Lion of the Blogosphere posted about this shocking headline in the New York Daily News:
I’m not a supporter of Ted Cruz, I’m rooting for Bernie Sanders (the most admired Jewish man in America, and Wall Street’s worst nightmare), but this cover is so utterly obscene, it risks proving Cruz’s point about New York values being crude and disgusting. Ever since 9/11 New York has had this attitude that they’re the heart and soul of America, but to millions of Americans in the heart land, not to mention millions of people around the World, New York is a vulgarity circus. When many people think of New York values, they think of Howard Stern’s bathroom humor and Joe Pesci in Goodfellas
You would think New Yorkers would be humble about this, but when someone points it out to them they react with vitriol.
Ted Cruz scored nearly perfect on the LSAT, suggesting an IQ equivalent of nearly 150 (higher than any U.S. president in well over a century) and you can tell from watching him debate that he has an incredible working memory capacity and working memory speed (two traits highly related to IQ).
But ultimately, intelligence is the mental ability to adapt, so how does Cruz turn this around to his advantage?
He could say:
The elite liberal New York media can attack me all they want. I’m honored that they hate me. I’m running for real American values, not New York neocon values that got us into wars in the Middle East and push masturbation and bathroom humor into the homes of traditional families. New York elites are a bunch of pretentious status whoring snobs, and regular New Yorkers are the kind of freaks you see on shows like Welcome Back, Kotter:
He could then start handing out bumper stickers and T-shirts that say “I hate New York and love Ted Cruz”.
And if he really wants to get under Trump’s skin, he could say :
I’m a super smart guy, and I can tell you, Donald Trump is the dumbest billionaire in America. I can’t think of any billionaire in the country with a lower IQ, which is not surprising since he inherited much of his money rather than earning it like working Americans in the heart land. In fact, is he a billionaire at all?
Trump prides himself in being both brilliant (a Wharton grad) and rich (a billionaire) so if Cruz attacked him in both areas, Trump would go absolutely ballistic, and Trump could be pressured to release confidential test scores and financial statements, putting him on the defensive. This is exactly what Trump might do if he were running against himself.
However all of this would backfire unless Cruz could find a way to get to Trump’s right on immigration, which is the reason so many Republicans worship Trump. If Cruz is as smart as his test scores imply, he would promise to cut down on legal immigration (which even Trump supports).
We know Ted Cruz has the brains to compete, but does he have the courage?
[Update January 16, 2016: Blogger The Audacious Epigone argues in the comment section of this post that Trump only inherited 1% of his current net worth which Forbes puts at $4.5 billion; an estimate Epigone considers conservative]
Pumpkin Person 
Ted Cruz is no doubt the sharpest guy in the race. His strategy is savvy, and his responses are always so well-formed and facile.
I’ve always noticed that unlike the other candidates, Cruz always speaks openly about his campaign strategy, and he is almost always right about his predictions.
Trump is formidable as well.
He has the most extreme poise, and he seems inexhaustible.
Look forward to Donald Trump vs. Ted Cruz.
I wonder who would have a better chance in a general election against Bernie or Hillary
A difficult assessment. I think the Democrats will come down like a ton of bricks on the GOP nominee.
Both Trump and Cruz have been unfazed by attacks, but Trump has been highly gaffe-prone, whereas
Cruz has been disciplined (he says the same things -verbatim-again and again).
In terms of debating and argument, no one tops Cruz.
I think he would crush Hillary in a debate.
Cruz’s debating ability is unsurpassed in sophistication. His policies are solid and appeal to every segment.
But Trump has more rugged charisma, and Cruz is not terribly likable, even though I like him.
I’m gonna have to go with Cruz. He would arm himself with several of ironclad arguments against Hillary and do everything to cast her as a Washington crony. But he has to deal with the Donald first, and I’m less certain here.
Trump would do terribly among Hispanics and they are key to winning many swing states. To make up for that, he would need to really motivate whites and perhaps even blacks, who are arguably more hurt my illegal immigration than anyone. Though currently he’s doing very poorly with blacks, but he might be able to turn that around since his shameless materialism resembles hip-hop culture and he could explain why his policies benefit them.
Ted Cruz reminds me of Q from Star Trek.
If Q’s role was not to pester the crew of the Enterprise.
They would share much in common in a positive role.
They would be the polarity of masculine (Q) and feminine (Cruz).
I hope Syria is not destabilized because of Hillary Clinton.
Creating power vacuums is not a good thing to do as a foreign policy.
Still playing with your formula for estimating IQ from bio-demographics
I will ask you some questions – one by one – if you don’t mind
1) should an age (see step 21) be given as a round number? For instance, 30 yo or 30 y 6 m (eg 30,5)?
