In the late 1990s Oprah did a show on mad cow disease and during the show she was alarmed to learn that U.S. cattle were being fed some kind of beef derivative. “But cows are herbivores,” remarked a concerned Oprah. She turned to the audience and said “now doesn’t that concern y’all just a little bit. It has stopped me COLD from eating another burger!”

Shortly after the show aired beef prices hit their lowest point in ten years and that feeding practice was banned, improving the safety of U.S. beef. Citing her enormous influence, Texas cattleman blamed Oprah for the drop in beef prices and using an obscure veggie libel law, were able to sue her for $10 million, arguing that she slandered U.S. beef to get ratings. Even worse, the law suit would take place in Amarillo Texas, the beef capital of America. Even worse for Oprah, there were people in the town with bumper stickers that said “The only mad cow in America is Oprah”

As a black woman entering an all-white Southern pro-beef Texas town, Oprah was entering enemy territory.

“She messed with the wrong state,” one Texas redneck told Entertainment Tonight.

Early on Oprah reached out to Dr. Phil who though not famous at the time, was important in legal circles for how a court room psychologist. At first they did not get along because Oprah could only spare an hour to meet with him.

“It’s not my ass being sued, if that’s all the time she has, I want to know part of this”

When she decided to give him more time she said, “a lot of people think I should settle this case, what do you think?”

“Absolutely not”, he replied, explaining “the line-up at the sue Oprah window gets a whole lot shorter if you take this all the way to trial and send them home with nothing”

“Boy I like the way you think,” replied Oprah. Dr. Phil’s gift for delivering homespun common sense in succinct sound bites resonated with Oprah.

During her time in Texas, a mysterious old black lady dressed in black handed Oprah a note then quickly vanished before Oprah had a chance to enquirer. When Oprah opened it up, it said:

Did you ever think you’d see the day when a black woman was on trial for having too much influence?

During the trial Oprah slipped into a depression. She kept asking “why is this happening? Why am I being sued over burgers? How can this be happening?”

Dr. Phil took her aside and said “It IS happening, and you need to get in the game, and fast, or those good old boys are going to hand you your ass on a platter!”

“No they wont,” replied a defiant Oprah, and Dr. Phil knew in that moment that she would win.

During the trial, Oprah was the best witness Dr. Phil had ever seen in decades as a court psychologist. The louder and more hysterical the cross examiner would get, the calmer Oprah would get.

“Free speech not only lives it ROCKS” shouted Oprah when she won the trial. Beaming with superhuman charisma, she held a newspaper on her show with the headline “OPRAH WINS”

After the trial Oprah said to Phil “over the years I’ve had every psychologist in America on my show and none of them have made as much sense as you. And I don’t want to be selfish with that, I want to share it with millions”

At first Oprah’s audience hated Phil and flooded her show with complaints and her producers strongly urged her to drop him. But Oprah used her marketing savvy to turn it around. She began calling him “tell it like it is Phil” and told anecdotes about how Phil had told her like it is.

Before long, Tuesdays with Dr. Phil became the highest rated shows of the week.

Other TV producers began offering Dr. Phil his own talk show, but he was smart and loyal enough to not stab Oprah in the back the way Joan Rivers allegedly did to Johnny Carson. He would tell Oprah about the offers and she would say “anytime you want your own show, let me know.” But since Phil already had a successful litigation company in Texas, he didn’t have time to become a full time TV personality.

But after several years of being a popular weekly guest, Oprah decided he was finally ready to have his own show so her company Harpo, partnered with Paramount to give him one.

Oprah recruited the King brothers, the big husky rednecks who helped Oprah get so rich, to syndicate Dr. Phil’s show too. The King brothers took a gamble syndicating an overweight black woman like Oprah all over America at a time when the country was anti-black, and to repay them, Oprah was now taking a chance on a big husky redneck Dr. Phil at a time when the country was increasingly anti-working class white.

The big husky King brothers made all TV stations who wanted to air Dr. Phil sign a contract that he would never be aired opposite Oprah. As a result, Oprah remained #1 and Phil instantly became number two. By owning the most popular talk shows in syndication, Oprah became the World’s ONLY black billionaire for THREE STRAIGHT YEARS and the most influential woman on the planet.

“What better partner can you ask for than Oprah?” gushed Phil. “She is insightful, committed and UNBELIEVABLY INTELLIGENT!”

Back in 2015 I wrote:

Many times on this blog I have claimed that the correlation between IQ and years of educations (indeed IQ and academic success in general) is 0.65.  I have based many arguments on this figure which I had assumed was correct since it came from none other than the late great Arthur Jensen who cited it on page 279 of his 1998 book The g Factor.  Well it turns out the figure is no longer true, and hasn’t been true for at least several decades.  The standardization sample of adults (age 25+) on the WAIS-III revealed the correlation between full-scale IQ and years of education has sunk to 0.55. It seems back in the 1950s, when the first WAIS was standardized, the correlation between IQ and years of education was about 0.7, but by 1978, when the revised WAIS was normed, it had already sunk to the mid 0.5s.

