A reader asked:
What are the real-world implications of an exceptional score (say, 170 – 190) on tests of the Mega Test type?
While conventional IQ tests are administered in a single sitting, and supervised so that you can’t rely on books or calculators to “cheat”, Mega Type tests include problems so complex, they’re solved over dozens of unsupervised hours in many sittings, with the use of reference books and other aids.
Chris Langan stated:
…by virtue of their difficulty, these problems take longer to solve… sometimes days or even weeks. Accordingly,
From Discussions on Genius and Intelligence Mega Foundation Interview with Arthur Jensen pg 23
power tests are untimed and unsupervised. This opens the door to factors like motivation and persistence, which are not
among the factors primarily measured by standard IQ tests. On the other hand, virtually every significant intellectual
achievement of mankind has involved these factors in great measure.
Arthur Jensen stated:
…Such tests would have little practical use, although they could be of scientific interest in studying the nature of high-level problem solving. But people even capable of taking such tests could be identified with some conventional tests, such as a combination of the Advanced Raven Matrices and Terman’s Concept Mastery Test. People with high scores on such tests can demonstrate their problem solving ability in their careers. What is the need for prior selection? They can make it into college and graduate school if they’ve got high IQs, and it will be their virtually unique constellation of traits (g + special abilities + motivation + character, etc.) that will determine whether they will, first of all, identify important problems, and secondly, be able to solve them or at least materially contribute to their eventual solution.
From Discussions on Genius and Intelligence Mega Foundation Interview with Arthur Jensen pg 24
So Langan and Jensen seems to feel that Mega type tests measure a combination of traits useful for high level intellectual achievement. Cognitive traits (g, special abilities) + personality variables (persistence + motivation). Jensen seems to feel that the cognitive component can be sufficiently measured by combining conventional psychometric tests (eg RAPM + CMT), but what about the non-cognitive component?
Jensen writes about a trait called Typical Intellectual Engagement (or TIE) :
Most people perform at near their maximum level while taking a cognitive test. However, even among persons who show exactly the same level of g, there is great variation in TIE, which is assessed with a fifty-nine-item self-report questionnaire. The TIE inventory assesses the degree to which the individual typically engages in g-demanding activities, vocationally and especially avocationally, and has what would ordinarily be regarded as intellectual interests (reading, learning, thinking, a wide range of interests, particularly in literature, science, and mentally challenging activities, such as chess, being absorbed by the subjects of one’s interests and delving into them in depth).
The g Factor by Arthur Jensen pg 574
Jensen continues:
The g Factor by Arthur Jensen pg 574
TIE is much more a personality factor than an ability factor. It does not correlate at all with G f (or a third-order factor g), but has significant but small correlations (r = + .3 to +.4) with verbal IQ and Gc. (Tests for IQ and Gc involve specific knowledge content and hence reflect intellectual achievement as well as the information-processing capacity that is measured more purely by Gf.) For a given level of g, a higher level of TIE in adulthood leads to somewhat higher levels of real-world intellectual achievement. But TIE itself clearly belongs in the personality domain, as shown by its correlations of about + .60 with
two of the “ Big Five” personality factors (“ Openness” and “ Conscientiousness” ), as well as with another personality factor, “ self-directed activity,” which reflects energy level, absorption, and lack of distractibility.
Given the 0.57 correlation between IQ and academic success, I’d expect someone with about + 5 sigma score on a conventional IQ test (top one in 3.48 million) to on average, have real world intellectual achievements of about +5(0.57) = + 2.85 (top one in 482). In other words, an adjunct professor who never gets tenure. That’s not to deny that some +5 sigmas achieve far more academically, perhaps even winning the Nobel Prize, but the overall average would be dragged down by all the +5 sigmas who don’t even graduate from college, either because they have more lucrative options, or because they don’t have the luxury.
I would expect, if we could get a representative (rather than self-selected) sample of people with +5 sigma Mega scores, they would be about as academically successful as their counterparts on conventional IQ tests. Because the Mega Test likely loads more on personality variables than conventional tests do (in particular TIE because you have to stay intellectually engaged with a problem for days or weeks), it likely has a lower g loading, but because TIE correlates with academic success independently of g, it’s correlation with real-world intellectual achievement is probably about the same.
