with intelligence itself.
intelligence as measured by IQ tests isn’t something superadded or supervenient. smart people will have worked at being smart.
prof Shoe met a white Namibian in China and asked him about black Africans. according to Shoe the Namibian said that black Africans had the same potential but less motivation or “fire in the belly” and this was a result of it being so much easier to make a living in Africa than in Ice Age Europe or NE Asia.
And even bad screenplay writers, so long as they are getting paid, are probably at least as smart as the average engineer.
If the bad ones have IQ’s of 120+, it’s only because they got their job through nepotism, and their high IQs are high because they share the genes of a media mogul, not because bad script writing requires high IQ.
‘If the bad ones have IQ’s of 120+, it’s only because they got their job through nepotism, and their high IQs are high because they share the genes of a media mogul, not because bad script writing requires high IQ.’
No, it’s because even a “bad” script requires smarts to write, assuming it’s a bought script. Blockbusters have “bad” scripts. It takes smarts to write the kind of dialogue/scenes that you know people will eat up in a certain context.
‘intelligence as measured by IQ tests isn’t something superadded or supervenient. smart people will have worked at being smart.’
For sure.
Assuming your SD scales for college grads, a 167 on the LSAT = IQ 136 — way over the actual Mensa cut-off.
Like I said, you’re likely overestimating the smarts of your average engineer.
It takes smarts to write the kind of dialogue/scenes that you know people will eat up in a certain context.
There are plenty of screenwriters who get work, not because anyone eats up their writing, but because of nepotism, and then good directing, acting, cinematography, music, special effects, and/or good marketing keeps their lack of talent from being exposed.
Weren’t you arguing that Lena Dunham lacked high IQ. Well if she can lack high IQ, yet still become one of the most significant, wealthy, and articulate young writers out there, then imagine the IQs of the countless people who write direct to video splatter movies or porn, and only barely earn a living doing so
Assuming your SD scales for college grads, a 167 on the LSAT = IQ 136 — way over the actual Mensa cut-off.
Only 6 points over. Mensa was probably being conservative because any estimate requires an assumption about the IQs of LSAT takers, so might as well err on the side of keeping borderline scores out of Mensa.
‘Weren’t you arguing that Lena Dunham lacked high IQ.’
I argued that you were greatly overestimating her IQ. High is relative.
‘There are plenty of screenwriters who get work, not because anyone eats up their writing, but because of nepotism, and then good directing, acting, cinematography, music, special effects, and/or good marketing keeps their lack of talent from being exposed.’
That is not how it works. People can separate bad writing from good direction, camera angles, etc. All you need to do is listen. And I’m not disagreeing with you — those screenwriters aren’t particularly great screenwriters. HOWEVER…even that low level of competence requires some smarts. Just like being a not-so-great engineer also requires some smarts.
Or maybe Mensa is assuming LSAT takers are dumber than college grads, since a lot of college kids think they’re going to become lawyers & take the LSAT, only to discover they can’t even graduate from college.
Also, the smartest college kids are probably in STEM, and not aspiring lawyers.
‘Only 6 points over’
lol, 2.4 z versus 2 z. so they’re just wildly inaccurate.
OR…
Mensa assumes college grad has IQ 105 with SD 15. 95th percentile on LSAT is then ~ 1.64 SD above that. 1.64 x 15 = 24.6 + 105 ~ 130. Seems more like they assume a lower college grad IQ.
‘Or maybe Mensa is assuming LSAT takers are dumber than college grads, since a lot of college kids think they’re going to become lawyers & take the LSAT, only to discover they can’t even graduate from college.’
Unlikely. Individuals who are taking graduate tests are probably smarter than the average college grad, if anything.
peeepeee is grasping at straws as usual.
no one takes graduate school entrance exams who doesn’t graduate from college.
NO ONE.
the highest mean SAT score today is for English majors. but that includes the writing section.
the dean of Yale Law School, acceptance rate < 3%, said that the best UG major to prepare for law school was English.
it's a question of factor scores too. STEM will score higher in spatial. humanities majors on the verbal.
Mensa assumes college grad has IQ 105 with SD 15. 95th percentile on LSAT is then ~ 1.64 SD above that. 1.64 x 15 = 24.6 + 105 ~ 130. Seems more like they assume a lower college grad IQ.
Well the WAIS-R, the WAIS-III, and Charles Murray’s data all claim college grads have a mean IQ around 115. I think wordsum claims they have an IQ of 105, but wordsum is a very short IQ test so the results are very rough.
‘If you want to do well [in college], you should have an IQ of 115 or higher. Put another way, it makes sense for only about 15% of the population, 25% if one stretches it, to get a college education. And yet more than … 40% of all persons in their late teens are trying to go to a four-year college–enough people to absorb everyone down through an IQ of 104.’
That’s something Murray wrote. Seems like he thought the IQ of a college grad was dropping. He was also wrong. Getting a BA is cash money regardless of IQ.
On pg 63 of the book “Coming Apart” Murray has a chart showing 25 year old whites with a BA had a mean IQ of 113 in both 1982-89 and 2005-2009.
Of course white college grads are probably a bit higher than all U.S. college grads, so maybe the true figure is 110. That would reduce the LSAT IQ of engineers by 3 points, but still rounds to about 120.
Based on what, exactly?
Idk, I trust Mensa’s cutoff more because…well, what else do they do, really?
Just by raw numbers it can’t work. 33.5% of Americans have a BA which leaves us with what…+.4 z = top third? that’s about 106.
Just by raw numbers it can’t work. 33.5% of Americans have a BA which leaves us with what…+.4 z = top third? that’s about 106.
But the AVERAGE IQ of the top third is much higher than the minimum IQ of the top third. Of course the brightest top third is different from the most educated top third, but there’s a lot of overlap.
and in 1965, it was something like 12% men, 7% women, so let’s call it 10% to average (and there were extra decis after 12 and 7). That gives us ~118 avg IQ for college grads. which was down to about 115 in the mid-70’s. ya, think Murray’s wrong.
and iirc Murray and Hernstein also thought that elite law school grads were the smartest people in America.
a guy on my College Bowl team at the regionals who answered as many as I did went on to work for one London’s five “Magic Circle” law firms. his law school wasn’t elite, but he was a Russian major and that was a dear skill apparently. he’s a securities lawyer in Moscow.
The fact that the number keeps growing indicates that 106 is NOT the minimum.
Murray is a cross burning prole.
but the people who are getting bachelor’s degrees today are in fact as smart as the people who got them 50 years ago, if not smarter. theyre just less smart compared to everyone else today.
Sorry, swank, but Interstellar’s screenplay was a piece of shit.
Explain why
i think ‘sounding retarded’ is part of his shtick or persona, like some old guy trying to make sense of the crazy world around him
Cosby was admitted to Central High School, which only admitted high IQ students. I took a course from Thomas Bouchard, one of the most famous IQ researchers in history. The SAT has always had a much higher correlation with IQ for academically motivated students who study vocabulary lists and are familiar with the math content. In fact, the SAT correlates as high as .8 for some populations of students and as low as .4 for other populations of students. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test is a far better measure of IQ for most people. The WAIS retains its validity across varying population types. It is completely possible for a student to have high intelligence, but perform poorly on the SAT for a wide variety of reasons. This is even more true when it comes to the ACT, Of course, with proper training, it would be expected that Cosby would be able to improve his score tremendously.
