The tragic death of boxer Muhammad Ali has inspired much commentary, including from iconic blogger Steve Sailer and National merit finalist ruhkukah who recently said on this blog:
Muhammad Ali, who just passed away, may be one of the best examples of the failure of IQ to capture every aspect of human mental ability. He was one of the most charismatic men of his time, known for his unique verbal facility, in addition to being a great boxer and athlete.
Ali’s actual IQ score: 85 not 78
For decades it’s been reported that Muhammad Ali scored the equivalent of 78 on army testing (I first saw the figure in Daniel Seligman’s 1992 book A Question of Intelligence), but upon doing a bit of research, I realize that everyone has been wrong. Ali scored at the 16th percentile on the test, which for whatever reason, sources are equating with an IQ of 78, but on a standard scale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, the 16th percentile of Americans is actually IQ 85. Someone clearly made a clerical error, and it got repeated over and over and over again. No one bothered to fact check, until now.
Of course these norms include non-whites which tends to inflate them relative to the traditional white normed IQ scale. On the other hand they exclude women, which deflates the norms. Since the inclusion of non-whites negates the exclusion of women, Ali likely scored 85 on sex-combined white norms (the traditional IQ scale and the international IQ scale).
However ruhkukah’s point still stands. Even an IQ of 85 sounds very low for a man as impressive as Ali, but we have to put in perspective.
Average IQ of the subculture boxers are recruited from? About 74
Boxers are generally drawn from the most violent segment of the black underclass, since their job is essentially sanctioned assault. Thus the population Ali must be compared to is the black incarcerated population, a sample of which had a mean IQ of 78.47 (SD = 8.24) (U.S. norms) on the WAIS-R. After adjusting for inflated norms (the study was published in 1987 and the WAIS-R was normed in 1978), this becomes a mean IQ of 75.77 (SD = 8.24). But because the WAIS-R norming included non-whites, the white mean was driven up to 101.4 and the white SD was driven down to 14.65. Converting to white norms (the traditional standard), where the white mean and SD by definition are 100 and 15 respectively, the black inmates now have a mean of 74 and an SD of 8.44.
Statistically expected IQ of the greatest boxer of his generation: About 85
Americans like Ali, born from 1925 to 1942 are the “Silent Generation” and there were 20 million of them. Of these, 1.2 million were black males, and of those, given that in the 20th century, about 29% of U.S. black males ended up in jail during their lives, perhaps 348,000 of these 1.2 million black males were part of the tough subculture from which boxers are recruited.
Assuming Ali was the best fighter in this group, he’d be 4.53 SD above them in boxing performance and given the 0.8 correlation between performance and “raw talent”, we’d expect Ali to be 0.8(+4.53 SD) = +3.62 SD above this group in raw kinesthetic ability.
Given the 0.35 correlation between IQ and physical coordination found by the U.S. Department of Labour cited in Seligman’s 1992 book, we’d expect Ali’s IQ to be 0.35(+3.62 SD) = +1.27 SD above his ethno-social class.
This is probably an overestimate given that correlations tend to be smaller in homogenous subgroups.
Nonetheless, the prediction hits the mark. If the black male gangster class has a mean IQ of 74 with an SD of 8.44, Ali’s expected IQ would be 1.27(8.44) + 74 = 85 which is exactly how he scored on the Army intelligence test!
IQ isn’t everything
Some might question how someone so verbally quick and charismatic, not to mention iconic and influential, could have had an IQ of “only” 85, but I actually think the low IQ was part of his charm because it gave him a childlike innocence and enthusiasm that the public found endearing. But for all his gifts, in the end Ali struggled to adapt the situation to his advantage (the ultimate test of intelligence). His promoters got rich at the expense of his health, while the final decades of Ali’s life were tragic.
Nonetheless he will go down in history as one of the most admired people of the 20th century for his athletic gifts, creativity (he’s been called the first rapper), stage presence, moral courage in opposing the Vietnam war, and the pride, dignity, and status he brought to his people. He will be deeply missed.
Pumpkin Person 
but his head looks so big, larger than Bush’s even on a proportion.
His head was tiny actually.
well it’s tough to tell.
Perhaps his head wasn’t capable of taking the blows of those guys, so he got Parkinson’s disease 😦
George Foreman
-Brought German Shepherds to country colonized by Belgium, when in competition with Pro-Black Ali (rumble in the Jungle in Zaire, turned the locals against him).
-Didn’t know how to handle Ali’s unique strategy.
BUT
-Speaks professionally.
-George Foreman grill.
-Kept himself on good behavior almost as much as Holyfield.
George Foreman used to be known for his angry persona, which he claimed was the result of his daddy not being around growing up. But then he found his real daddy, Jesus, and became smiley all the time. Then he had a bunch of kids himself, and named them all George/Georgina after him. And then he did the grill too
pp-what about reaction times?
How does that play a role in this specific one?
Interesting! Thanks for the post Pumpkin.
I think you peeviously mentioned Ali’s fast reaction time, which also contradicts his low IQ. But I remember in a book I read by Gerd Gigerenzer (spelling?) that athletes artificially improved their reaction speeds in certain limited scenarios by subconsciously noticing micro-movements in their opponents bodies, and predicting where they (or some object they were throwing) were going next based on that…or something like that.
