I recently got the following email from commenter “Aint tellin”:
Hello,
I don’t want to bother you with such a mundane question, but this past week I’ve been seeing more and more of one particular comment in regards to comedian Norm Macdonald. I figured you would be the best person to validate this claim. He is frequently cited by many comedians as being a genius and having an incredibly high IQ. These same high-profile comedians are quick to label him the greatest living comic alive.
While I don’t know if these comments are correct, I do have to concede that from my listening of him out-of-character that he appears to be well read (particularly in Russian literature) very witty and articulate.
I know that you’ve previously estimated the IQ of the average comedian to be in the realms of +1.5SD above the norm. How high above the norm (no pun intended) would a comedian have to be to produce work worthy of the title: ‘funniest man alive’? Would you consider the claims of Norm Macdonald’s genius accurate or hyperbole?
I don’t know if there’s any consensus on who the funniest man alive is, but certainly Norm Macdonald is up there as one of the greats. Comedians are fascinating because most are obviously very smart, but often act dumb for comic effect, and unlike other high IQ occupations, they seldom have elite or advanced degrees, or even any degrees at all.
One sign that they have very high IQs is the extreme overrepresentation of the high IQ Ashkenazi population. Depending on how you define them, Jews are 2 or 3% of America, and yet a third of Comedy Central’s “100 Greatest Standups of All Time” are Jewish. Interestingly blacks are also overrepresented: they are 18% of the list despite being 13% of America.
Expected IQ of “funniest man alive”
We first need to know the correlation between IQ and comedy. A 2011 study found a 0.27 correlation between Raven IQ and humor ability (as measured by the rated funniness of captions you can think up for cartoons).
Source: Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males by Gil Greengross and Geoffrey Miller
But there are two reasons to think the correlation is an underestimate. It was calculated on college students who vary less in IQ than the general population. Correcting for range restriction would likely increase the correlation by about 0.1 or so. Also, a very abbreviated version of the Raven was used and the lower reliability likely further depressed the correlation by perhaps an additional 0.1. Correcting for both factors, the correlation is likely 0.44.
However the Raven likely has a g loading around 0.72 (the g loading of the Matrix reasoning subtest on the WAIS-IV). Some might say the Matrix reasoning subtest is less g loaded since it’s shorter than the Raven, but this is perhaps counterbalanced by the fact that it’s individually administered which ensures everyone understands the task. Dividing 0.44 by 0.72 gives 0.61, which is the likely correlation between humor ability and general intelligence (g).
However great achievement requires more than just raw talent. It also helps to have 10,000 hours of practice, among other things. Raw talent seems to explain 66% to 70% of the variance in various cognitive performance, suggesting talent correlates 0.82 with performance.
So multiplying the 0.61 correlation between g ad humor ability by the 0.82 correlation between ability and performance gives a 0.5 correlation between g and comic performance.
Now when people say “funniest man alive” they probably really mean “funniest American of either sex” (Macdonald had to move to the U.S. though may not be a U.S. citizen). Assuming there are 215 million Americans over age 25, a perfect correction between IQ and comedy would give the funniest person in America an IQ of 186 (U.S. norms). In other words, 86 points above the U.S. mean. But since the correlation is perhaps 0.5, we’d expect him to be 86(0.5) = 43 points above the U.S. mean, or IQ 143 (U.S. norms), with a 95% chance of being from 118 to 168.
How close did the estimate come?
Given the huge margin of error associated with this estimate, it’s always nice to have some empirical confirmation. Usually no such confirmation exists, but I was extremely lucky to discover that back in 2000, Macdonald had appeared on the hit TV show Who wants to be a millionaire? Since general knowledge is among the most g loaded measures of intelligence, I decided this could serve as a rough proxy for his IQ, though he was asked only 15 questions (the WAIS information subtest has nearly twice that), and they were multiple choice which makes it easier to get lucky.
Although Macdonald relied on help from the audience and friends for some questions , and was talked out of giving a final answer to the last question, in my judgement he knew or would have correctly guessed the answer to all the questions except for the one about the guitar auction, giving him a score of 14 out of 15.
To see how this maps to IQ, I asked the questions to my readers, who self-reported the following scores (out of 15):
Distribution of the 48 self-reported scores as of sept 24, 4:24 pm Eastern:
15,15,14,14,14,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,11,11,11,11,11,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,9,9,9,9,8,8,8,8,7,6,5,5,4,2
The mean is 10.5 with a standard deviation (SD) of 2.8, so Macdonald’s IQ (as crudely measured by this quiz) is 1.25 SD above the average reader of pumpkinperson.com.
Since previous research suggests my readers average a borderline genius IQ of 127 (U.S. norms) with an SD of 15, that would put his IQ at:
1.25(15) + 127 = 146
Of course, modern IQ scales normalize the distribution, but that makes little difference for Macdonald’s score. Either way he scored in the mid 140s, exactly as we’d statistically expect from his comic talent.
Despite his great performance on the game show, some might dismiss Macdonald as a mere clown and doubt he could be so brilliant. And admittedly, general knowledge is only a rough proxy for IQ, and the game show was only a rough and perhaps rigged proxy for general knowledge (it’s not in the show’s interest to make us celebs looks dumb) and my equating to IQ relied on self-reported data from people on the internet.
However I saw an interview where Macdonald made a comment implying he’s smarter than he seems: He said that unlike Bill Maher and other cerebral comics who want to show how smart they are, David Letterman is smarter than all those guys but smart enough to know that everyone hates a smart guy. Perhaps Macdonald was projecting onto Letterman his own dumbing down strategy.
Pumpkin Person 
norm is very smart. the smartest comedian except for steve martin. his brother is very accomplished too.
but he grew up poor.
so maybe he wouldn’t score so high on IQ tests.
Grew up poor? His parents were teachers which is a good job in Canada.
you know more than i do.
so solidly middle.
He grew up in rural Canada with a two-hole outhouse. I don’t know if that means he was poor but he makes it sound like he was.
By the way, Norm never graduated high school. There’s a clip where Norm says that when he started on SNL, he was intimidated by the Harvard educated writers but quickly realized they weren’t any smarter than him. I think he said they were just rich idiots. Sarah Silverman said she had the same experience when she joined SNL.
His Wikipedia page says he attended carleton university
In his podcast with Sarah Silverman, he says he grew up on a dairy farm with no money, and he didn’t go to college. There’s another interview where he says he didn’t graduate high school, and that nobody will question you if you lie about having a high school degree.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if he was lying about not having one. There’s an article about him that says he graduated high school at fourteen.
Im guessing the smartest comedian is probably jewish in all likelihood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Richards
This guy lost the plot one night during a stand up gig. Seeing as hes from Seinfeld I highly doubt he actually is ‘race-ist’. I genuinely believe his explanation that he was trying to be outrageous for laughs.
In his apology on the David Letterman show he referred to african americans and ‘afro americans’. People thought it was more stand up hahaha.
Overall though I’d say hes not the smartest person…but his dad was an electrical engineer so maybe he’s doing an inside joke. Now THAT would be funny.
^^^MOSSAD AGENT^^^
has pill ever actually met a jew?
I lived with one in london actually.
i mean norm is so fucking smart that when he has spoken seriously and not as a comedian he’s even smarter.
norm is one of my heroes.
and not just among comedians.
norm is one of the smartest famous people…ever.
What is intelligence*
Adaptation is the mimic of environment/niche to survive.
Memory is just like xerox.
Adaptation is a perfectionistic conformity/obedience to environment.
There is instinctive memory: the memory we don’t memorize, because we born with this. [all instincts are memories or recordings].
There is environmental memory: the memory we have to expand our instinctive basis.
Another human huge intellectual advantage over nonhuman animals: we have big instinctive but specially environmental memories.
General knowledge tend to be considerably automatic, smarter you are, easier for you to learn/to memorize/to copy given information. If something is super easy for you, it’s may mean you’re not striving enough, and it’s likely to be your memorization skills in action + psycho-cognitive biases.
A comedian is one of the smartest… but only significant creativity is a true intelligence, specially genius one.
A lot of smarter people, seems, internalize a lot of stuff, but have a superficial UNDERSTANDING about most of this.
If someone is smarter enough to be a succesfull comedian and provide for itself the best of environments why s/he don’t try show up its real intelligence/creativity in any other [more relevant] area than entertainment*
And comedians often have faster connection between their emotional//social and short-term creative/combinatory skills.
The difference between intelligence and creativity is that the second is based on a lot of effort [hughly analytical critical skills use], over-fixation on given specific stuff, persistence, and yes, a lot of intuitive helps too. The big effort of intelligence without creativity is basically the memorization/recording of given informations.
It seems you love Norm the same way Pumpkin loves Oprah and Pill loves Mel Gibson…
Beautiful!!😍
adapting…
What big brained reaction time look like…
lol I’d believe it if my IQ is 127, though 1.25(7) + 127 = 136, I doubt it.