I’m not American so I’ve never taken the SAT, but my sense is that it’s biased against kids from working class backgrounds. The WAIS is definitely not
it’s possible for someone to have very different scores on any two tests even of those tests have a hgih correlation.
but it’s unlikely.
In fact, the SAT correlates as high as .8 for some populations of students and as low as .4 for other populations of students. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test is a far better measure of IQ for most people. The WAIS retains its validity across varying population types.
just making shit up again. the WISC and WAIS aren’t even reliable when two different people administer it. the claims of reliability by the Psychological Corporation are lies.
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/51/1/149/
and half the Wechsler subtests don’t measure anything remotely useful.
like…put together these parts an object which should be familiar to you as fast as you can.
ok…so person 1 does it slightly faster than person 2. so what?
1. this isn’t an ability required for any kind of practical human activity.
2. what matters in the real world is can you put it together fast enough or at all.
half the Wechsler subtest are just silly.
and half the Wechsler subtests don’t measure anything remotely useful.
They’re all extremely useful. There’s not a working day that goes by that i don’t use virtually all the abilities on the Wechsler.
But that’s not even the point. Intelligence is the ability to adapt to any situation, not just the modern western world. What is useless in one environment is useful in another.
like…put together these parts an object which should be familiar to you as fast as you can.
ok…so person 1 does it slightly faster than person 2. so what?
1. this isn’t an ability required for any kind of practical human activity.
Spatial ability is unbelievably practical. Spatial geniuses are the people who actually make things & create the physical world
2. what matters in the real world is can you put it together fast enough or at all.
Fast enough varies depending on the situation. The faster you can observe spatial relations, the more likely you’ll be fast enough for whatever task or job you are doing
Wechsler scales are hard to score so examiners make mistakes but when the same person is tested twice the correlation is ridiculously high according to all the studies I’ve seen
if true there is a simple explanation.
the SAT and other such tests have a floor. Cosby’s score was the floor. a group who are bunched at the floor will have a lower correlation with the WAIS which has no floor or a much much lower floor at any rate.
Nationwide, 44% of high-school freshmen go on to attend college and 21% earn a bachelor’s degree in six years, the College Board said.
those 56% who don’t go to college don’t sit the SAT.
An interesting study would be compare the future incomes of kids who flunked their SAT but did well on a regular IQ test with kids who flunked a regular IQ test but did well on the SAT
there are no such kids if the tests were given at roughly the same time. if given a decade apart there might be a total of 1 in the whole country.
talent and IQ aren’t the same thing. very few high IQ types have any talent for entertainment of any kind.
exceptions might be the blind. but if they took the SAT in brail it wouldn’t be a problem.
“dyslexia” doesn’t exist. it has been dropped by the APA as a legitimate diagnosis.
there are no such kids if the tests were given at roughly the same time. if given a decade apart there might be a total of 1 in the whole country.
Yes there are. The correlation between SAT and Raven IQ when tested contemporaneously.is 0.72 (after correcting for range restriction):
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/6/373.short
so about 0.5% of people with an IQ equivalent of 130+ on one test would be below IQ 100 on the other, when tested around the same time.
no there are not.
the bivariate normal distribution is not the actual distribution.
duh!
besides pp your number is wrong.
with a rho of .72 a full 2% would score below average according to the model.
.72*2/sqrt(1-.72^2) = 2.075 about.
of course those scores would have to be real. it sounded to me like Cosby gave up on the SAT…didn’t really try.
unless you’re talking about everyone with an IQ > +2 on one test.
but even in that case it’s a full 1%.
.72*2/sqrt(1-.72^2) = 2.075 about.
“Mugabe”, the average IQ of people who score above 2 sigma on a test is more than 2 sigma (on that test), because it includes all the people who scored well above 2 sigma and none of the people who scored below.
On the other hand, the standard deviation (on the other test) would be less restricted than your formula implies because whatever variability exists among those who score above 130 on the first test would predict additional variability on the second test unaccounted for by your calculation.
But the two inaccuracies largely cancel each other out.
again with the delusional thinking pp. I was just trying to figure out where you came up with that incorrect .5%.
i already calculated the correct figure.
and it’s about .9 – 1%. I did the required integration numerically in Excel.
it’s 1.038*E(1 – PHI(X)| X > 2).
sorry that’s wrong. should be E(1 – PHI(1.038X)|X > 2).
and that’s .9% – 1%.
20% of the probability > 2 is between 2 and 2.1. (.98214 – .97725)/(1 – .97725) = .215.
the mean of the truncated normal dist, truncated at 2, is a little over 2.3 iirc.
So you were even more wrong than I claimed when you asserted that there were virtually no students who did well on the SAT and bad on regular IQ tests contemporaneously (and vice versa).
no.
I was right.
you were wrong.
the actual distribution is NOT bivariate normal.
peapea’s lack of mathematical sophistication reminds me of this:
https://screen.yahoo.com/chess-girls-000000603.html
the actual distribution is NOT bivariate normal.
Prove it.
the earth is not a perfect sphere.
all models are wrong, but some models are useful.
I had a professor of theoretical chemistry who even regarded quantum mechanics as “just a model”.
as Pete Rose said regarding his betting on baseball:
you can’t prove a negative.
the “proof” is that there are in fact no such kids.
that is, provided they’ve had 11-12 years of education in an American school and that they actually made an effort on both tests.
that is, provided they’ve had 11-12 years of education in an American school and that they actually made an effort on both tests.
Part of the reason two IQ tests don’t correlate perfectly is because people don’t try equally hard on both tests, so that’s factored into the correlation, and is irrelevant to your argument about the distribution.
FALSE.
math for girls.
according to Mademoiselle peeepeee if one simply folded his arms and left his SAT blank the .72 correlation between SAT and the Raven’s could be used to predict a CI for his Raven’s score.
give up blogging peeepeee until you turn 13.
according to Mademoiselle peeepeee if one simply folded his arms and left his SAT blank the .72 correlation between SAT and the Raven’s could be used to predict a CI for his Raven’s score.
If one assumes that all the variables that influence test scores (ability, knowledge, motivation) are normally distributed, then the arm folder would be several SD below the mean in motivation. Odds are his motivation would regress upwards to the mean when he took the Raven. In other words he would still be unmotivated, but not so unmotivated as to not take the test. Is the normal distribution perfectly observed? No. Do the imperfections matter enough to get obsessed over? Not to the non-autistics.
Do the imperfections matter enough to get obsessed over? Not to the non-autistics.
you’re the one who’s obsessed with the model’s fitting extreme outliers.
i’m the one who’s saying it DOES NOT.
the model says NOTHING about people who don’t make any effort. NOTHING.
that was the point.
but you’re too autistic to grasp it.
THERE ARE A TOTAL OF 0 KIDS WHO SCORE +2 ON THE SAT AND < 0 ON THE RAVEN'S.
Actually you’re 100% wrong. See scatter-plot C:
High iq and high risk taking —- comedian very high risk taking profession
Really creativity risk taking high iq in that order.
