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I’ve long argued that media preferences, aesthetic judgement and artistic sophistication are correlated with IQ. I don’t think the correlation is especially high since art is subjective, but neither is it trivially low, but somewhere around 0.4, similar to the correlations of IQ with brain size and income.

Movie critics probably have an average IQ of 115 while the average internet movie fan probably has an IQ around 100, thus on rotten tomatoes, the greater the ratio of critical approval to popular approval for a given movie, the more culturally sophisticated it is likely to be. 

An interesting example is Sound of Freedom which was liked by 99% of movie fans but only 57% of critics giving it a sophistication quotient of 57/99(100) = 58.

I’m not suggesting fans of this film have an average IQ of 58, but a lot of them are QAnon freaks who literally believe your favorite celebrities and Democrat elites eat babies and worship Satan. The best way to discredit a credible conspiracy theory (Epstein allegedly blackmailing politicians to affect Middle East policy) is to mix it with absurd ones. I’m not saying Sound of Freedom promoted QAnon but QAnon promoted the film which appealed to what one critic called “dads with brain worms”.

How does my own taste in movies score by this metric? Years ago I published a list of my ten favorite movies and here’s how they did: Halloween (1978) 108, Friday the 13th (1980) 110, Carrie (1976) 121, The Sweet Hereafter (1997) 114, American Beauty (1999) 94, Silent Night Deadly Night (1984) 115, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 103, Creepshow (1982) 94, Quest for Fire (1981) 117, and The Breakfast Club (1985) 97. Mean score: 107; Median 109

Here’s what some other commenters had to say. I’m too tired to calculate the scores but feel free to do so in the comment section.

Bruno wrote: