Monthly Archives: August 2020

Harvard & the Presidency

14 Friday Aug 2020

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

There are roughly 222 million Americans old enough to have gone to Harvard. Of these, only 279,000 have actually attended Harvard. If we crudely assume that Harvard is the pinnacle of credentials, attending Harvard puts you at the top one in 796 level achievement (normalized Z score = +3).

Meanwhile of America’s 76 million baby boomers (alive or dead), only four grew up to be President of the United States (so far). If we crudely assume being President is the pinnacle of power, the Presidency puts you at the top one in 19 million level. The median U.S. president would therefore be at the one in 38 million level in power (normalized Z = +5.47).

Of the five living U.S. President, two have attended Harvard (Bush & Obama), so an achievement that is +3 Z in the general population, is only +0.27 Z among Presidents. This implies the average U.S. President is +2.73 Z in education (3 – 0.27). Considering the average U.S. president has an IQ of about 130 (+ 2 Z), this implies education is more important for achieving power than IQ (as Lion of the Blogosphere would agree).

This makes sense because education reflects not just IQ but social class and work ethic as well.

We can estimate that IQ correlates 0.37 with power (2/5.47) while education correlates 0.5 (2.73/5.47).

Professor claims so-called aliens are future humans

05 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 168 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

I’m a huge skeptic when it comes to people claiming to have seen aliens, but I’ve always loved the way these aliens (known as Greys) are depicted as having so many high IQ traits (large cranial capacity, extremely thin, etc). I’ve always thought they looked like the next stage of human evolution but I dismissed such thoughts as sci-fi nonsense because how could such an advanced form of humanity already exist when our species only just evolved a few hundred thousand years ago.

But what if they don’t already exist, they just appear to because they are time travelers from the future. That’s the fantastical thesis of Dr. Michael P. Masters. At first I thought this was nutty, but there are two reasons why it’s worth considering. First Dr. Masters comes across as highly intelligent and well educated on the subject of human evolution, and second, his theory has enormous explanatory power.

His theory explains:

  • why supposed aliens look like the natural extension of the last six million years of human evolution
  • why supposed aliens keep such a low profile (if they are time travelers, they probably don’t want to mess with their history because it could affect their present)
  • why supposed aliens appear despite no astronomical evidence for life on other planets (they are from our own planet, just in the future)
  • why if time travel is theoretically possible, we never see people from the future (we do, it’s just they’re from so far in the future that they’re no longer “people”)

The main problem with his theory is (1) it’s based on dubious evidence for the existence of these aliens, and (2) why would human evolution keep continuing in the same direction (bigger brains, smaller less ape-like faces, less muscle) now that we’ve largely overcome natural selection and are on the precipice of genetic engineering?

You can see Dr. Masters discuss his theory in the below video.

Take the Pumpkin Adult Test of Math Ability (PATMA)

04 Tuesday Aug 2020

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 95 Comments

Math ability is one of the best proxies for IQ so I decided to create a little math test for anyone who’s interested. It’s completely anonymous. There are only 10 questions ranging from extremely easy to extremely difficult. The easiest question can probably be answered by over 99% of the general U.S. adult population while the hardest can probably be answered by less than 0.1%. To enhance the g loading, I picked questions that emphasized mathematical intuition and conceptual understanding as opposed to brute number crunching.

There’s no time limit, but try to take the test in one sitting without use of calculator, pen, paper or other aids, though I doubt they would help much. Take the anonymous poll to let us know how you scored.