”Critics of IQ tests (and even supporters like the Lion of the Blogosphere) often claim that IQ correlates with success, not because high IQ people behave intelligently in real life, but because you need to score high on the SAT (a disguised IQ test) to get into a good college to get into a successful career. In other words, test scores become a self-fulfilling prophecy, skeptics charge”
Well, as i always said. Iq correlates with intelligence and ”earn more money” or to be ”successful” also correlates with intelligence, but isn’t only that. Intelligence (higher, average, lower, quantitative or qualitative) manifest itself in MANY WAYS.
Iq ”despise” the fact we do not live in PERFECT meritocratic societies. It mean that people work where are better. Only way to measure and compare decently the human intelligence at individual levels, will be when (if) this organisational philosophy of human life to be deployed.
”Gardner theory” make sense, the problem was political agenda inside these ”multiple intelligences theory”.
Well, as i always said. Iq correlates with intelligence and ”earn more money” or to be ”successful” also correlates with intelligence, but isn’t only that. Intelligence (higher, average, lower, quantitative or qualitative) manifest itself in MANY WAYS.
Intelligence does manifest in MANY WAYS. The way I look at it is an IQ test is just a sample of many of the most important ways intelligence manifests. They’re not perfect measures of intelligence but they’re very good approximations. Because it’s not possible to measure ALL of intelligence in a one hour test, so you just take a sample.
Is possible measure all of intelligence but without a mathematical way. Work of Kazimierz Dabrowski is a very efficient and holistic way, without any math determinism.
The only way cosbys iq can be found is by looking at his millitary record. The military is the most meritocratic organisation in us as training is vastly different from school learning. Cosby was a hospital corpsman in the navy, which is said to have an iq around 130.
http://corpsmen.askdefinebeta.com
130 sounds quite plausible. He had the highest score in his school. Even if the school had an average IQ around 85, assuming it had about 1000 students, you’d expect the highest IQ to be above 125 at the least (depending on the variability of the students)
it said highest in grade so you have to divide by 4 or so.
In the previous thread the learned Pincher Martin cited the original source which said the highest in the whole school.
what a joke.
few generals have IQs higher than 130.
but if the test is normed on the military then +2 SDs is NOT 130.
Hey P.P. what’re your thoughts on Ferguson riots in relation with HBD? Makes sense for low IQ population of blacks to reaction this way rather than enact positive change.
I read that during the LA riots in the 1990s, Bill Cosby used his authority as America’s father figure to get on TV and say something like “Don’t go out and riot. Stay home and watch the Cosby show instead.”
Let’s see.. I scored a 1100 ish on my PSAT, low enough to completely disqualify me from any merit scholarships then later I scored 1290 on the actual SAT… quite a big jump there. I think I remember being sick during the PSAT, but I don’t know for sure. And as others have said: Cosby might have just given up on the SAT. As a person in a creative field one thing I see a lot among creative types (especially young ones), regardless of how smart they are, is very little respect for tests or school. I think that may in part be because what they have to offer isn’t typically tested for in school. No one ever gave me an art test, or suggested I consider art school, even after I’d won or placed in nearly every art contest in my state. Our art high-school class was just a study hall with the occasional make work project. I don’t know of any stand up comedy academies Cosby could have gone to. A lot of us art freaks are expected to find our own way. Some of us do, some do eventually, others never do.
I’d imagine Cosby’s ‘stay in school’ mantra was something he picked up later, maybe after he became a father. I certainly tell kids to stay in school. In my experience a solid day job is a hell of a lot more useful for a creative than a degree in art or lit, specially now where so few programs stress fundamentals.
Well statistically education improves the odds of being successful so it’s good advice to give kids, even if it doesn’t apply to Cosby personally.
Stand up comedy is a very difficult field. it’s not enough to be smart.
I absolutely agree. Having an expressive face, a style that is unique, and something to talk about: a world view that resonates with your audience, these are just the things I can think of off the top of my head and I didn’t even mention the classics: delivery and timing. I hear about my expressive face a lot and I do great impressions but I don’t have the thing that makes the real comedians great: that great gaping hole inside that can only be filled with applause. I just don’t get anything from being on stage. I’d much rather toil away in my studio by myself.
Swanky Pete writes above:
IQ and athletic ability are both largely innate, but also uncorrelated with each other. You should know that.
I’m claiming that the ability to sing, act, tell jokes, etc. – let’s call it an “entertaining ability” – is also innate and uncorrelated with IQ. It’s similar to a set of uncorrelated physical skills. In most of these cases, success as a performer is not a byproduct of having a high IQ.
Like any field with large numbers of highly visible participants, you can easily find many smart people in the entertainment world with high IQs. And the more highly remunerated these performers are in their fields, the more likely they are to be smart – but not because of the quality of their professional skills, but because they’re better at managing their careers.
There are literally thousands of comedians funnier than Billy Crystal, for example, but Crystal is rich and they are not because Crystal has been very clever about managing his career.
The joke in Hollywood is that most actors are dumb and uneducated. One doesn’t need to go very far to find dumb singers. And most standup comedians are guys who just have a knack at telling jokes and making funny faces.
But not a complicated one.
There are templates for most jokes that even dumb comedians can quickly learn. You just plug in a couple new variables to make a new situation and you have a new joke. But it’s really based on the old joke. You aren’t creating anything new.
After that, your success in comedy will be based on things like your timing and the funny faces you make when telling your “new” jokes.
There’s just not that much real creativity in the field of humor. That’s why so many famous comedians – Denis Leary, Robin Williams, Carlos Mencia, even Bill Cosby, to name just a few – have gotten in trouble for using other comedians’ material.
I don’t think much of the Psychology Today article you linked to and its reliance on Samuel Janus’s studies in the 1970s. Forty years ago, American humor was more Jewish, less black, less Latin, and less southern white. This was a result of the strong Borscht Belt influence I mentioned earlier. American humor then was highly verbal. Janus’s 1975 study even made mention of the high number of Jewish performers in the field, saying “the majority were Jewish.”
‘I’m claiming that the ability to sing, act, tell jokes, etc. – let’s call it an “entertaining ability” – is also innate and uncorrelated with IQ’
telling/creating jokes is abstract and what evidence there is contradicts your theory here. the rest is just you discounting what it takes to be a good (read: working) entertainer.
‘But not a complicated one.’
Yes, spoken like someone who doesn’t need to churn out two or three new FUNNY jokes every week.
‘But it’s really based on the old joke. You aren’t creating anything new’
You do not understand jokes. The crux of the choke is the observation or analogy. The observation/analogy is what really makes the joke funny. You are talking about the format of conveying the joke, of which there are several, but the main form is setup-and-punchline.
90% of coming up with new jokes is coming up with the observation/analogy. And before you charge in here with ‘most observations are just things like men are different than women, etc. etc.’ those are categories of observations.
‘After that, your success in comedy will be based on things like your timing and the funny faces you make when telling your “new” jokes.’
No it won’t, this is ridiculous. Your success will be based off of how good your jokes are. Time and time again.
Take Robin Williams for example, in a classic improv line from Mrs. Doubtfire. He says, in a funny jewish voice, “I should never buy gribenes from a mohel. It’s so chewy.” The joke isn’t funny because of his stupid voice. Sure, the voice adds to the joke because it’s funny that an old jewish lady would be saying this, and to imagine her doing that is funny. But, what’s really funny is the connection between gum and the guy who does circumcisions.
‘I don’t think much of the Psychology Today article you linked to and its reliance on Samuel Janus’s studies in the 1970s. ‘
I don’t think much of your completely unbacked assertions about a field you seem to know nothing about.
‘Creating jokes requires some abstract ability, but it’s not high level once you learn a few formulas.’
there is no “formula” for a GOOD analogy.
‘Cosby’s brand of humor is an exception because he tells complex stories’
You are CONFUSING method of delivery with the actual analogy/observation. They are different things.
‘A professional comedy writer can give you and Ron White the exact same lines to deliver to an audience, and Ron White will be able to make a good living with those lines and you couldn’t get a single laugh out of them. Why? Because of natural timing, facial expressions, and the quality of voice.’
It depends on the jokes. A certain cache of jokes will work better when delivered from a certain character; it’s an ethos thing. The character stuff is more about general bodies of jokes and the types of analogies/observations you’re making.
These things you’re talking about, however, are also abstract — 1) write the joke, 2) formulate/deliver joke for maximum impact, 3) in a way that is congruent with MY mannerisms, voice, tone, etc.
Writing comedy requires smarts. Studies show it, cursory examination shows it.
‘But I’ve worked with former standup comedians, and as a group they are a dreadfully unintelligent lot.’
“I could do that I just don’t wanna.” Classic. By unintelligent you seem to mean uneducated. I wouldn’t disagree.
‘The philosopher Bertrand Russell discovered this truth ‘
Sounds like he didn’t quite understand what made the line funny and decided to write it off.
‘That’s innate. You can’t learn it. You either have it or you don’t.’
You learn humor. You learn delivery. Maybe you need some modicum of intelligence or insight….but after that it’s a lot of work.
‘He was preternaturally fast in his observations. ‘
Yes, I know. He probably was very smart indeed.
‘Any comedy writer could’ve created the association you find funny in the Mrs Doubtfire line. That’s not what makes it funny, though. ‘
How many wannabes does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None. First someone has to do it, and then the wannabes will tell you about how well they could have done it.
What makes the joke funny is the connection.
‘Some of his best “improv lines” were created by other comedians’
Don’t think this one was.
‘You clearly don’t understand what makes for a great comedian if you think Williams was great because of his observations.’
Observations/analogies. Yes, that’s what made him great. A lot of the time those observations/analogies were embedded in the funny voices etc. he used.
If he plagiarized or whatever, then that means he just stole a lot of good observations/analogies. Point is the same.
‘And yet I bet no one remembers that line except for you.’
lol yeah okay…
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=I+should+never+buy+gribenes+from+a+mohel+it%27s+so+chewy
Swanky,
A good analogy is not the same thing as a good joke.
Yeah, they are different things, but I’m not confusing them. I’m simply telling you which one is more important to a standup comic’s success.
Comics borrow from each other quite liberally because they recognize that who created a line is less important than who delivers it and how he delivers it. They’re masters of delivery, not creativity. They’re primarily performers, not writers. Those who can write usually move on to that task, if not exclusively, then prominently – Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Carl Reiner, for example.
The first comic skit to make Bill Cosby nationally famous was “Noah.” Here he is delivering an abbreviated version of it on the Jack Paar Program in the 1960s.
Now what are the funny elements in that skit? Clearly, they’re not ones based on the comic’s creativity. Cosby takes a well-known story, enhances it with great sound effects (the work of the saw, the voice of God, etc.), hams it up with facial expressions (Noah looking skeptically at the heavens), and then plays against what the audience knows as a serious story with humorous anachronistic elements (“What’s an arc?” “What’s a cubit?” “Am I on Candid Camera?”), turning Noah into a skeptical modern person who doesn’t really believe what’s happening to him.
Is there anything really creative about any of that? No. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cosby had heard some variation of the story somewhere else – if not applied to Noah, then to some other part of the Bible – and then adapted the elements for his own use.
And yet that skit launched Bill Cosby’s career as a standup comic.
They’re not abstract in any complex way that requires a high IQ to understand.
How much skill would it take to write “Noah”? You could do it easily in an afternoon.
Delivering the joke for maximum impact doesn’t take a comic much work, either. You can either sell the “Noah” skit or you can’t. You’re either funny or he’s not. You’re either a gifted mimic or he isn’t. You either have the kind of voice that can deliver a joke or he doesn’t.
Bill Cosby made the kids in his neighborhood school laugh long before he even knew what a standup comic was. Robin Williams was shy and intense as a young boy, but used comedy to make his withdrawn mother laugh. He was also voted “funniest” by his high school classmates in his Marin County high school. Jonathan Winters was creating humorous characters in his room as a boy.
Who were all the funny guys in your school? The gifted mimics. The class cut-ups? The ones who could tell a joke? Were they the high-IQ bunch? They certainly weren’t in my school. The funniest guys were the ones who went on to become police officers and farmers.
One probably needs a higher than average IQ to be a successful comedian only because one needs a higher than average IQ to be successful at any profession which has a few moving parts to it. But Richard Pryor, Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, Bill Burr, Sam Kinison, Denis Leary, etc. were not smart men with smart backgrounds. They were, and in some cases still are, just guys who knew how to make people laugh.
CORRECTION:
‘A good analogy is not the same thing as a good joke.’
Yes. The good analogy or observation forms the CORE of a good joke. Always necessary, not always sufficient — that sort of thing.
‘ I’m simply telling you which one is more important to a standup comic’s success.’
And you’re wrong. Good observations/analogies, whatever, are important. Both elements require smarts anyway.
‘Delivering the joke for maximum impact doesn’t take a comic much work, either. You can either sell the “Noah” skit or you can’t. You’re either funny or he’s not. You’re either a gifted mimic or he isn’t. You either have the kind of voice that can deliver a joke or he doesn’t’
This is just wrong. It does take a lot of work, which is why comedians spend hours working through their acts.
‘Who were all the funny guys in your school? ‘
Funny in a social setting is NOT the same as being paid to be funny.
‘But Richard Pryor, Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, Bill Burr, Sam Kinison, Denis Leary, etc. were not smart men with smart backgrounds. They were, and in some cases still are, just guys who knew how to make people laugh.’
Wild speculation, so whatever really. I have studies on my side. I have the fact that writing a joke is an abstract process on my side. I have the fact that several prominent comedians —- your steve martins, Louie C.K.’s etc. seem bright, on my side. you don’t have anything but these assertions.
Swanky,
Creating jokes requires some abstract ability, but it’s not high level once you learn a few formulas. And telling jokes does not require any such ability. (Cosby’s brand of humor is an exception because he tells complex stories; he doesn’t randomly stick together a bunch of one liners.)
Reading a map also requires abstract ability, but we don’t try to argue that the best truck drivers need high IQs.
I don’t want to. But I’ve worked with former standup comedians, and as a group they are a dreadfully unintelligent lot. They’re pretty funny, though.
Besides, writing jokes is not the same as delivering jokes to an audience. Which is why so many comedians hire writers to create the lines they then deliver. Some comedians like Bob Hope and Sid Caesar kept a stable of writers to deliver them fresh material on a regular basis.
REPOSTED FOR CLARITY:
Swanky,
Creating jokes requires some abstract ability, but it’s not high level once you learn a few formulas. And telling jokes does not require any such ability. (Cosby’s brand of humor is an exception because he tells complex stories; he doesn’t randomly stick together a bunch of one liners.)
Reading a map also requires abstract ability, but we don’t try to argue that the best truck drivers need high IQs.
I don’t want to. But I’ve worked with former standup comedians, and as a group they are a dreadfully unintelligent lot. They’re pretty funny, though.
Besides, writing jokes is not the same as delivering jokes to an audience. Which is why so many comedians hire writers to create the lines they then deliver. Some comedians like Bob Hope and Sid Caesar kept a stable of writers to deliver them fresh material on a regular basis.
A professional comedy writer can give you and Ron White the exact same lines to deliver to an audience, and Ron White will be able to make a good living with those lines and you couldn’t get a single laugh out of them. Why? Because of natural timing, facial expressions, and the quality of voice.
The philosopher Bertrand Russell discovered this truth when he reported that a famous comedian in his day, whose name I’ve forgotten, got a huge laugh out of a earnest line spoken at a dinner party, something like ‘my soup is cold”, simply because of his delivery and the expectation among the gathering that whatever came out of his mouth would be funny.
That’s innate. You can’t learn it. You either have it or you don’t.
And yet I bet no one remembers that line except for you.
Robin Williams is the poorest example you could have used. He was a gifted mimic who specialized in ethnic and regional voices (in the model of his hero Jonathan Winters). He was preternaturally fast in his observations. And he was superb at physical comedy.
Any comedy writer could’ve created the association you find funny in the Mrs Doubtfire line. That’s not what makes it funny, though. You need the comedian to sell it, and Williams was among the best at selling his lines.
Besides, are you even sure that line was created by Williams? Some of his best “improv lines” were created by other comedians, and yet here you are wanting to give him credit for an observation that most likely isn’t even his.
David Brenner once threatened to kick Williams’ ass if he ever used his material again. Williams admitted to paying money to many comedians whose material he has “accidentally” used.
You clearly don’t understand what makes for a great comedian if you think Williams was great because of his observations.
thanks for reposting for clarity.
at first I thought I was hearing you channel Jobraith.
now I know you are.
The best evidence of Cosby’s high IQ is that he was able to get away with raping so many women for so long.
dear God peeepeee is a moron.
there are at least a million blacks with Cosby’s Iq who do not have high income.
apparently peeepeee doesn’t know what “cause” means.
Dear God, you’re an idiot. I didn’t say high IQ causes high income for everyone, I said it caused HIS high income. And a lot of other factors caused it too.
I didn’t know Mrs. Doubtfire was a fan of Cosby’s.
Swank and Mugabe, what is the your opinions on MAOA and HBDer saying it is behind criminality and aggression in blacks?
they’re morons.
1. there is no consistent effect independent of environment.
2. Chinese have the highest frequency of the allele which supposedly “causes” black violent crime.
black crime is caused by lack of opportunity.
in shitmerica the prison business is booming.
in the Netherlands 19 prisons are being closed—too few criminals.
here i will answer this the same way I answer all ‘WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT THE BLACK PROBLEM’ queries:
facts hbders seem to overlook —->
According to the Human Rights Watch, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but they have higher rate of arrests. African Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users but are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison.
A report by the Department of Justice found that blacks and Hispanics were approximately three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white motorists.
African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.
The police stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites. In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the population, 80% of the NYPD stops were of blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked. When blacks and Latinos are stopped 85% were frisked according to information provided by the NYPD. The same is true most other places as well. In a California study, the ACLU found blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites.
Once arrested, blacks are more likely to remain in prison awaiting trial than whites. For example, the New York state division of criminal justice did a 1995 review of disparities in processing felony arrests and found that in some parts of New York blacks are 33% more likely to be detained awaiting felony trials than whites facing felony trials.
African Americans are frequently illegally excluded from criminal jury service according to a June 2010 study released by the Equal Justice Initiative. For example in Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 African Americans qualified for jury service have been struck by prosecutors from serving on death penalty cases.
Hmm, a direct contradictory article can be found here: http://theunsilencedscience.blogspot.ca/2011/08/genetics-of-violence.html
that is not contradictory. it’s just nonsense. he even admits that the studies aren’t on his side in one article, only to cough up some jive “BECAUSE OF THE CONSPIRACY” rationalization.
Swanky would drop all of this pretentious nonsense about blacks not committing more crimes than whites if he just went and lived in a black neighborhood for a few months.
feel free to point out where I said blacks do not commit more crimes than whites, spunky. hint: nowhere.
although, you are free to respond to the facts I posted here.
Martini said:
I’manman.
I’m an elegant man.
I’maman.
Your “facts” are selective and misleading. What’s worse, they’re not original. You’re just regurgitating old liberal propaganda that just hangs around and refuses to die.
Do blacks get longer sentences for drug offenses? Do less crack and more cocaine, and that problem is solved. Or they can ask for more severe sanctions on the drugs of choice for white people. I could get behind that.
Do black offenders get longer sentences than white perps for the same crimes? That’s what happens when you have more priors on your rap sheet.
Are blacks (and Hispanics) more likely to be stopped, searched, and arrested? Yes, and they’re also far more likely to commit crimes. What an amazing coincidence, huh?
Are blacks more likely to be “illegally” prevented from serving on juries? No, there’s nothing illegal about preventing someone from serving on a jury who refuses to consider capital punishment for a sanction against a guilty criminal.
The next amazing fact Swanky’s going to share is that more young men are stopped and searched than, say, senior citizens or prepubescent girls.
duh…duhduh…DUH!
‘Do blacks get longer sentences for drug offenses? Do less crack and more cocaine, and that problem is solved. Or they can ask for more severe sanctions on the drugs of choice for white people. I could get behind that’
‘Do black offenders get longer sentences than white perps for the same crimes? That’s what happens when you have more priors on your rap sheet.’
Is it fun living in a just world, spunky? Here, let’s pop some of that stifling bubblewrap:
‘The Pennsylvania study found that, controlling for other factors, including severity of the
offense and prior criminal history, white men aged 18-29 were 38 percent less likely to be
sentenced to prison than black men of the same age group’
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_sentencing_review.pdf
As usual, you’re wrong.
‘ No, there’s nothing illegal about preventing someone from serving on a jury who refuses to consider capital punishment for a sanction against a guilty criminal.’
This is a non-response. They are excluded for racial reasons, or “there’s no WAY a BLACK person could ever…” reasons.
.
‘Are blacks (and Hispanics) more likely to be stopped, searched, and arrested? Yes, and they’re also far more likely to commit crimes. What an amazing coincidence, huh?’
Oh are they? Does your evidence of that happen to come from arrest rates and whatnot?