I do wonder though whether personality traits like TIE are the only difference between people who perform better on Mega type tests than conventional tests. Could there be cognitive differences too? Conventional IQ tests break big problems down into digestible mini-problems but perhaps the ability to break big problems into small ones is an important cognitive ability in its own right. When faced with big problem in real life, even something as trivial as writing a blog post on a big topic, I’m sometimes overwhelmed with a sense of where do I even begin? Perhaps Mega type tests better assess this kind of big picture planning and hierarchical organizing. It would be interesting to see whether neuro-psychological tests of executive functioning predict Mega test performance independently of both conventional IQ and TIE.
Pumpkin Person 
What sort of items would appear on the termans concept mastery test?
Good question. Some time ago I was informed that Ronald Hoeflin of Mega Society fame had a copy of the test, so I e-mailed him asking him to send it to me and score it. He didn’t reply, even though someone else I know had received a reply about the same topic a day prior! Hoeflin seems to have a bad habit of ignoring people he doesn’t like for whatever reason.
I dont think he didnt like you. its just that the way you see what other people see as exceptional would be mundane to you the same thing would happen in the case of you and Ronald Hoeflin.
You have a ~160 IQ which to people with 180+ IQs (which Im sure this Hoeflin guy has seen a lot of) would consider mundane. So karma really does exist! Who knew.
I’ll be able to tell you better after I take it myself. I want to see how I compare to Jensen (though verbal tests are my weakness)
WAIT PEE PEE WHERE DID YOU GET THE CMT
A reader sent me it a few years ago. It’s somewhere in my bedroom, buried under all my books and papers.
What sort of items would appear on the termans concept mastery test?
items like: why do gay men prefer white cock to black cock or asian cock?
I discussed this subject at length in my interview with In-Sight Journal:
https://ganzir.info/2021/02/24/my-interview-with-in-sight/
https://in-sightjournal.com/2020/09/22/479-1/
“What are the real-world implications of an exceptional score (say, 170 – 190) on tests of the Mega Test type?”
They just measure how much time you waste doing a useless test.
A question for PumpkinPerson:
What would be the lowest IQ required to score the highest achievable score in both TCM and ARM combined? As in beyond this lowest benchmark, the tests results themselves won’t be able to distinguish between the higher tiers.
PP you told me that something like anything beyond +2.5 SD wouldn’t be directly discernable in some version of a raven’s matrices score. Although the examiner could tell how difficult it is for the person. So the examiner may be able to tell the difference between a +2.5 SD vs a +4 SD test taker in that sense. But I think that the observation wouldn’t be fine tuned enough to tell the difference between +3.6 SD vs +4 SD*.
This article has some relevant data:
https://pumpkinperson.com/2019/03/22/arthur-jensens-iq/
Article is behind some form of academic verification log in/paywall, so IDK about the max score on the concept mastery test. I’ll assume a +4 SD which is ~213. A +4 SD in that batch of students would be ~160 on the WAIS. Looks like that the upper limit in most of these tests is equal to or lower than WAIS’ 160.
I wonder to what extent likely interracial differences in TIE are innate. Of course African-Americans have had less time to amass wealth and used to be lynched if they were literate, so I don’t entirely blame nature for their having less intellectual tendencies.
I always thought the < 1-sigma IQ delta couldn't account for White-Black difference in achievement (even accounting for oppression). Some of them may just lack the internal gumption to capitalize on the advantages Jews have provided, and said Jews probably need to understand this if they really want to help them self-actualize. Instead they just let the ineffectual farrow unsustainably and wallow in destructive pleasures.
Interesting that no Asian has been known to attain a super-high score on a Hoeflin test despite their being considered nerdy and disproportionately represented among the Omni readership.
So youre saying the 15 point/1 SD gap is actually underestimating the intellectual difference between blacks and whites?
That. Might just be. Absurd.
It might underestimate the difference in expected intellectual output if we are assuming emphasis on scholarship is uniform across peoples. I don’t think the White/African-American “IQ” gap is “naturally” any more than ~12 points,
Many African-Americans have a crab mentality and will Uncle Tom-Shame their brothers, and most white liberals are psychologically unequipped to constructively criticize non-white behaviors. We are left with a morally deteriorating black proletariat that is obscured by tokenism and pyrrhic bs.
Not true. There’s a Chinese dude who’s claimed a 45/48 on Titan: https://rank.hriq.net/al/10002
I’d imagine that that was after the test was compromised. Hard to believe that a non-native speaker would get 21+/24 on the verbal section BG (before Google).
Yeah ok true
Wouldn’t be surprised if Asians & Jews are slightly lower & higher than whites in TIE respectively. Would explain why they tend to under & over-achieve their IQs respectively.