Boxing is fascinating because so much repeated decision-making is involved to adapt the situation to your advantage, like in a chess or poker game. But in boxing, the decisions are happening so much faster, and mostly on a subconscious level.
When you have a logic mind look more easy to give good arguments and specially when their oponents are compulsively contradictory.
He had a faster kinesthetic reaction time is not*
He had a higher fluid verbal cognition, what many blacks tend to have. They are on avg better to argue specially about spectrally simple topics. More simple, reactive and faster minds. Verbal iq ‘tend to” measure crystallized verbal cognition.
Gypsy is other similar type with higher capacity to conviction, faster thinkers, i think ashkeNAZI too.
He had fewer verbal informations to memorise but good verbal reasoning/agility to use this little crystallized knowledge.
People who memorise excessively may look like those people who are always accumulating things in their homes.
Some boxers tend to be faster thinkers and generally sports select for many different types of faster (kinesthetic) thinkers, just look for the table tennis.
Do Bruce Lee and draw a comparison.
That would be fascinating.
PP, would you like to try to estimate an IQ of Stephen Hawking? Maybe you did it before and I missed it
I’ll add him to my waiting list
Please read the column written by Burt Prelutzsky. I agree that the attention Ali received was not warranted. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3437204/posts
what the hell was that?
It literally goes off subject (from Muhammad Ali to the Hillary Clinton email scandal- with no transition).
Was it like two articles merged into one?
-He was arrogant,
BUT
he was right about Vietnam. It targeted Blacks, and poor people, who were treated badly by the Hegemony of the country.
His personality was pretty arrogant, I will agree.
He basically portrayed George Foreman as an Uncle Tom to the Locals in Rumble in the Jungle, unfairly.
He had just enemies.
But that was him.
He was not a MLK follower.
He belonged to the National of Islam.
I am fair and believe it is only fair that Whites be allowed to have the * of his racist views, but ask yourself, where did they come from?
Obviously, I also think we need to consider the possibility that the IQ test Ali took was not an actual reflection of his intelligence. There are many reasons why people underperform on a specific IQ test: learning disabilities, motivation, poor reading skills, lack of exposure to educational materials, social stresses etc. One person’s IQ test score is not statistically meaningful in the same way the general population’s IQ average score is. We all know this, and I’m surprised that this isn’t a focus of our discussion. Bill Cosby said in an interview with David Letterman that Cosby himself scored 500 composite on his SAT back when the SAT test was considered a proxy IQ test. Cosby explained that this was because he never studied or read books. He also took an actual IQ test around that time that qualified him for a gifted IQ program. Even though the SAT and the IQ test correlate highly, the correlation didn’t apply to Cosby.
With intelligent people, I notice that their voice is very crisp and sophisticated. Muhammad Ali’s voice didn’t seem like that, but he did seem verbally charismatic. What’s the correlation between charisma and Verbal IQ. I’d think you’d have to have a decent amount of Verbal IQ and social skills.
Also, even with a high processing speed and working memory, if you have a high Matrix reasoning score, Information and Vocabulary score, could you still be very successful in Physics, (theoretical), Math (abstract algebra, pure math), and Philosophy?
Ali probably had an IQ of 138 not 85. He lied on his Army IQ test to not to go to Vietnam. Simple is that.
My father who was a retired army officer forced me to go to military academy. I intentionally failed on the entrance exam.
btw my IQ is also 138
You and Puppy just don’t get it. Social intelligence is not really related to ‘g’.
By definition, all forms of intelligence are related to g. Anyone who has worked with the mentally retarded can tell you this. Even physical “intelligence” is moderately g loaded. You don’t understand that correlations can be positive while also having many exceptions.
Even physical “intelligence” is moderately g loaded.
Does this mean that:
(1) Physical intelligence has its own g factor?
or
(2) Physical ability is positively correlated with (mental) g?
Actually, both statements are probably true.
physical coordination is correlated with IQ (r = 0.35) because the brain controls the body.
the brain controls everything and its primary functioning ability is called g. and everything in the brain is interrelated to some degree since it is the same functioning organ so it would only make sense to observe a phenomenon like g being correlated with every function that is coordinated by the brain.
Also, IQ correlates with health of lifestyle, doesn’t it? So I figure it would have a modest correlation with athletic ability.
that has nothing to do with it
Health of lifestyle might have nothing to do with physical coordination, but I would say that athletic ability is part of “physical intelligence” (what we were originally talking about) and I would also assume that athletic ability correlates with IQ
Billy the chance that a guy like Muhammad Ali had an IQ even above 70 would be surprising to me. he was a boxer. he was famous only for boxing. blacks are quick witted and can make very intelligible or powerful remarks at times. this does not mean that their cognition is any good or that they deserve to be respected for their cognition.
billy if you truly believed any of the garbage youre spewing about your own and Muhammad’s IQ then you would quickly realize that any black with some amount of significance should and would have an IQ above 100 yet you have a critical and disparaged view of rap? how can this possibly be.
what was the year that Muhammad Ali test for the army , and receive a low IQ .
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