And newsflash, dingus, “you’re of a certain x group that does crimes” != legal authority to “stop and search.”
spunky shows us that hbders have a crude grasp of reality.
is it fun living in a just world…?
and engels sees what marx sees.
social psychology’s “the just world phenomenon” IS marx’s IDEOLOGY.
the third pole is Everest.
the fourth pole is Parnassus or Olympus or rather…
what is OBVIOUS to anyone who is human first and everything else second.
Swanky,
Links to advocacy groups are not accepted as genuine social science. Try again.
If a crime is potentially punishable by capital punishment, and your beliefs prevent you from even considering that as one of the punishments for a person you agree is guilty of the crime, then the legal system is right to exclude you from the jury pool.
And there’s nothing illegal about it.
It comes from every possible way of looking at crime stats, including criminal reports filed by black people who are accusing other black people of committing crimes.
Like I said, most of this intellectual garbage you’ve latched on to would be immediately cleared up in your mind if you were ever forced to live among a large and typical group of black people for a substantial period of time. That little social experiment would quickly turn you into another George Zimmerman.
Macaca writes:
Oh yes, Marx, that “idealist” you like to talk about.
‘Links to advocacy groups are not accepted as genuine social science. Try again.’
a) feel free to cite any reason to disbelieve the source and b) they referenced another study published in a peer-reviewed journal. Deflection request denied.
‘then the legal system is right to exclude you from the jury pool.’
You don’t know anything about the law. If a juror is excluded WITHOUT stating said belief, but because a lawyer BELIEVES that someone who is BLACK would HOLD that belief, then that juror was illegally excluded. and yes, that happens.
‘It comes from every possible way of looking at crime stats,’
you mean the stats that suffer from the biases I just cited that you tried to wiggle away from with some vague bullshit about advocacy groups not being good science (without giving any reason, seeing as how the source cites many peer-reviewed studies).
and the rest about ‘living among blacks…’ save it, already. any environment full of people who have nothing will look a lot different than an environment where people have things.
marx WAS an idealist in the same sense that the German Idealists were idealists…
AND NOT
in the sense that “airy fairy” liberals are idealists.
marx would refer to Dawkins as a “vulgar materialist”.
Engles was a rich German industrialist.
the guy has some serious street cred with the libertardians and Friedmaniacs.
Steve Hsu’s landmark paper on additive effects of genes on IQ: http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.3421
prof shoe doesn’t understand that the supposed additive effects are just the weights of a local linear fit.
change the locale in (G,E) space and the genetic architecture changes too.
prof shoe is a moron.
the very idea of thousands of alleles all having a tiny and consistent effect is STOOOPID.
Jorgeous must not believe in evolution.
au contraire mon NOT fraire…
there is change…
there is drift…
there is speciation…
but evolution?
not necessarily.
I won’t be your gay husband.
Swanky writes above:
But there’s nothing funny about those one-liners if Carrey isn’t bending over and spreading his butt cheeks. And the only line he uses which is clever is the mock opera buffa line.
I never said physical humor didn’t take talent. I just said – contrary to the buffoonish Macaca’s claim – that it’s a low IQ endeavor. There’s nothing high IQ about Jim Carrey bending over and pretending to talk out his butt cheeks. It appeals even to children and retards.
Verbal humor, on the other hand, requires high IQ to do consistently. When Woody Allen says, “I’d call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse,” you need a higher than average IQ just to enjoy that line, let alone write it. George Carlin was another guy who did verbal humor very well.
Well, of course. My point has been from the beginning that comedic talent is more like athletic talent than it is an isolated career track of high IQ. Some people just know how to do comedy. They’re born with it. They may work on their physical routines a lot, just as athletes work a lot on their sports. But the underlying ability is already there. All that’s needed is refinement of the technique.
Here are a few examples:
Bill Cosby shows how different drunks walk Cosby was a fine athlete and a tall, slender man in his youth. He had great control of his body.
And then there’s the rubber-faced Jim Carrey (watch the video starting at 24:45 through 26:50) He’s gifted at mimicry (see some of his impressions here) and knows how to contort his body and face into unbelievable positions and shapes.
And here’s Sam Kinison with his scream humor.
You don’t need a high IQ for any of these abilities. And there’s nothing creative about the routines themselves. The laughs are entirely built into the talent the comic brings to them.
‘But there’s nothing funny about those one-liners if Carrey isn’t bending over and spreading his butt cheeks.’
Congratulations, you have discovered context. An artist creates a situation and hints at the situation’s absurdity or funny implications.
‘ I just said – contrary to the buffoonish Macaca’s claim – that it’s a low IQ endeavor’
Based on nothing.
‘There’s nothing high IQ about Jim Carrey bending over and pretending to talk out his butt cheeks. It appeals even to children and retards.’
It’s not JUST THAT. The PUNS make it funny. Even you, persnickety Pincher, admitted that one of the lines spoken in assuendo was funny — clever, even.
‘Verbal humor, on the other hand, requires high IQ to do consistently.’
You’re just talking about the same thing: an artist creating a context and then relying on that context for its implications.
‘You don’t need a high IQ for any of these abilities. And there’s nothing creative about the routines themselves. ‘
To do a good impression requires you to understand how to make your voice and mannerisms more like another individual’s and then to understand how to ratchet it up or down for an audience. It’s not as simple as “catch the ball.”
And just because it’s an “athletic ability” doesn’t mean it’s not an “athletic ability” that is greatly aided by smarts. See, e.g. Quarterback.
Swanky,
We’re not discussing context. We’re discussing what’s more important in driving the audience’s laughter, what they remember most.
And the answer is that they remember Jim Carrey bending over and pretending to talk out his butt cheeks, not his low-grade pun “Can I ass you a few questions” or even his high-level opera buffa pun.
I gave several examples. Chevy Chase, for example, was a famous but mediocre comedian who nevertheless made a good living on TV by doing things like mocking Gerald Ford’s clumsiness. Watch his routine and tell us what’s high IQ about it. Don’t bother. You’ll fail. It’s not funny. And it’s not smart. Yet Chevy’s pratfalls are remembered to this day, nearly forty years after he first did them.
The irony is that Chase very well might’ve had a high IQ, given his pedigree. But if he did have a high IQ, it just shows how little IQ or career success have to do with bringing the funny. Johnny Carson once said that Chevy “couldn’t ad-lib a fart after a baked-bean dinner.” Now that’s funny.
It was clever and funny. But how do we know Carrey even came up with it?
One of the things I’ve been trying to impress upon you is how often comedians cannibalize the material of other comedians. Even when they don’t outright steal, plagiarize, borrow liberally, etc., they’re still clearly inspired to imitate the previous comedians in rather crass ways.
You might think you’ve listened to a lot of comedians. Perhaps you even make a weekly trip to the local comedy club to watch the acts of various unknown standup comics trying to make their living. But I guarantee you that as much comedy as you think you’ve seen, your typical successful stand-up comic has seen at least a hundred times more material. They’ve listened to a thousand failed comedians try their new stuff on audiences, all of which was written in great earnest and some of the ideas which might even be called creative.
A natural comic hears a lot of his stuff and knows how to use it. He intuitively understands why the beginning comic failed, and why he, the more successful comic, can take the same idea, the same skit, the same basic sentences, and turn it into a famous routine.