But if Rushton is correct, low TIE might be a sign of Asian advancement because a more socially organized group would follow the leader. TIE promotes curiosity and thus questioning authority which leads to social disorder.
So Jews do have a revolutionary spirit?
Jews seem to have a lot of resilience and an affinity towards developing networks of knowledge that connect things of different subject matters and evaluating them as one. Just my speculation but I think Jews dont perform as well on very specific intellectual endeavors as much as they do in more holistic or broad intellectuality.
Secular Jews have replaced the sense of purpose provided by Judaic biblical narratives with social justice/ vilifying Whites, and I interpret their ostensible altruism towards brown goyim largely as a facade that conceals their MO: to agitate and undermine those who pose a threat. I understand that acquiring as much clout as possible is rational, especially considering what happened to them when antisemitic fascists rose to power, but I don’t know if many possess the metacognitive ability to realize that their ways are about as self-serving as anybody else’s – and that’s scary. I believe even the liberal atheists among them on some level still feel that they are God’s/the universe’s chosen people, know what’s best, and that they belong on top. HBDers tend to believe that as well.
You do know the atheists/nonbelievers amongst them believe what they do because of the atrocities done against them and their resentment towards believing in a God who would allow those things right?
That make sense, but I meant that they filled a void, not that they deliberately supplanted their theism. They’ve retained their messiah complex, though.
Here is a question for you PP. Many of the tests on the WAIS are timed. What is the IQ difference between someone who could correctly answer a question 5 seconds past the allotted time, vs 5 minute, vs never. All these people, according to the test, are the same—but all of them perform differently when time isn’t a factor.
By making time a factor, all timed tests, whether they purport to test for it or not, are severely weighted by processing speed. I can imagine a situation where a genius with minor executive functioning/processing speed issues would score much lower than their abilities would suggest.
But lets say that, instead of eliminating time, we just increase it slightly. 50%, 100%, 200% etc….What would the resulting shift in FSIQ/GAI look like for each successive time increase?
By making time a factor, all timed tests, whether they purport to test for it or not, are severely weighted by processing speed.
If that were true high speed spatial tests like Block Design would load on the processing speed factor, but instead they load on the spatial factor along side untimed spatial tests like visual puzzles. Also, when people are given as much time as they need to complete Block Design puzzles, their scores correlate almost perfectly with what they would have scored with time bonuses. In extreme cases time bonuses might unfairly penalize some subjects (particularly those with motor impairment), but that’s the exception, not the rule.
I listened to megan markle for the first time last week and she sounds intelligent by her voice. It looked from the pictues that she looked a bit like a party girl.
bro wtf the are you even talking about??? who gives a shit about Meghan Markle?? I haven’t watched TV or Netflix in a minute so I forgot about that show Suits she used to be on.
But Im not gonna lie, I wanna see an IQ score for Tiger Woods…he’s been in the news lately for something or the other. Also all of the Supreme Court Justices.
“Most people perform at near their maximum level while taking a cognitive test.”
Perhaps, but my suspicions inform me that, even if this is so, a sizeable segment of testees may not perform at that level. Personally, I’ve never felt fully engaged on timed IQ tests (I know, P: so much for “impersonal”). My foray into such was an anxiety-roiled disaster. I immediately disengaged. Even today, decades later and despite a fair store of smarts, a kind of moderated, conditioned response remains. Early on, the feeling was somewhat analogous to that which I’d experienced as a sixteen-year-old sprinter. I was considered exceptionally fast in my hometown, and would commonly “spot” friends 10-to-20 yards on the now-quaint 100-yard dash. Rarely would I lose. There was, however, word circulating of a habitually white-shoed kid in the neighborhood who reportedly ran with the speed of a mid-sized quadruped. In our town of approximately 1,500, reputations tended to round the circuit post haste, so, I suspect he’d heard something of me, as well. Naturally, there would, at some point, be a showdown. And then, somewhat spontaneously, there was. Positioned at the starting line, adjacent the somewhat older, larger, and more powerfully built local legend before a multitude of piqued spectators, I felt flush as trepidation set in. I was self-diminished, defeated before the word “Go” in a race sabotaged by my own bloated ego. The legend exploded off the line. I did not. I may have even shrunk back before making a half-hearted “dash” to the finish line. He could have polished off a second martini by the time I arrived.
Admittedly, the story is entirely unnecessary, but a fleeting mood to write struck. Nevertheless, I think it is reasonably illustrative of the aforementioned test-induced feeling, and most would likely find it quite interesting, particularly in light of that which followed. The noted “legend” – later widely known as Billy “White-Shoes” Johnson – went on to become a preeminent kickoff returner for the NFL’s Houston Oilers. If I’m not mistaken, this was after a failed attempt to make the U.S. Olympic sprint team.