It turns out this is only true when you look at all adults lumped together:

When you limit yourself to adults in specific age groups, the correlation remains remains around 0.7:

The massive correlation between IQ and years of education appears to be because high IQ people stay in school longer. It seems not at all because school raises IQ. This was proven by Dillon (1949):

The TAVIS has now been taken at least 358 times (excluding people who clicked on the link but didn’t submit, or who submitted their answers without attempting any questions, or who answered only one question (a hard one) because they were likely trying to confirm if a guess was right).

Below are the 358 scores that are likely legit (though it’s possible the highest scores are from people involved in the above mentioned monkey business).

2,3,4,4,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,16,16,16,16,16,17,17,17,17,18,18,18,18,19

Since the first norming, the mean and SD have both increased slightly (they’re now 9.98 and 2.62 respectively) and the distribution has become more bell shaped:

There are more people with extreme scores than a perfectly normal distribution would predict, especially at the high end. It’s unclear why this is but several possibilities come to mind:

• The test items did not increase in difficulty in a sufficiently linear way.
• A bias in the sampling
• Some of the people tested are not part of the biologically normal population
• Monkey business

To normalize the distribution, each raw score was converted into a percentile rank which in turn was converted to the expected IQ on a perfectly normal curve. But because research suggests my average reader is two standard deviations smarter than the average American, 30 IQ points were then added.

These norms look plausible at the high end but seem too generous at the very low end. Future normings will use equipercentile equating with self-reported SATs, ACTs and Wechsler IQs to see if that gives different results.

What follow’s is a guest post written by Ganzir, only lightly edited by Pumpkin Person:

You are invited to participate in Ganzir’s research by taking a survey. You will read a description of a disease’s symptoms, then rank each of 12 different descriptions of personality traits according to how much they resemble those symptoms. This quiz has no right or wrong answers. You shouldn’t see a score or a pass/fail message, but if you do, it’s an artifact, not part of the survey. Your answers will be manually transcribed into my statistical records. If you intend to take this survey, do not read the comments on this post before you do.

Once I have enough responses, I will post an analysis of the results on my blog at ganzir.info. I will release my first report on it once I have 25 responses or at the end of March, whichever comes first: Link to the survey 

Of the hundreds of people who clicked on the TAVIS link, 70 submitted their answers (excluding obvious retakes from the same person). The mean TAVIS is 9.79 with a standard deviation of 2.25. The distribution looks approximately normal.

However previous research suggests Pumpkin Person readers are approximately 2 standard deviations smarter than the average American. Assuming my readers have the same variability as the general U.S. population (it’s actually higher but that leads to absurd conclusions) and assuming TAVIS scores are roughly linear, we get the following IQ equivalents:

TAVIS 0 = IQ 65 Educable (mild) Retardation

TAVIS 1 = IQ 72

TAVIS 2 = IQ 78 (Borderline retardation )

TAVIS 3 = IQ 85 (Dull)

TAVIS 4 = IQ 92

TAVIS 5 = IQ 99 (U.S. average)

TAVIS 6 = IQ 105

TAVIS 7 = IQ 112 (U.S. University graduate average)

TAVIS 8 = IQ 119

TAVIS 9 = IQ 125 (Borderline genius)

TAVIS 10 = IQ 132 (Mild genius)

TAVIS 11 = IQ 139

TAVIS 12 = IQ 145 (Moderate genius)

TAVIS 13 = IQ IQ 152

TAVIS 14 = IQ 159

TAVIS 15 = IQ 166 (Promethean)

TAVIS 16 = IQ 172 (Mega society)

Much more research is needed to confirm these IQ equivalencies but it’s a start. In future article(s), I’ll explore equipercentile equating TAVIS scores with scores on well normed tests like the SAT.

Commenter Teffec recently posted a list of verbal IQ questions in the comment section. I thought his questions had potential so rather than releasing them into the comment section, I decided to make them into a formal test. All the questions were written by Teffec (unless like the great David Wechsler, he stole many of his test items), though I suggested he add some easier items and I’m the creative genius behind the test’s name 🙂

There are 24 questions (all verbal analogies) that start off super easy but become progressively much harder. The test requires a mix of abstract reasoning, general knowledge and vocabulary and should be a pretty good proxy for verbal IQ, which in turn is an excellent proxy for overall IQ. Don’t google the answers (not even to check spelling), not that doing so would help much and I did make sure the test accepted a few misspelled answers.

You can take the test here.

It only lets you take the test once so give it your best!

I gave it a 10 minute time limit so don’t perseverate too long on any one item. After the test is done you’ll be asked to anonymously provide a bit of personal info just to help me norm the test, but this is optional. It will give you your raw score either way.