I am glad I have found your blog.
As for Norm, he routinely dissimulates w.r.t. his upbringing, frequently claiming that he grew up on an Albertan cattle ranch, or on a potato farm, or that he had to fight French boys on the mean streets of Quebec.
I think you are exactly right that he was speaking about himself vis a vis the Letterman compliment. He seems to do that quite a lot.
As for that IQ range, 140-150, what sort of life could such a person make? What sort of jobs would they find interesting (especially if they don’t have much by way of schooling)?
Speaking of the IQ of comedians, they seem to let their intelligence be exposed when they start talking seriously about the craft of joke-writing. Although the greatest sign of their intellect is probably the ability with which they analogize.
I imagine that Colin Quinn would fit the bill of a rather smart comedian. His working-class Brooklyn accent, most likely, allows him to get away with doing rather dense comedy specials centered around the history of New York or the U.S. Constitution.
However, a side-by-side comparison of Norm’s book and of Colin’s book really prejudices the latter, I’m afraid, comedically as well as intellectually.
Well many comedians are jewish for the same reasons many actors and media editors and music producers are.
Just as I would have expected. The only person I know of that I find funnier than Norm Macdonald is my dad, who is not a comic but a psychologist. Although, I’m aware of my possible bias here. His IQ score from when he was tested in the army put him around 150. My mother—also tested in the army—scored in the mid 140’s. I think it’s the concurrence of high intellect and a blue-collar upbringing marred by tragedy that led to his off-the-charts humor. I wonder if it’s a similar case for Norm.
While I doubt Norm would care about his IQ, I think it definitely safe to say: Norm Is a genius.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/24/rod-rosenstein-resigns-latest-reports-trump-mueller-investigation
I don’t really follow the news that much anymore because its complete horseshit. But why would the NYT reveal Rosenstein to be a deep state mole? Makes no sense.
The chief writer for futurama and a staff writer during the simpsons golden age is David X Cohen. Degree in physics.
Futurama was a legit great show. Especially early on.
Simpsons is dogshit right now.
This is a random guy explaining why the jokes in the simpsons aren’t funny. He calls it low brow humour. What he means is low IQ Family Guy humour. Hes right. Its a lot like family guy. I never got why simpsons writers changed their whole style to be like a knock off bargain bin rival.
Im not a comedy writer, though I may try here, but if you want something to be funny, the context usually has to be serious.
If you make jokes in a lollipop la la land with jesus high fiving people, you condition people to expect stupidity which is not comedy imo.
The decline of the Simpsons is one of the most tragic things in the history of television. Except it wasn’t even much of a decline but rather a sudden drop-off around the year 2000. Now it’s not even funny, probably worse than Family Guy.
Laurel and Hardy works because one of the guys is serious. And the situations theyre in are real lifey. If both characters were retarded and both in Oz, nobody would have found it that funny unless you were high or something.
Dumb and Dumber works because the world and situation (a kidnapping) they are in are serious.
My theory on comedy is that its about contrasts in expectations. Maybe some day ill write a piece on it.
The simpson best ever episode imo is actually the opposite to the above. A serious person (Frank Grimes) surrounded by retards. Idiocracy does it as well. But its a lot more political and therefore intellectually amusing too.
Futurama might seem to break this. I.e. its a dumb situation with dumb people. But actually futurama is funny because its basically a parody of modern society.
Are you among dumbers or chosens*
R strategy: procreate to survive
K strategy: survive to procreate
Captain Superobvious attacks again!!
norm is very smart:
I live in L.A., where I’m always faced with the lunacy of the left. I didn’t know that the same lunacy existed on the right. So I never really bought into this notion that everybody is racist — because there was a black president, you know? But the Sacha Baron Cohen show has been a frightening eye-opener. I was also in a bubble, but in a different way. I guess everyone is a fucking idiot. Everyone is an idealogue. Hopefully the pendulum will slow down in the next four years.
so swank is on the right as he is an italian supremacists even though he’s jewish.
JS is a spanish supremacist.
i’ve known so many jews i can’t stand it, and…
they are NOT that smart.
they ARE that ambitious, energetic, pushy, etc..
Jews ARE smart. But they’re also the other things you said–sometimes straight-up aggressive, in a verbal way.
I’ve noticed this with many educated South Asians as well. But they tend to be much less liberal.
my own theory of the jewish psyche is…
if western europeans all took amphetamines they would become jews.
jews are many things but lazy and drunk aren’t among them.
how different can “how smart you SOUND” and “how smart you ARE” be?
before IQ tests there was no such difference.
test validity can be measured.
wechsler tests and other EXPENSIVE tests are much LESS valid than college entrance exams…
BY THEIR OWN STANDARDS!