Good point. Mega type tests might be more accurate for people who suffer from anxiety since they don’t feel the pressure of time limits nor the stress of being supervised.
I feel the average of my highest and lowest LSAT scores is the best measure of my cognitive ability. Although I generally feel like on standardized tests I perform slightly better than I do in normal everyday life…
I need to see standardized test/IQ scores for:
rapper Eminem
jazz pianist Chick Corea
Interior designer Christopher Lowell
Actress Cicely Tyson
all the Supreme Court Justices
DJ Vlad, UC Berkley Comp Sci grad and top purveyor of ghetto urban culture
Our current president Joe Biden
Pumpkin if you can make this happen I’d love you forever!!!!
To be honest thought standardizes in general doesn’t interest me as much anymore. Show me real-world financial success, or success in Science/Math Olympiads, or number of patents pending, and that’s probably a better portrayal of cognitive than anything else one could think of…
*standardized tests in general… don’t interest me as much anymore…
I’m interested in learning more about factors that influence success beyound IQ + conscientiousness….
A series of multiple-hierarchical regressions showed that TIE had significant incremental validity (over and above g and the Big Five) in the prediction of AP.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17134334/
Interesting, because it always seemed Openness (which TIE i believe correlates with) was orthogonal to AP…
You kids keep thinking I make it up that I had it harder when I was a kid. No surprise most of the games in this guys list are from 20 years plus ago. The crash bandicoot level he mentions in passing ‘The High Road’ basically can’t be done without glitching on the rope of the bridge. That was how I did it in 1997 and it was the same way I did it on the remake.
I will say of the last 10 years there were games that challenged me like Nioh and the DLC for Doom Eternal recently, but overall you can be a middle aged woman playing most of the stuff out there now. The other feature that modern games have is paying to make the level easier basically.
Chanda Chisala once again proves that Richard Lynn is a charlatan.
“Leaning on Lynn
Well, God never fails to entertain us with his own grand sense of humor, if we can just be a little patient. Not too long after I completed my Scrabble series, I was stunned to see someone quite respected in the HBD community — the prodigious researcher and intellectual godfather himself, Richard Lynn — start using the exact same Scrabble argument, not in his usual race gap debate, but to defend his equally controversial gender gap hypothesis (adult men are biologically smarter than adult women, he says, as demonstrated by top Scrabble performance!) He even cited the same sources I used for proving the high cognitive demands of top expert competitive Scrabble that makes it discriminate objectively on mental ability.”
https://www.unz.com/article/nigerians-jews-and-scrabble-an-update-on-the-iq-debate/
Poor rr.
Cmt would sound most analogous to Miller’s analogies. Which is itself another analogy.
Took this incredibly difficult test (kind of akin to the Mega Test in difficulty except it measures lower scores a lot better) and got an IQ score equivalent of 100. The test site is https://iqnavi.net/brainpower-test/.
They have a variety of IQ tests mainly visual ones similar to Raven’s. Very interesting test would recommend taking and informative in determining IQ.
i was thinking yesterday how jordan peterson would’ve been a much bigger thing if his voice wasn’t so horriblle.
it is a FACT (irrespetive of T theories) that voice pitch varies black > white > chinapeople.
So will you be watching the Meghan Markle – Oprah interview?
Yes.
meghan’s clit is bigger than harry’s penis.
sad.
Love this article by Carole Malone:
OPRAH WINFREY is one of the smartest women on the planet. It’s why she’s a billionaire. It’s why when Harry and Meghan invited her to their wedding she went like a shot. Not because she was overcome with excitement at being a royal wedding guest (although she must have been curious).
And not because of Meghan, who was a two bit actress in a Netflix soap opera at the time. But because, even back then, Oprah, always alert to the main chance, had her beady eye on the Big Interview. She wasn’t Meghan and Harry’s friend back in 2018, having met them just once before the wedding, and I suspect she isn’t now. But everything she’s done to help them, e.g. get their first home in LA, introduce them to all the right people, will have been done with a view to the big prize. And now she’s got it.
Gossipy British women have the social intelligence to see Oprah’s cunning genius!
Where can we take the TIE?
meghan is trans.
in fact this puzzle is a lot like chess.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/rise-and-fall-americas-lesbian-bars-180976801/
they don’t mention me in the above article. sad.///