Let us know how you scored in the anonymous poll below:

UPDATE 2022-03-20

To the person who got 12 right at 6:24 am, consider your score to be 13. You failed item 4 because of a misspelling but I updated the scoring to now accept that misspelling because it’s not supposed to be a spelling test.

If people are wondering why it reports scores out of 27 when there are only 24 items, it’s because of the few personal questions after the quiz is done. These are not counted in the scoring since they’re not part of the test, so consider your score out of 24.

Someone gave the cutest answer to item #5. I feel sorry for that person; not because they’re stupid, but because the test is clearly culturally biased against them. Perhaps where ever they live, that is the right answer.

The latest Alexa ratings are in and Greg Cochran’s West Hunt blog ranks 2,421,019 in the entire World! It seems Pumpkin Person is now the only solo HBD blogger who cracks the prestigious top one million.

Survival of the fittest.

To quote Daniel Seligman, “people who are the top in American life, are probably there because they’re more intelligent than the rest of us”.

I am at the top both metaphorically and literally. After returning from my cottage, I stepped out on to my balcony with a cup of cocoa, enjoying a bird’s eye view of two provinces. It was mighty cold, but the setting sun was so beautiful and my hot chocolate kept me warm.

When Ron Hoeflin set out to to measure the smartest one in a million level he had a major advantage that he was smart enough to exploit. Every year (at the time), about 3.5 million Americans become old enough to take the SAT and virtually 100% of the smartest people actually do, thus the 3 to 4 people who scored perfect on the SAT each year were one in a million level minds. This allowed him to norm his own high ceiling test because he noticed that a 43+ on the Mega Test was about as rare among Mega Test takers as was a 1600 on the SAT.

But what if instead of trying to make a super high ceiling test, he was trying to make a super low ceiling test, to recruit the dumbest one in a million (normalized deviation IQ below 30). This test would have items like “say DaDa”.

One problem with norming this test is there’s no anchor test that’s taken by all dumb Americans the way the SAT is taken by all smart Americans. So how would you find the dumbest Americans? It used to be all severely disabled minds were institutionalized so you could just go to all the institutions in America and ask to test the lowest functioning young adults there (controlling for age is important). Of course there wouldn’t be a perfect correlation between who they considered the dumbest and who actually scored the lowest, so you’d have to test perhaps the entire bottom half of every institution to make sure you tested all the dumbest minds (not counting people who are in a coma since they’re arguably untestable, not stupid per se).

If I were as rich as Elon Musk, I might spend a few billion trying to find the dumbest people in America but then I’d be harassed by people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who would accuse me of being cruel and use it as a another excuse to tax my wealth and the twitter mob would be on their side.

It would be interesting to see if you could actually pin down the dumbest one in a million or if even the easiest test imaginable would have too many people scoring zero.

One of the guests on tonight’s Jeopardy! said he’s the only person he knows to score perfect on all three high school college boards: The SAT, ACT, and the PSAT. He now works as an SAT coach.

Sadly, this did not translate into Jeopardy success as he finished double Jeopardy with negative 2400 and was removed the stage, while two women duked it out in Final Jeopardy.

This is a good example of regression to the mean. Just because you did super well on your college boards, does not mean you’ll do well on a different intelligence test. Of course just appearing on Jeopardy! at all suggests he’s way above average in general knowledge. He also may have been hurt by overconfidence, as he bet everything on a daily double and was penalized for giving several wrong answers when he could have stayed silent.

And not all SAT champs struggle on Jeopardy!. Amy Schneider, one of the best players of all time, claims to have scored a perfect 1600:

Schneider was born in 1979 so likely took the recentered SAT, where 1600 equates to IQ 154 (U.S. norms); 153 (British norms).

I was listening to a podcast where this poker champion smugly noted that computers can beat the best chess players but they can’t beat the best poker players. The subtext seemed to be that chess champions are just robots, while poker requires real intelligence.

But in fact computers can beat poker players one on one, but because poker is usually played with more people does the number of possibilities become too much for a computer to process. But chess can also be played with more than two people. How well would a computer do then?

I suspect that six person chess would be a much better test of intelligence than regular chess, not least because it’s been much less studied, so players would be forced to adapt, instead of relying on over-learned algorithms invented by others. It would also require social intelligence, in that you’d have to infer who might be an ally.

It is interesting to ask what is it about the human mind that it allows it to dominate even the fastest computers and when did this ability evolve? Perhaps there are some problems so complex that we no amount of processing power is enough, so we evolved the capacity for certain shortcuts, and perhaps one of those shortcuts is analogical thinking: This reminds me of that.

It’s interesting that representational art does not appear in the archeological record until 40,000 years ago and this is often thought to be the start of human culture. What makes art significant is it’s the first time we get evidence of humans thinking analogically. A stick man may have little resemblance to a human, yet the sticks at the top are analogous to arms and the sticks at the bottom are analogous to legs. Analogical thinking.