In 2009, there were 23 decabillionaires in America according to authoritative Forbes magazine:

Of these, only the following 13 appear to be self-made:

1. William Gates
2. Warren Buffet
3. Lawrence Ellison
4. Michael Bloomberg
5. Sergey Brin
6.Larry Page
7.Michael Dell
8.Steven Ballmer
9. George Soros
10. Donald Bren
11. Paul Allen
12. Carl Icahn
13. Ronald Perelman

Now what’s astonishing is that with the exception of Allen, Gates and Buffet, all of them are more or less Jewish.  Despite being 2% of America, Jews (as of 2009) are 77% of self-made decabillionaires.

So we see that as we move up America’s economic ladder, from the homeless, to the general population, to billionaires, to self-made decabillionaires, we see that the percentage of lowest IQ race (blacks) goes from 45% to about 14% to 0.25% to 0% while the percentage of the highest IQ race (Jews) goes from perhaps close to 0%, to 2%, to about 36%, to 77%.  See pie charts below (click for larger view):

Source for the data:
http://www.povertyliving.com/2013/03/homeless-statistics-in-the-united-states/

Clearly, life is an IQ test, and money is how we keep score, because from an evolutionary perspective, intelligence is the mental ability to adapt; to take whatever situation you’re in, and turn it around to your advantage.

And what is more advantageous than money? Money buys mansions overlooking the Pacific ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Money buys private jets and fancy cars. Money buys the best food, and the best servants, and politicians who impose your world views, scientists and research labs to explore all your questions, and media platforms to spread your ideas. It buys the best health care for yourself and all you love, and buys the freedom to retire early. It even buys love and better teeth, the perfect body without exercise and youth (plastic surgery).

If you know where to shop, money is the solution to virtually all our problems, and smart people, as good problem solvers, tend to get money.

This is such common sense, it’s entered the culture with sayings like “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” and “a fool and his money are soon parted”.  Money is the most universal measure of success, so if IQ tests are valid measure of the cognitive ability to adapt & problem solve, then high IQ races should have solved the problem of getting money more effectively than low IQ races, and that’s exactly what we find.

And even more astonishing, arguably the biggest brained member of the entire black race (and the entire female sex), is almost always the only African American on Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, and was, from 2004 to 2006, the World’s ONLY black billionaire (excluding two hybridized blacks with less than 50% sub-Saharan ancestry), and the most influential woman on the planet according to Time magazine.

However not even big brained Oprah has made it to the absolute top of American wealth: Decabillionaire level which is a level of success currently achieved by only whites and Jews.

Given that U.S. Jews have an average IQ of 110 but a race IQ of 130 (the IQ Jews would have if the correlation between race and IQ were perfect) and U.S. whites have an IQ of 100, but a race IQ of 106, the fact that self-made decabillionaires are 77% Jewish and 23% white means they have an average race IQ of 0.77(130) + 0.23(106) = 124, which is 28 points above the U.S. mean of 96.

But since race IQ only correlates 0.48 with general intelligence which correlates 0.9 with IQ, we must divide those 28 points by 0.48 then multiply by 0.9 to see that the average self-made decabillionaire has an IQ 53 points above the U.S. mean of 96:

96 + 53 = 149

In other words, the average U.S. self-made decabillionaire has an IQ of about 150 (by definition, only one in 2000 U.S. whites has an IQ this high)

Of course all of this assumes that the high “race IQ” of self-made decabillionaires is nothing more than a byproduct of capitalism selecting for IQ, allowing one to assume race is just a regressed correlate of  intelligence that has to be “unregressed” from the mean through division.

Of course I’m not dumb enough to think that the racial composition of the super rich is explained entirely by IQ, otherwise, there would be other high IQ groups represented such as East Asian Americans who score higher than whites and Indian Americans who may score as high as Jews.

Clearly Jews are over-represented among the super rich, even controlling for IQ, but because other high IQ races are under-represented, controlling for IQ, it seems to cancel itself out, and the average IQ of a highly selected groups is often deducible from the average race IQ of the group.  For example, using racial composition of the homeless, I was able to infer they have an average IQ of about 75, which has been confirmed by actual IQ testing of the homeless.