By the time you see the routine, you think it’s just a creative idea that sprung out of the head of Jim Carrey. And so you credit him for some inherent gifts he doesn’t possess. But what you don’t know is that he most likely borrowed the idea from some Joe Schmo comic who he saw perform ahead of him one night in Ottawa.
This kind of situation happens in comedy a lot more than you think it does.
*****
We see it even among successful comics. That is, a situation where one well-known comic steals material from another well-known comic.
Bill Hicks, for example, was a great standup comedian who worked in the eighties and early nineties before he died of cancer at the age of 32. He was an enormously gifted comedian who was well-respected even among other comedians, who are usually the toughest audience a comic has.
Hicks had a famous routine he did on smoking.
One of Bill Hicks’ friends was fellow comedian Denis Leary…that is, they were friends until Hicks heard that Leary’s standup routines were beginning to closely resemble Hicks’ standup routines.
Watch and decide for yourself.
EXHIBIT A: Denis Leary Vs. Bill Hicks PART 1/3
EXHIBIT A: Denis Leary Vs. Bill Hicks PART 2/3
EXHIBIT A: Denis Leary Vs. Bill Hicks PART 3/3
The funny thing is that Hicks’ routines are still superior to Leary’s more frenetic delivery. But Leary still used them, and a routine he stole from CK Louis, to became a well-known comic and eventually an actor in movies and TV.
This happens a lot. Robin Williams admitted writing checks to several comedians for “accidentally” using their material. His excuse was that he had heard things and filed them away haphazardly in his mind, causing him to forgot their provenance.
I believe him. But it makes a mockery of the idea that verbal creativity is what made Williams great. He was a genius performer, but not a creative genius whose power was founded in the original situations and words he made up on his own.
‘And the answer is that they remember Jim Carrey bending over and pretending to talk out his butt cheeks’
And my answer to that is that no one would remember the routine if Jim Carrey hadn’t made the puns.
‘Don’t bother. You’ll fail. It’s not funny. And it’s not smart.’
It’s not funny to me because it depends a lot on the context of Gerald Ford running the country at that time. I’m not sure what the point of that was —- to show me that there are “not so funny” routines?
‘ But how do we know Carrey even came up with it?’
Irrelevant. Regardless of the source, the point is that creating jokes takes smarts. Every field has accusations of plagiarism/independent development. And they’re usually fields where ideas are currency, i.e. fields where smarts are important.
Indeed, even this process —> ‘He intuitively understands why the beginning comic failed, and why he, the more successful comic, can take the same idea, the same skit, the same basic sentences, and turn it into a famous routine.’ —> TAKES SMARTS.
should be ‘every field,’ and then ‘they’re usually more prominent in fields…’
that was an encyclopedia.
sounds like Pinky is a failed comedian.
another low IQ joke from idiot steve martin, mensa member.
he wrote a nice essay about joining Mensa with fun IQ jokes
http://www.aj.cz/celeb/sm5.htm
steve martin, the greatest comedian in the history of the universe, is an idiot?
now swagnasty is on my enemies list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon's_Enemies_List
btw Pinky,
Carson has no authority. both he and his successor Leno were NOT funny.
spunky, it is very strange that you would say good comedy does not take smarts. have you read this? does this not take smarts to create?
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/martin-drivel.html
Swanky,
Sure they would have. Go ask anyone what Carrey said when he bent over and spread his butt cheeks. They won’t remember.
But everyone remembers what he did.
In one of his Ace Ventura movies, Carrey does nothing more than a Tarzan yell with his ass. No puns, high or low. So like I said, no one remember the puns.
I also remember Carrey coming out of a rhino’s ass. I have no idea if he said anything funny when he did it, but the visual memory is there forever.
As I told Macaca, and as you should have understood if you understand anything about comedy, physical comedy is low IQ comedy. From the Three Stooges to Jerry Lewis to Jim Carrey, every idiot understands physical comedy when they see it, and any idiot with just the right look and physical talent can do it.
If you’re going to call someone a creative genius for coming up with some comic situation or line, then it’s not only relevant to know whether they actually created what you claim they created, it’s sort of the entire point of the discussion.
Jorgeous,
I no more could’ve been a comedian than you could have been a writer or scientist or a man of substance – or anything, in fact, other than the pedigreed poodle you are.
my now deceased black standard poodle was cleverer than you.
his name was “beeebee”.
my god what a beautiful and HUMAN like dog he was.
and he didn’t suffer fools, not even lightly.
at his funeral I read Donne’s Death be not Proud.
and…
Good night sweet prince.
he was a prince.
you are a commoner.
Macaca,
Did you bugger the poor dog to death? You really should go easy on the Chinese, as at least they would have gotten some non-carnal use out of your dog.
‘Sure they would have. Go ask anyone what Carrey said when he bent over and spread his butt cheeks. They won’t remember.’
Assertion after assertion. At this point the only one talking out of his ass is you. As awesome as the “go ask-everyone-but-don’t-because-they’ll-agree-with-me” defense is, I find myself unpersuaded.
‘In one of his Ace Ventura movies, Carrey does nothing more than a Tarzan yell with his ass. No puns, high or low. So like I said, no one remember the puns.
I also remember Carrey coming out of a rhino’s ass. I have no idea if he said anything funny when he did it, but the visual memory is there forever. ‘
Those were from the second movie. That movie was aimed at a younger audience. The jokes, accordingly, were cruder.
‘physical comedy is low IQ comedy. From the Three Stooges to Jerry Lewis to Jim Carrey, every idiot understands physical comedy when they see it, and any idiot with just the right look and physical talent can do it.’
From “everyone can understand physical comedy” it does not follow that creating good physical comedy does not require smarts. And you’re confusing (once again) understanding with appreciating. An idiot can appreciate the Sistine Chapel….does that mean creating the Sistine Chapel didn’t take smarts?
And this sentence “any idiot with the right….physical talent can do it” borders on nonsense. Physical comedy is abstract because you must know what’s funny about body positions angles, etc. and whatever.
‘it’s sort of the entire point of the discussion.’
The point of the discussion is whether creating jokes takes smarts. So it really doesn’t matter where a particular joke came from — whoever made it was probably pretty smart if it was a good joke.
Swanky,
I provided more links, facts and examples to back up my arguments. You’re just in over your head, son. You obviously don’t know very much about comedy.
You now have a video link showing Jim Carrey doing his talking derriere act without uttering a single pun, which gives lie to your point that Carrey’s butt humor was really about the pun.
Today Jim Carrey could just turn around, bend over, never say a word, and get a laugh now. That’s because it was never about the pun.
I said that everyone can understand physical comedy to show why it was low IQ humor. That was to counter Macaca’s stupid claim that verbal humor was low IQ. Quite the contrary. Writing verbal humor is one area of comedy where you actually need a high IQ to be successful.
But performing good physical comedy does not require smarts. That doesn’t mean smart people can’t do it. Charlie Chaplin was a creative genius and a damn fine physical comedian. But smart people are successful at physical comedy for reasons other than their high intelligence, just as smart people can be great athletes for reasons other than their IQs. You need the right face, the right body, the right physical coordination to make it work.
