Commenter Teffec asked me to estimate the IQ of Charlie Kirk and I think the best way to do that is to first estimate the IQ of elite talk show hosts in general, since Kirk clearly falls into that category with several million subscribers on YouTube, even before his tragic death.
When Time magazine asked Meredith Vieira her SAT scores she replied 1300s which would equate to an IQ of around 136 in her day (U.S. norms). Although once part of a very famous talk show (The View), I don’t consider her an elite talk show host since The View is an ensemble, so only one or two of them needs to be talented for the show to work.
Joe Rogan posted a certificate on Instagram from the Brain Metrics Initiative showing his IQ was 127 which sounds about right. Smart enough to be the most successful podcaster in the World with a lot of thoughtful political views, but still dumb enough to be short and stumpy and somewhat gullible (or at least pretends to be since pseudoscience sells). Not sure how accurate the BMI test is but I seem to recall Rogan saying he never took the SAT which means he would have scored below an equivalent of IQ 135 had he taken it because Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray along with Ron Hoeflin have argued that everyone who would have scored extremely high on the SAT, actually took the test (probably less true in recent years thanks to the ACT).
Meghan Kelly told Howard Stern she scored at the 85th percentile on the SAT which equates to about the 95th percentile if all Americans took it which equates to an IQ of about 125 which sounds about right. She’s bright, very bright, but not brilliant. It’s unclear whether she meant the verbal, math, or combined score.
Howard Stern claims to have scored 900 on the SAT which in his day equated to an IQ of about 110. I used to add bonus points since he attended a ghetto school but the famous Coleman report in the 1960s found school quality contributed very little to standardized test scores at least in Howard’s day. Many people would consider this a huge underestimate given Stern’s wit, humour, fluency and incisive interviewing style. It’s also way less than you’d expect from his most salient biodemographics. On the other hand, the hosts of Quite Frankly: A Howard Stern Podcast are constantly calling him a dumbass with an IQ of 79 so subjective impressions at both extremes tend to cancel out.
The average of all four of these people is 125 (U.S. norms) with a standard deviation (adjusted for degrees of freedom) of only 10.79, compared to the general U.S. population set at 100 (SD = 15). The ratio of their squared SD divided by America’s squared SD implies only 52% of the variation in IQ remains once you control for occupation, leaving 48% explained. The square root of 48% implies a potent 0.7 correlation between occupation and IQ, thus corroborating much previous research (Jensen 1998).
Of course self-reported data, especially from famous people should be treated with great caution as there is selection bias in who chooses to disclose their test scores, which test scores they choose to disclose, not to mention outright lying. On the other hand, using Jonathan Wai’s method of counting the percentage who attended elite schools, I had previously estimated that in 1994, the 11 top talk show hosts in U.S. television syndication had a mean IQ of 133 (U.S. norms) so there’s no reason to think ascertainment bias or selective disclosure inflated the average IQ in my admittedly tiny sample.
Pumpkin Person 
Ridiculous as usual. You posted scores from people who are paid to promote themselves. Obviously theyre lying dumbass. Your social IQ is just cringeworthy sometimes. Joe Rogan is nowhere near 127. Don’t care what you say. You should be able to tell a persons IQ just by their voice and what they talk about. And obviously you don’t have the social intuition to do that so you need certificates and trophies to make inferences. Unlike me, who is a real detective and expert and can use ‘alternative’ data.
Anyway, most talk show hosts are fuckin morons. In the UK and Ireland most of them are comedians. And comedians that do generic or banal comedy so as not to offend people.
If youre talking political talk shows, the IQ is higher. Chris Matthews is much smarter than Stern or the View or Oprah or Maury pauvich or those other clowns.
If youre talking podcasters, thats completely different. Because the producers dont’ ‘choose’ them. So its possible Chris Langan could do a podcast.
Can you imagine Bruno doing a podcast? LOL. He would just recite pie to 3000 decimal places on screen.
Ridiculous as usual. You posted scores from people who are paid to promote themselves.
I acknowledged the problems with self-reported data, but you argue Howard Stern lied to seem dumber so maybe the self-promoters and the self-demoters cancel out. Also I verified with the percentage who attend elite schools which shows my data is not too low.
Obviously theyre lying dumbass. Your social IQ is just cringeworthy sometimes. Joe Rogan is nowhere near 127. Don’t care what you say.
No he’s definitely AT LEAST 127. Look at how he verbally obliterated Dave Rubin who you probably consider a genius because he’s Jewish:
And obviously you don’t have the social intuition
You didn’t have the social intuition to realize the “170 IQ billionaire prostitute” you worshipped for 10 years was fictional. lol. Just because you’re psychotic does not mean you’re a social genius.
to do that so you need certificates and trophies to make inferences. Unlike me, who is a real detective
lol! If you lived in the 1500s you’d be telling Copernicus he didn’t have the intuition to realize the sun revolves around the Earth, and must rely on geometry and astronomy because he’s not a real detective like you.