Evidence that self-made decabillionaires have an average IQ around 150 comes from the fact that as of 2009, at least two of the 13 (Bill Gates and Paul Allen) reportedly scored between 1590-1600 on the older much harder pre-1995 SAT; roughly equivalent to an IQ of 170.  Assuming the IQs of self-made decabillionaires are roughly normally distributed with a standard deviation of about 15 IQ points, then if the top 15% have IQs around 170, the average IQ should easily be at least 150 (though Gates and Allen might be outliers and their scores are impossible to confirm).

The evidence that IQ and money are linked is overwhelming, and comes from multiple sources.  The next time someone tells you the correlation is weak, tell them that the average self-made decabillionaire might be an astonishing FIVE STANDARD DEVIATIONS (75 IQ points) smarter than the average homeless, and ask them “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”

There’s not one way to define intelligence. I like to define intelligence as the mental ability to adapt; to take whatever situation you’re in, and turn it around to your advantage. Others like to define intelligence as the mental ability to problem solve. Still others like to define intelligence as the ability to reason abstractly. Ultimately all these definitions are the same. If you can reason at the most abstract (least specific) level, you can adapt to the widest range of problems, and thus solve them.

Another definition of intelligence is the ability to use tools. One could be really precise and say intelligence is the mental ability to use whatever physical abilities you have, as a tool to use whatever environment you’re in to your advantage. The two main physical tools humans are born with are our hands and our vocal cords. And we use these tools to manipulate the physical environment to our advantage.

So we use our hands to use objects as tools (grabbing a sharp rock for hunting) and we use our vocal cords to use other people as tools (communication).

This is why it makes sense that IQ tests like the Wechsler have traditionally been divided into two main sections: Verbal IQ (using your vocal cords as a tool to your advantage), and Performance IQ (using your hands as a tool to your advantage). So Verbal IQ measures abilities such as vocabulary, and Performance IQ measures largely spatial abilities such as making designs using multi-coloured blocks.

However if the human mind were placed in the body of a snake, our Verbal IQ would be virtually useless because we’d have no vocal cords with which to speak, and our Performance IQ would be virtually useless too because we’d have no hands to manipulate the physical environment. So no wonder snakes have such tiny brains. Evolution is not going to select for metabolically expensive and physically burdensome brain mass when the animal can’t use it.

But when we sum up a person’s Verbal and Performance IQ, have we really captured all of intelligence? Perhaps there is life on other planets, far more intelligent than us, but that doesn’t use either of these systems to adapt to its environment. Perhaps they can’t hear or see, so both verbal IQ and Performance IQ are useless to them, but they have other senses that we can’t even imagine. And if our minds were put in their bodies, we would experience these senses, and we would have a different body to make use of them, but our mindss (which evolved to speak and use our hands) would not be able to use them to our advantage. We wouldn’t be able to adapt.

The most intelligent organism in the universe is the one whose mind, when placed in the body of as many different organisms as possible, organisms with many different goals as possible, in as many different environments as possible, can adapt these situations to its advantage as effectively as possible.

A reader recently asked me to estimate the IQ of Bertrand Russell.  This reader is probably extremely smart: The fact that he’s interested in IQ at all is one sign of intelligence, but the fact that he inquired about Bertrand Russell (as opposed to some pop culture celeb or politician) is another sign.

The two most salient facts about Bertrand Russell is that he was an incredibly eminent intellectual; journalist Daniel Seligman described him as arguably the most intelligent man of the 20th century, and yet he couldn’t lean to make a cup of tea, despite his wife leaving him detailed instructions.  He also couldn’t make his hearing aid work.

To get a sense of Russell’s IQ, we begin by noting that roughly the year Russell won his Nobel prize, the average IQ of the 64 eminent scientists in the Roe study was about 155.  The dumbest of these eminent scientists had an IQ around 120, 35 points below the mean of the whole group.  But I bet even he or she could learn to make tea.