Carrey and Lewis, by the way, are both high school dropouts, but it doesn’t seem to have limited their success. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re dumb, but it’s not a good sign that they’re successful at physical comedy because of the fine quality of their minds.
Just because you and I can analyze physical comedy doesn’t mean people who are good at it analyze it.
Physical comedy is intuitive; it’s not an abstraction at all to the person who does it well, except perhaps in hindsight when they’re trying to explain what they do to other people who want an explanation.
Here’s Buster Keaton explaining how his father was able to safely toss him around as a child in the family’s vaudeville act:
The family was arrested several times for alleged child abuse, as many members of the audience could not believe the father was not hurting the boy by tossing him around the stage. The young Buster could always prove that he had been unhurt by the treatment.
Drama schools also teach aspiring actors how to do simple physical tricks, like trip over their own feet, but most still can’t do it without numerous takes, while a gifted physical comedian can get it right nearly every time he does it before a live audience.
Nope. Our discussion was about whether *performing* standup comedy requires smarts. It doesn’t.
He said verbal barbs are low IQ. Not verbal humor.
And all of your physical comedy discussion proves my point: the techniques had to be created to achieve the proper effect. Lol.
Now you move the goal posts to assert that my main point wasn’t that creating jokes takes smarts. No sale.
My “verbal zingers” was meat to be synonymous with verbal humor, because most verbal humor has a target. Will Rogers might softly aim at the target; Don Rickles might aim with extreme prejudice; but almost all verbal humor has a target.
They’re not created analytically. Physical comedians have an intuitive sense of what works – what faces they should make, what their bodies should do, what voices to use, etc. – in the same way an athlete understands how to make his body work toward some goal. They then hone that existing talent into a routine.
These techniques you can’t learn with practice, any more than you can learn how to pick up chicks like Warren Beatty by learning his best techniques.
There’s been no sale only because you never had the money to buy, Swanky.
I didn’t move the goal posts. I said from the beginning that I excepted the old comedians who primarily dealt with writing verbal humor, the old Jews writing those zingers for Jewish audiences in the Catskill Mountains, for example.
But that’s not most comedians. Certainly not most who work today.
Pingback: Sadistic bully gets OWNED by Pumpkin Person | Pumpkin Person
What’s all this crap about Steve Martin? Didn’t I already exclude verbally inclined jokesters from my list? Didn’t I for that reason exclude the many Ashkenazi Jews who were comics from the Borscht Belt?
If you’re a decent comic writer, you certainly need a higher than average IQ. Martin’s a bright guy who’s written novels, plays, screenplays and other works. He must have an IQ at least one to two SDs above the white mean.
Martin was also a performer, but an overrated one. He’s certainly not in the same class with Cosby, Williams, and Carrey. I listened to “A Wild and Crazy Guy” and wondered what the fuss was all about. Martin’s fame as a comic was substantial, but brief. He really should be relegated to the seventies, when he pretty much gave up on standup, which is probably lucky for his reputation today, as people like Macaca can continue to overrate his talent.
Martin not in the same class as Cosby, Williams, and Carrey? The guy who was filling stadiums in the 70’s? lol.
And by “excluding” “verbally inclined” jokesters, you’re excluding most comedians, spunky. You’re also wrong about physical comedy. You seem to believe that the coordinated physical theatrics that people appreciate are easy to conceive.
It’s not just “I fall down.” It’s not just “I fall down in that way only I fall down.” No, it’s “I need to VISUALIZE how this fall will look, and then, using that, I need to know which type of fall WILL BE FUNNY…”
You are delusional if you do not believe these people spend hours poring over these types of questions. And the reason they do so is because comedy is complicated and abstract.
It was a brief stage the country went through at the time, like owning Pet Rocks or listening to disco.
Cosby and Williams were successful standup comedians for decades, not just a decade.
Jim Carrey’s career arc has been more like Martin’s in that he left standup for the movies almost as soon as he could. So if Carrey didn’t have the success in standup that Martin had in the seventies when he was a phenomenon, that’s probably because Carrey had a lot more immediate success in the movies than Martin did, allowing Carrey to leave standup soon after his act started getting a lot of attention.
No, Swanky, because the distinction was between those who actually create verbal humor rather than those who just say the lines they’re fed or steal.
They don’t. They can’t afford to. They’re working too hard on their overall act to spend much time learning how to do these physical routines from the ground up.
They’re not learning the routines, they’re figuring out how to apply what routines they know to new situations and which will be funny which won’t etc.
You don’t have a good grasp on the artistic. Apart from that the only studies I know of support what I say and not what you say. So we can agree to disagree.
At least once Martin had not a single laugh in his standup routine.
this might be an example of Swank’s “risk taking”.
Zach Galifianakis had a similar experiences.
comedy is hard work.
hard hard work.
I disagree. Take Cosby’s drunk walk routine. He does several variations of the walk while describing the kind of drunks who use each of them. All of them are quite funny.
But Cosby didn’t bring all those walks with him to a routine about drunk people. He most likely saw or thought of the routine first, and then quickly developed the walks, which he was able to learn quickly because he’s naturally gifted as a physical comedian (and not because he’s smart, which he is).
And the walks are funny not because Cosby is gifted as an observer, but because he’s physically gifted in doing the walks while pretending to be drunk. He’s a gifted performer. He’s not a genius in analyzing drunk people.
mon dieu who cares.
Pink Martini is a failed homosexual comedian who’s into China-dick.
You do, Jorgeous. It’s why you’re still around here trying to make yourself heard even when no one cares to listen to you.
and I suppose I also “care” about all the ladies I jack-off to?
try again.
but first get humped by a black standard poodle.
Nice looking dog. I wonder how it would look on the skewer? They say black dogs are the tastiest.
Since that’s as close as you’ll ever get to one of those women, I’d say you care about them as much as you can for any lady. Other than dear old mom, of course.
No spunky. If he’s so physically gifted then he already has a good idea of how to do the walks, so they may as well be routines to him. He’s applying his talent to a comedic observation—-abstract, smart, etc.
Even your own examples are contra you.
The audience starts laughing at Cosby’s walks before he ever gets to his observations, just as they laugh at Carrey’s ass-talking when he never utters a pun.
But the importance of physical humor can also be shown by how many fine silent film comedies were made where the actors never said a word. These films remain more popular today than do the silent film dramas of the same era.
Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy (before they transitioned to talkies), Fatty Arbuckle, the Keystone Kops. People still watch and enjoy these films today. Words are irrelevant to enjoying these films. They show the importance of facial expressions and body movements to creating the laughs in the situations.
The nearly mute Mr Bean character is a modern example of how far good physical comedy can still take a film.
HAHA…LOL! Jorge Videla’s fetish of the Le Grand Caniche.
martin had the INSIGHT to make fun of…
COMEDY ITSELF.
there’s an unspoken rule…
I tell jokes…
you laugh!
Martin transcended this.
when he wasn’t funny…
HE WAS FUNNY.
I think comedians tend to be very smart, no way that “they are uninteligent”. Smart humor need very higher mental agility, manipulation of words, concepts of different subjects, general knowledge and eficient memory.