The fact that anyone too intelligent on tv might say something critical of the eh….special ethnic minority….running the government/media i.e. Irish people
By that logic there are no intelligent people in any profession. Even Nobel Prize winning scientists will have their careers ruined if they touch a third rail so I guess they’re all morons too.
If youre talking political talk shows, the IQ is higher. Chris Matthews is much smarter than Stern or the View or Oprah or Maury pauvich or those other clowns.
I agree he’s much smarter than the View and Maury & possibly Stern.
Chris Mathews thinks Oprah has a high IQ btw, saying:
“…he also said he had considered asking Oprah Winfrey to fill Barack Obama‘s vacant Senate seat, which could have, in one move, diversified and raised the collective IQ of the entire U.S. Senate…
…Anybody doesn‘t think Winfrey would be a great senator from Illinois or anywhere is crazy. She gets along with everybody. She brings people together. She finds common ground. She‘s way past race politics 20 years ago. She‘s so far ahead of most people…in human relations”
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28899478
The one category of tv host that might have MENSA plus IQs are game show hosts. Im talking Carol Vorderman, Anne Robinson and im sure in the USA you guys have similar types of shows.
Interestingly, Donald Trump was a game show host.
Its interesting. I think howard stern is lying.
But like all ashkenazim, in an intelligent way.
I.e. he is purposely pretending to be stupid and ‘from the ghetto’ and ‘working class’.
Cognitive traits vs Personality traits would more so be the reason we would be able to separate people by the category of celebrity. If you look at Joe Rogan’s carrier on fear factor he had experience with people, he acted out a script and had to be engaging. So its more about being interested in people.
This doesn’t mean you if you are interested in people you are dumb but it also doesn’t mean if you are interested in science you are smart. By personality some people just like science better without necessarily being better at it.
What really mater in celebrity is that you do have something to sell.
This creates a niche in a marketing scheme.
Marketing creates a brand.
Confidence becomes more important to get it sold.
Therefore you need to believe in the product.
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A long time ago I interacted with someone trying to prove Christianity with quantum physics. They said their IQ was 127 – they had a huge following on youtube at age 27 and the content made as much sense as Joe Rogan’s content but had better graphics to show what they meant. They put effort into the sciencey research part more on the individual level.
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Charlie Kirk did not need extremely high cognitive ability to market his brand.
Guns, Religion, Family, conservative values in general.
And Charlie Kirk was only 31 when he died.
He only needed to be confident in what he was promoting.
He was acting more like a politician than a celeb figure.
I think bruno is correct that he is more likely to be 120
I have a new set of definitions for intelligence I’d like to share.
Intelligence is the quantification of all cognitive resources to better achieve different objectives.
Learning is the process of forming new connections that increase ones kinesthetic and perceptual range by holding more memory / information in the mind that can be assessed all at once.
Executive Function or cognitive control includes but is not limited to inhibition of wrong actions, shifting attention, updating working memory and evaluation of actions (the metacognition to fix mistakes or plan, think and reason) understanding consequences before they happen.
Conan went to Harvard, and his family consisted of many elite Harvard doctors/professors/lawyers.
And Letterman is clearly smart; he’s very quick-witted. Johnny Carson, though less so. Kimmel and Leno not at all. Fallon a bit.
Kirk spent one semester at a non-prestigious community college before dropping out, which does not scream high IQ. But his father was an architect and “a major donor to the Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign,” which means rich, and his mom was some kind of financial trader, all of which sound pretty high-IQ. Plus he enjoyed debating smarmy college kids one-on-one, which isn’t really an activity that low-IQ people would enjoy.
You realise Charlie was a religious nut right?
Have a couple talks around town and you’ll realize your average person is not very interesting to talk to nor capable of keeping up to the topic of conversation.
Things frequently go dead silent.
After a while they’ll share their unthoughtful and rigid views of the world. Hardly read or considered but firm on them.
You’ll soon realize you’re not exchanging ideas but being spoken to, this is their spotlight, their time to shine, basically a therapy session for them. This is why most people need to chat with LLM’s; no one wants to lend an open ear to their shlop.
Most people are not worth getting to know or casually talking to for even 5 minutes. I believe these talk show hosts must be well above average based solely on the fact that millions of people can stand to listen them for hours on end.
I agree. They may seem mediocre but when you talk to a few randos on the street, they suddenly seem spectacular by comparison
I just thought of an objection. There’s this guy named “DBDR” on youtube who is very low IQ and talks about his life, and he has a sizeable following.
See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqmNKK2Okok
His new channel is called “Hat Flying”. I would lump him in with blackpill youtubers like “Rehab Room”, “Professor Meeks”. So, maybe you can be pretty low IQ and still be interesting to talk to.
He only has 3 thousand subscribers though. I’m talking about people who dominate the field to the point where most Americans have heard of them.