In low complexity jobs (i.e. making tea in a restaurant), the correlation between IQ and job performance is about 0.23.  So even though Russell was likely dumber than all of Roe’s elite scientists at learning to  make tea, his actual IQ was probably only 23% as low as the dumbest Roe scientist.

So since the dumbest Roe scientist was 35 points dumber than the average elite scientist of that time, Russell was probably 0.23(35) = 8 points dumber than the average Roe scientist.

If the average Roe scientist had an IQ of 155, Russell likely had an IQ of 155 – 8 = 147.

An IQ of 147 implies that only one in a thousand whites of Russell’s era were as smart or smarter than him.

Brain size has roughly tripled in the last 4 million years of human evolution.  If the within species correlation between intelligence and brain size is about 0.4, and evolution selected humans to be smart, not big brained per se, then as much as brain size has increased, it arguably increased no more than 40% as much as intelligence has increased because brain size was just a spandrel for intelligence.  If a mere by-product of selection for intelligence tripled in size during the last 4 million years, imagine how extreme the direct selection for intelligence was!

So what is it about humans that is so many quantum leaps smarter than chimps?  I would say, it’s our ability to ask questions.  Chimps can be taught sign language and some can acquire large vocabularies and communicate effectively and be good conversationalists, but they never ever ask a single question.  The ability to ask questions is a uniquely human ability.  Even babies who speak only a single word can ask questions: “mamma?”

And it’s not because chimps lack curiosity or can’t learn the linguistic skills to ask questions…it’s because…I just figured out why!

In order to ask questions, you have to know that you don’t know.  In other words you need meta-knowledge (knowledge about knowledge; knowing you don’t know) and true self-awareness.  Self-awareness and the ability to acquire meta knowledge were quantum leaps forward in intelligence, likely associated with the tripling in brain size.

It also explains why talk show hosts are often brilliant.  Their job requires them to ask questions:

Below are three pie charts (click for larger view).  The first shows the racial distribution of homeless Americans.  The second shows the racial distributions of all Americans.  And the third shows the racial distribution of billionaire Americans.

Source for the data:
http://www.povertyliving.com/2013/03/homeless-statistics-in-the-united-states/

The data for this pie is found here:
http://isteve.blogspot.ca/2012/07/forbes-400-by-ethnicity.html

It’s fascinating how well money mirrors IQ.  For example, blacks (who average the lowest IQs) are nearly half of the homeless, but only 0.25% of the 400 richest Americans.  And the only black on the Forbes 400 has arguably the largest black brain size in America, if not the world.

By contrast, Jews (who average the highest IQs) are only 2% of America, but 36% of American billionaires.

Now on a scale where U.S. whites average 100 (SD = 15), the U.S. population as a whole now has a mean IQ of about 96 (SD=15.8).  In a previous post, we imagined an incredibly evil IQ test that had the same distribution of scores as other IQ tests, yet your score correlated perfectly with your race. Below are the IQs the races would have if IQ and race correlated perfectly in America.  In parentheses are the IQs these races actually do have:

Black Americans: IQ 70 (IQ 85)
Native Americans: IQ 72 (IQ 86)
Hispanic Americans: IQ 79 (IQ 89)
Southeast Asian Americans: IQ 86 (IQ 92)

ArabAmericans: IQ 106??(IQ 100??)
White Americans: IQ 106 (IQ 100)
East Asian Americans: IQ 115 (IQ 104)
Indian Americans: IQ 130 (IQ 110)
Jewish Americans: IQ 130 (IQ 110)

Since the homeless are 45% black, 5% Native American, 12% Hispanic, perhaps 1% Southeast Asian, 35% white, perhaps 1% East Asian, and perhaps 1% South Asian,  their average IQ on this evil IQ test would be:

0.45(70) + 0.05(72) + 0.12(79) + 0.01(86) + 0.35(106) + 0.01(115) + 0.01(130) = 85

An IQ of 85 would be the average IQ of the homeless if race and IQ correlated perfectly, but in reality, race and IQ only correlate 0.43 in contemporary America, and race and general intelligence (g) only correlate 0.48.