It was intended to be a round number. So a 30-year-old is anyone who was born at least 30 years ago, but less than 31 years ago
2. What if a person claims that he/she doesn’t vote at all for some reasons (see step 18)?
Or doesn’t want to see any of that parties in power?
All you can do then is try to estimate which party best reflects his views and if there’s really no preference, then he’s essentially an average of all 3 on the left-right spectrum & thus a Democrat
Enough for tonight, thanks)
Cruz calling regular New Yorkers “freaks” would not be a winning strategy. Cruz’s strongest advantage over Trump is that he appears far more presidential. Attacking regular Americans is the last thing he should do. I don’t know if you watched the debate last night, but Trump won that particular exchange by a wide margin, and even made Cruz look almost petty — not an easy feat to accomplish.
On the other hand, Cruz’s chosen response today was very tactful:
I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers that have been held down by liberal policies in New York City.
I apologize to the hard-working men and women in the state of New York who have been denied jobs because Gov. Cuomo won’t allow fracking. Even though there have been many high-paying jobs just south in Pennsylvania, New Yorkers have been denied the chance to provide for their families.
I apologize to all the pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-Second Amendment New Yorkers told by Gov. Cuomo that they have no place in New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.
I apologize to all the small businesses that have been driven out of New York City by crushing taxes and regulations.
I apologize to all of the African American children who Mayor De Blasio tried to throw out of their schools that were providing a lifeline to the American dream.
Politicians from both parties are driven by the biggest donors.
De Blasio who ran as a mayor supporting the lower classes, shafted them, when big businesses paid him off. A good example was affordable housing that was planned to be built in a wealthy neighborhood. The wealthy tycoons in that neighborhood just paid him $50 million to have them relocated to a poor section of Manhattan.
So, does it mean that you also use pounds and inches in round numbers? If so, how To round them? 1.5 pound is still one unless it is two? Or we just follow regular math rules (for example,1,3=1 and 1.8=2)? Who knows – maybe making your data so discrete was meaningful for statistical noise reduction of some kind
The reason I don’t use fractional ages, is because age is always rounded down to the nearest whole year (at least in North America), So people who are 30.9,are considered 30, not 31
However when it comes to height or weight or head size, it’s permissible to use fractions.
https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/05/17/revised-formula-for-estimating-iq-from-bio-demographics/
I don’t fancy Bernie Sanders for anything, what I know of the man’s economic policy reveals him to be an embarrassing hangover of Marxist thought.
And since the original Ted Cruz article mentioned it, I’ll speculate on why conservatism has a negative correlation with IQ: It’s massively depressed at the low end as less intelligent white, working class people are strongly in favor of defending their own interests instinctively.
For the purposes of transparency, I’m politically liberal and somewhere between Locke and Mills.
I’ll speculate on why conservatism has a negative correlation with IQ: It’s massively depressed at the low end as less intelligent white, working class people are strongly in favor of defending their own interests instinctively.
They’re massively in favor of defending their own ethnic genetic interests (if you believe in such a concept as I do) but not their economic interests.
One of the interesting aspects of the current left-right divide is poor whites can’t defend one without sacrificing the other.
And one more clarification, please. If a person clearly shares
radical ultra
-left/anarchic beliefs, where can it be on your 3-elements spectrum?
I would classify them as Green party
Ok. Thank you. Now my last question , at least so far. а)This is known that weight and IQ correlate positively . But you subtract a resulting number. Does it mean that they (weight and IQ) correlate negatively in your sample or this is a sort of adjustment (like for being a male , step 14)?
b) Weight is bi-factorial – a folk can be fat or muscled (or both). Whatever your answer for a) is, do fats and athletes follow that correlation the same way?
Height is positively correlated with IQ, and weight is positively correlated with height, and that’s probably why some studies find a positive correlation between weight and IQ
However it’s also been reported that weight/height ratio is NEGATIVELY correlated with IQ.
In the data I analyzed, there was virtually no correlation between IQ and weight (positive or negative) but when height and weight were both added into the multiple regression, weight became a negative predictor:
https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/05/17/revised-formula-for-estimating-iq-from-bio-demographics/
I’ve never seen an IQ study distinguishing weight from fat vs weight from muscle, so we don’t know why high body mass index is related to low IQ. I did a post on the topic on my inactive blog:
https://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/iq-weightheight-ratio/
To assert that Trump inherited most of his money would, of course, be blatantly dishonest. He inherited $200,000. He now has a net worth estimated, consevatively, at $4.5.