EXCEPT FOR THE BELOW AVERAGE.
There’s no evidence that people who do well on the SAT seem smarter than people who do well on the WAIS, but even if there were, it could be because of the SAT’s verbal and social class bias.
The real measure of test validity is correlation with brain size.
of course if you have a black accent or thick southern accent or canadian accent or australian accent…
people will assume you’re a moron no matter what you actually say.
…or if you have a lot of muscles…
…or if you don’t dress correctly…
…or if you have bad hygiene…
…or if you aren’t masculine enough in appearance (although there is a U curve, because too masculine and people think you’re stupid too)…
peepee has this BIZARRE prejudice against entrance exams.
even though from a PSYCHOMETRIC POV they’re the best.
it’s just that they’re the best for a SELECT population.
yes. other IQ tests can identify people who are very smart but would score not so high on entrance exams.
i agree.
so what?
the idea that entrance exams are not IQ tests is DUMB.
if your IQ is over 100 the GOLD STANDARD is the SAT…
NOT the whatever jew test.
WAIS has a g loading of 0.9. SAT has g loading of 0.7. Nuff said
my g is 130 on the wais
so
wais is 0.9(30) = 27g
SAT is 0.7(55) = 38g
g is not full-scale IQ, mine is 113
Given that almost everyone with a IQ over 100 is pressured into going to college nowadays (unfortunately!), and almost everyone at this level of intelligence has had exposure to the basic 9th grade level math/grammar needed to do well on the SAT, I would guess that among this population (100+ IQ crowd) the SAT g loading is almost the same as Wechsler’s.
Doubt it. The SAT only measures a very narrow range of cognitive skills, and is easier for people who’ve taken more math classes in high school and at some schools they give 8 weeks of test prep and at other schools none at all.
Also, the SAT math seems to have no correlation with math talent at high levels. Mug of Pee claims to have scored 800 yet is baffled by the simplest of logic. Even math 800 bill gates was not a top math student at Harvard, although he was a computer genius.
And many people who scored near perfect on the SAT like chuck schumer or james woods don’t sound all that brilliant in interviews.
Thats because they dont say their real opinions. You realise schumer is a politician?!
I bet he beleives in HBD.
bill Clinton was a master politician and back in his prime, everyone gushed about how intelligent he sounded.
For math, the only high range intelligence test is the math Olympiad. It’s relatively not knowledge intensive (SAT is 10 yo math except time constraint, Olympiad is 16 yo math for someone into Stem) . And if only 1 in 10 000 (0.01%) PhD in math get the field medal, it is 800 times more (8%) for perfect scorers (15-18 yo people) and 100 times more (1%) . There is no test in the world – to my knowledge – with a higher predictive value for high level Intellectual achievement.
I’ve done well on entrance exams like the SAT/LSAT and done well on raw ‘IQ’ tests like the old WAIS to get into gifted and talented.
I would say that pumpkin has a point that the fancy IQ tests, in terms of the level of logic/inductive thinking required, were harder.
But the entrance exams are overall more difficult because they tap into more domains. Raw memory, comprehension, inductive thinking, etc.
of course, muggy is right when he talks about there being little difference in the world between “how smart you sound/look” and “how smart you are.”
there are also approaches that people deem ‘smarter’ and ‘dumber,’ which boil down to whether you hide the brushstrokes or not.
i’ve always been the type to just spit out a main idea and let the refinement come with time or discussion or whatever. people think that’s stupid.
other people deliberate before saying anything. people think that’s smart.
but the difference is just how social you decide to make your thinking.
my approach earns a lot of social rewards.
the ‘House MD’ approach does not.
Are you sure you took the wechseler and not some other test, because it has way more domains than the SAT/LSAT. View my score report to get a sense of all the different kinds of abilities it tests:
What I mean is that entrance exams rely more on things one likely has previously learned.
Even the LSAT rewards familiarity with reading passages during undergrad in textbooks and figuring out the main idea/arguments.
So domain in the sense that it’s probably not just what you’d call “cognitive.” There’s more long-term memory that has to be accessed and other skills that come from practice.
I don’t remember the WAIS being like that. And yes it was that test…I didn’t keep my score report. I don’t even know if I ever got it. I know that the person administering it observed me in class, and I know they met with my parents.