Because life is partly an IQ test, the homeless are selected for low general intelligence, and thus regress upward, to the U.S. mean of 96, on crude proxies for g, like race.  So since the homeless score IQ 85 on this racist IQ test; 11 points below the U.S. mean of 96, we must divide 11 by the 0.48 g loading of race to estimate how low they are in g:

11/0.48 = 23 points below the mean

However since even the best IQ tests only correlate 0.9 with g, they would regress a bit to the mean if given the WAIS-IV, so multiply 23 by 0.9, which tells us they should score 21 points below the U.S. mean of 96.  Or roughly an IQ of 75.

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, bringing the average homeless down to 81.  But this mean is further inflated by the fact that the WASI norms include non-whites which inflates low scores.  When we adjust the norms to the scale where U.S. whites have a mean of 100 and an SD of 15, we find that homeless have an IQ of 77, remarkably close to the IQ 75 I estimated from their racial composition.

It’s also worth noting that on any given night circa 2013, there were 450,000 homeless adults in America.  Since there are  242,470,820 adults in America, being homeless puts you in the bottom one out of 538 in financial success, which means the median homeless would be in the bottom one in 1,077 level.  If you force financial success to fit a normal curve, as a member of Prometheus once advised to do, that equates to being  3.1 SD below the mean in money.

Given the 0.4 correlation between IQ and money, simple regression predicts the homeless are 0.4(3.1 SD) = 1.24 SD below the U.S. mean in IQ.  Because of demographic shifts, the U.S. mean has shrunk to 96 and the SD has widened to 15.8, which puts the average homeless at 96 – 1.24(15.8) = 76.

So here we have three completely different methods all agreeing that the homeless have a mean IQ in the mid 70s which is excellent cross validation!

The IQs of self-made billionaires

Now let’s turn to billionaires.   Of course not all of billionaires are self-made, but people who inherit money are typically the same race as their kin who earned it, so the inherited money are stand-ins for the self-made wealth.  Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans is 0.25% black (Oprah), 0.5% Hispanic, 60.5% white, 2% Arab American, 2% East Asian, 1% Indian, and 35.75% Jewish, which means that if IQ and race were perfectly correlated, it would have a mean IQ of:

0.0025(70) + 0.005(79) + 0.585(106) + 0.02(106) + 0.02(115) + 0.01(130) + 0.3575(130) = 115

So if IQ and race were perfectly correlated, billionaires (at least the self-made ones) would have an average IQ 19 points above the U.S. mean of 96.  But since race only correlates 0.48 with g which correlates 0.9 with IQ, we must divide those 19 points by 0.48 then multiply by 0.9 to see that self-made billionaires are 36 points above the U.S. mean of 96, giving them an average IQ of 132.

An average IQ of about 130 is supported by three other lines of evidence:

1) About 1% of the self-made Forbes 400 (Bill Gates and Paul Allen) reportedly scored 1590-1600 on the old much harder SAT.  That’s equivalent to an IQ of about 170.  Since the smartest 1% of the U.S. is 37 IQ points smarter than the average American, it’s reasonable to think the smartest 1% of U.S. self-made billionaires are 37 points above the average self-made billionaire, which gives the average self-made billionaire an IQ of 170 – 37 = 133.

2) About 56% of the Forbes 400 is self-made (236 people), and by definition, the median self-made Forbes 400er would be the 118th richest self-made person in America.  Given that there are over 242,470,820 adults in America, the median self-made super-rich is above the top one in 2 million level in money.  which when you normalize the distribution, is about +5 SD.  Given the 0.4 correlation between IQ and money, the expected IQ would be:

0.4(5 SD) = 2 SD above the U.S. mean

Given that the U.S. mean is about 96 with an SD of 15.8, that works out to an IQ of 2(15.8) + 96 = roughly 130

3) Lastly, scholar Jonathan Wai notes that 43% of self-made American billionaires attended schools requiring test scores in the top 1% of the U.S. ability distribution, which would be equivalent to an IQ of 133.  Although he realizes that many non-brilliant people attend elite schools, he feels they are roughly canceled out by all the brilliant minds who did not attend elite schools, so on balance the 43% figure might be significant.  If the top 43% of self-made billionaires have IQs around 133, it implies that the average self-made billionaire has an IQ around 130.