$4.5 billion that is, pardon me.
I said Cruz could accuse him of inheriting much of his money, not most. But if Trump only inherited $200,000 your point still stands. However I’m a bit confused, because Trump’s father was one of the 400 richest Americans according to Forbes.
That should be $200 m not k, but was split four ways among father fred’s four children, so trump actually probably inherited something south of $50 million, or 1% of his current net worth. I was going off memory and had the decimal in the wrong place, yikes.
1% might be an underestimate because of inflation, and because presumably he inherited the Trump brand which I don’t know is included in that $50 million figure. Forbes gives Trump a self-made score of 5/10:
http://www.forbes.com/profile/donald-trump/
I added an update at the end of the post regarding your points
Thanks. I would like to see any additional information on the question. I’m going off of what I’ve read, but it’s not definitive.
Pumpkin, you’d be surprised to know that Manhattan is not that rude. If anything, it’s too polite. All the rude, low class, White people have been driven out to the outlying areas, and soon blacks and other poor racial minorities in Manhattan will follow the same path (except as low skilled workers serving the rich). Manhattan is now for wealthy people. They don’t read the Daily News.
I’ve heard that NYC is a nightmare to drive in now. That’s always been the case, but it’s especially bad now because the cops are not enforcing street parking laws so you have all these cars just blocking everyone.
NYC was never car friendly. It’s best to take public transportation and hire movers, if you really need to move things.
I believe I have status when I tell people in America – I’ve visited Winnipeg and Saskatoon in Canada. Have you? Their answer is mostly “no”. Many well traveled New Yorkers have never even stepped foot in Montreal. It’s quite sad!
I probably visited both places as a young kid. In college I had some friends who lived in Newfoundland, so I went on a road trip to visit their home towns. Stunningly beautiful and extremely different culture from Ontario. New Yorkers would call them prole, but they were some of the nicest most down to earth people I have ever met. I would love to go another road trip all by myself to Newfoundland.
PP, I’d like to exploit your unbounded kindness once again. This is the rest of my sample, I promise not to bother you with stuff like that anymore. May I ask you to give scaled scores for
Similarities, WAISIII,
– another 41 yo , minus 1 raw score
– 26 yo, minus 3 raw scores (btw, the only black here, a student from Africa)
Matrix reasoning, WAIS III
– 41 yo, minus 1 raw score
– another 41 yo, minus 2 raw scores
– 43 yo , minus 3 raw score
– 29 yo, minus 1 raw score.
Matrix reasoning is very interesting, there is uncertainty about the real ceiling
of Raven SPM (RSPM is still in use in my country due to a lack of other good measures), and many think that its just slightly higher than 98%,but my sample almost make the same number of errors on RSPM and MR subtest. Yes, I understand that WAIS III norms are inflated now
PP, I’d like to exploit your unbounded kindness once again. This is the rest of my sample, I promise not to bother you with stuff like that anymore. May I ask you to give scaled scores for
Similarities, WAISIII,
– another 41 yo , minus 1 raw score
– 26 yo, minus 3 raw scores (btw, the only black here, a student from Africa)
Matrix reasoning, WAIS III
– 41 yo, minus 1 raw score
– another 41 yo, minus 2 raw scores
– 43 yo , minus 3 raw score
– 29 yo, minus 1 raw score.
Matrix reasoning is very interesting, there is uncertainty about the real ceiling
of Raven SPM (RSPM is still in use in my country due to a lack of other good measures), and many think that its just slightly higher than 98%,but my sample almost make the same number of errors on RSPM and MR subtest. Yes, I understand that WAIS III norms are inflated now.
Similarities, WAISIII,
– another 41 yo , minus 1 raw score
16
– 26 yo, minus 3 raw scores (btw, the only black here, a student from Africa)
15
Matrix reasoning, WAIS III
– 41 yo, minus 1 raw score
17
– another 41 yo, minus 2 raw scores
16
– 43 yo , minus 3 raw score
15
– 29 yo, minus 1 raw score.
17
I can’t wait to hear all about what you’re learning from your research in such a far away land. But make sure you don’t mention specific test items
Thanks a lot, PP
Trump strikes me as an utter imbecile. Every sentence that comes out of his mouth is garbled word-salad.
Trump is an interesting case because I can’t picture him doing that well on an IQ test, yet he seems to have an intuitive mental ability to adapt, which I consider the true meaning of intelligence.
So either he would do better on IQ tests than I think, or IQ tests are too simplistic to measure the dynamic subtlety of true intelligence, or Trump just has special talents well suited to the times, or Trump is just able to take risks other candidates can’t because he’s so damn rich.