Have you taken any entrance exams, pumpkin?
No, they’re not used in Canada, except to get into graduate school.
so the wechsler is most often used in articles by psychology profs because…
1. it has the best marketing.
2. it is the best IQ test for the general population.
1% for gold medal (50 person out of 600, 6 per country). There are 2 to 4 perfect scores each year.
-1.96(15) + 127 = 97
makes me 97 in American cultural knowledge IQ from the 90’s and early 00’s
what an actually very very smart person sounds like:
for more…
read the comments of mugabe/ian smith/jorge videla/chartreuse/etc.
i agree with swank that hugo black was/is the ideal justice.
i disagree with swank that black was not an original intent-er.
i disagree with swank that scalia didn’t suck.
yeah!
the greatest high court justice of all time was a former klansman.
the way it is.
not the way it should be.
muggy is an ignorant slut. it’s the only explanation for his disagreements.
black was not an original intent-er. he was one of the founders of the original meaning school of thought that scalia ran with.
The Court’s justification for consulting its own notions rather than following the original meaning of the Constitution, as I would, apparently is based on the belief of the majority of the Court that for this Court to be bound by the original meaning of the Constitution is an intolerable and debilitating evil; that our Constitution should not be ‘shackled to the political theory of a particular era,’ and that to save the country from the original Constitution the Court must have constant power to renew it and keep it abreast of this Court’s more enlightened theories of what is best for our society. It seems to me that this is an attack not only on the great value of our Constitution itself but also on the concept of a written constitution which is to survive through the years as originally written unless changed through the amendment process which the Framers wisely provided.
language is evolving. the parts are moving. hugo black’s “plain meaning” approach to the constitution = scalia’s, but there just wasn’t a name for it way back when.
black stating that “Congress shall make no law means no law” is not original intent. it’s original meaning. the original intent of the founders manifestly indicates that they meant to carry over the traditional British idea of “freedom of speech” at common law.
x may be called a at time 1 and b at time 2, which is what confuses the slutterati — muggy — but it’s always x.
moreover, the history surrounding x may be narrative a at time 1 and b at time 2, but people confuse the narrative at time 2 with the narrative for all time. history changes. that’s why history degrees are useful.
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
more lies and stupidity from ms swank.
“original meaning” as used by black meant “original intent” as used today.
“original meaning” as used by scalia is a crime against nature and should be punished by burning at the stake on a pile of cow chips.
the original intent of the founders manifestly indicates that they meant to carry over the traditional British idea of “freedom of speech” at common law.
if that’s true then black should be burned in effigy every july 4th along with fat tony scalia.
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
this does NOT describe the US and never has. the US is a very free but very brainwashed and undemocratic society all at the same time. original intent is not difficult to discern for those who make the effort. the US has no genuine memory holes only corrupt journalists.
italians are tiresome and greasy.
“original meaning” as used by black meant “original intent” as used today.
“Black insisted that judges rely on the intent of the Framers as well as the “plain meaning” of the Constitution’s words and phrases (drawing on the history of the period) when deciding a case.”
nope. de facto original meaning was black’s jurisprudence.
if that’s true then black should be burned in effigy every july 4th along with fat tony scalia.
this does NOT describe the US and never has. the US is a very free but very brainwashed and undemocratic society all at the same time.
it DOES describe the U.S., this is the entire point behind manufacturing consent. part of manufacturing consent is changing the historical narrative every generation or so.
and yes, i already stated this about the U.S. the revolution was conservative, fighting to preserve a way of life rather than overthrow an order.
the fact that one set of class values held together an entire society necessitated conformity of opinion. you can’t have a nation of ideas without a hiveminded society. it doesn’t work.
that is why “new ideas” come at cost in America. that is why it takes $$$ to “move hearts and minds.”
the government doesn’t need to get involved with “free speech” because the society itself is so armored against it.
and muggy doesn’t understand this.
the social consequences of ideas are NECESSARY.
ideas that are unpopular with the dominant class are shut out via hiring/firing, etc.
and to change the tide of which ideas are good and which ideas are bad requires a shift in who has the power.
$$$ all the way
but as the US has become more like the country it seceded from…
a justice like black would be like harriet miers today.
that is, the US has become much more elitist.
a U of Alabama law school grad (like black) would never be considered.
and even more than that…
black was almost borked because of his klan association.
he spoke on national radio (there was no national tv) defending himself.
anyway, there’s a documentary on hugo.
here’s one section of it.
bork is the ideal justice but he was borked.
emotional pain sucks
wish that I will feel better