Conclusion

When people are not explicitly selected for race (i.e. affirmative action, tokenism, geographic region) or non-cognitive variables linked to race (i.e. athletic talent), the racial distribution of a group of exceptionally accomplished or exceptionally unaccomplished people is an excellent proxy for IQ when statistically adjusted for the very imperfect correlation between IQ and race.  Even when some races succeed or fail because of non-IQ reasons (i.e. ethnic networking, language barriers), these other factors tend to cancel out when all the races in America are aggregated into the statistical analysis, as was done above.

On an IQ scale where the current white American mean is set at 100 (SD = 15), the distribution for Americans as a whole has now fallen to about 96 (SD = 15.8). Now imagine a racist psychologist who was too lazy to score anyone’s IQ test results. She simply looked at the person’s face and assigned them the average score of their race:

Black Americans: IQ 85
Native Americans: IQ 86
Hispanic Americans: IQ 89
Southeast Asian Americans: IQ 92
White Americans: 100
East Asian Americans: 104
Indian Americans: 110
Jewish Americans: 110

When she calculated the average score of her sample, it clocked in at 96, which is now the U.S. average. She was very pleased with herself. Her scoring method worked!

However when her boss checked her work he was not pleased. He said that while the mean score of her sample looked good, the standard deviation was only 6.6. How can that be he asked. All the other samples of American IQ were showing a standard deviation of 15.8.

Standard deviation is the standard amount by which people vary from the mean. It is calculated by taking the average squared deviation from the mean. If the SD is large, it means there’s a lot of variability in the sample. If the SD is small, it means everyone is clustered around the average.

The reason the racist psychologist got such a small SD is that by assigning everyone the average IQ of their race, she eliminated all the IQ variability that exists within races, leaving only the IQ variability that exists between races.

So can she get the SD up to 15.8 while maintaining the perfect correlation between IQ and race? By simply converting all her IQs in her sample into Z scores:

Z score = (obtained score – mean)/SD

Z score = (obtained score – 96)/6.6

And then converting the Z scores into new IQ scores with mean of 96 and an SD of 15.8:

New IQ score = Z score(15.8) + 96

With this conversion, the IQs of every member of each race were as follows:

Black Americans: IQ 70
Native Americans: IQ 72
Hispanic Americans: IQ 79
Southeast Asian Americans: IQ 86
White Americans: 106
East Asian Americans: 115
Indian Americans: 130
Jewish Americans: 130

The racist psychologist began to laugh with evil glee. For now her sample had as much IQ variability as every other, but the correlation between IQ and race remained perfect. She had simply transferred the within race IQ variation she had removed into between race IQ variation.

Around 1952, scholar Anne Roe had 64 extremely eminent scientists take a high cieling intelligence test created with the help of the Education Testing Service (ETS). They reportedly averaged a verbal IQ of 166 (range 121 to 177), a spatial IQ of 137 (range 123-164) and a math IQ of 154 (range 128 to 194).

I’m going to ignore the math section because the physical scientists found that test too easy and so their scores were excluded. Also, math is more of an academic skill than an underlying cognitive ability independent of verbal and spatial IQ, which is why the Wechsler IQ scales provide verbal and spatial IQs, but not math IQs.

Now the test these scientists took was normed by comparing their scores to the scores of students of known (Stanford Binet?) IQs, but since the students were presumably in their early twenties, and the scientists seemed to average in their late 40s, the scores should be adjusted for age. On the WAIS-R for example, people in their late 40s score the equivalent of 5 IQ points higher than people in their early 20s on Vocabuary (an excellent measure of verbal IQ), and 10 points lower on Block Design (an excellent measure of Spatial IQ), thus for the scientists, 5 points should be subtracted from the verbal IQ (166 – 5 = 161) and 10 points should be added to the spatial IQ (137 + 10 = 147).

Because the test the scientists took was probably normed using students who took the 1937 Stanford Binet, the score were likely already 15 years inflated by the time the scientists were tested circa 1952. It’s known that verbal IQ norms become inflated by 0.2 points a year and spatial IQ norms become inflated by 0.4 points per year, so their verbal IQs must be reduced by 3 points and their spatial IQs must be reduced by 6 points.

So on a scale where the average white American of their generation scored 100 (SD = 15), these 64 super eminent scientists averaged a verbal IQ of 158 (range 113-169) and a spatial IQ of 141 (range 127-168).

Assuming verbal IQ and spatial IQ correlate about 0.67 (which is the correlation between the verbal IQ and performance IQ on the WISC-R), we should expect these scientists to have had a full-scale IQ of about 155.

Would the most eminent scientists today average that high (relative to today’s white norms) on a high ceiling IQ test? I don’t know. The correlation between IQ and some measures of academic success (years of schooling) have dropped precipitously since the 1950s, so it’s possible that scientific eminence has also become much less related to IQ, causing elite scientists today to be much less exceptional.

In honor of HBD Chick’s wildly popular linkfests, I am going to do a piefest, (^_^) ’cause i hate piefasts, too. (*^_^*)

The first pie I’m going to show you is of the racial distribution of the U.S. population. This will be followed by pies showing the racial distribution of America’s three main power elites: the super-popular (those with the power to win American hearts), the intelligentsia (those with the power to win American minds), and the super rich (those with the power to win America’s wallets).

First, the racial distribution of America as a whole:

Now compare it with the distribution of America’s three major power elites below: The super popular (those who win hearts), the intelligentsia (those who win minds), and the super rich (those who win wallets).  Click for larger view.

The first thing we notice is that blacks are over-represented among the super popular, yet very under-represented among the intelligentsia and severely underrepresented among the super rich.  My theory is that in Africa, sexual selection favored those who had the popularity to compete for mates (reproductive output), but outside Africa, natural selection (survival of the fittest) favored those who could compete for resources, so blacks evolved to be good at getting popularity, but are really bad at getting resources (i.e. money).

The next thing we notice is that Jews are over-represented among all three power elites which makes sense given their high IQs, but their margin of superiority varies enormously from one domain to another.  They are are only moderately over-represented among the super popular, but they are extremely over-represented among the rich, and they are spectacularly over-represented among the intelligentsia (i.e. top pundits, columnists, bloggers).

My theory is that as a nomadic people, Jews were considered outsiders in whatever society they joined, so they had trouble winning the hearts of the tribal locals directly, thus they evolved an ability to win the minds of the leaders of these societies and creatively change the culture.  Thus Jews who were really good at making verbal arguments and abstract theories disproportionately survived, making Jews especially good at creating social movements and shaping the narrative and the national debate, in whatever country they enter.

Lastly, where are all the Asians?  Despite an above average IQ, East Asian Americans are under-represented in all three forms of power, but they are least under-represented in wealth, probably because in the ice age, they evolved to compete for resources instead of mates, but being highly evolved. their low testosterone and low psychopathy may impede their success in many domains.

South Asian Americans are under-represented among the super-popular, but slightly over-represented among the intelligentsia, and proportionately represented among the super-rich.  So on balance, they are neither over or under represented among America’s super elites.  It’s surprising that they’re not doing a lot better since by some estimates their IQs are as high as American Jews, and their work ethic is probably even higher. Perhaps their extremely dark and hirsute complexions, combined with an easily mocked accent and exotic culture creates barriers to their success in America, and unlike blacks, they don’t have as much charisma and affirmative action to compensate.

Another possibility is that although Indian Americans may have a high average IQ, they might not have much cognitive variability since these immigrants were so highly selected from India’s IQ distribution. If their IQ distribution is both high and homogeneous, it would explain why Indians are over-represented among the moderately successful, but not over-represented among the spectacularly successful