Revisiting Kamala Harris’s IQ

17 Thursday Oct 2024

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Of America’s 76 million baby boomers (alive or dead), only three 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 25 million level. The median U.S. president would therefore be at the one in 50 million level in power (normalized Z = +5.47). Very tentative data suggests the average IQ of U.S. Presidents is 137 (+2.47), thus suggesting the regression slope predicting IQ from power = +0.45 (very similar to the correlation between IQ and lifetime income).

Biodemographic prediction

As of 2019, there were about 65 million Americans in Generation X, and assuming they resemble Americans as a whole, about 1.8% are Afro-multiracial, which gives 1.17 million people. On a scale where white Americans average IQ 100 with a standard deviation of 15, black Americans average 85, and “pure” U.S. blacks average 80, Afromultiracials would average about 90. If there were a perfect correlation between IQ and power, we’d expect Kamala Harris to have an IQ 72 points higher (one in 1.17 million) than the average Afromultiracial, however since the correlation is only 0.45, we’d expect her to be 72(0.45) = 32 points above the average IQ 90 Afromultiracial, or roughly 122. If true this would put her intelligence in the superior range, though the lower end there of.

However guessing someone’s IQ from only their race and power is unwise. What is needed is actual test data.

Psychometric confirmation?

Harris has no publicly known IQ scores so we’ll have to settle for the bar exam as a crude measure of her intelligence.

Snopes.com reports:

So she scored lower than 72.2% of California law students, suggesting she was in the bottom 27.8% of law students. However the LA Times reports:

So when we subtract that 4,909 people like Harris who took the test the first time, we see 2,088 were repeat test takers (which Harris would become the next year). How many of the repeat takers passed like Harris would the next year? Subtract 72.2% of 4,909 from 59.5% of 6,997. In other word, 619 out of 2,088 or the top 30%.

So despite being in the bottom 27% of all law students for not passing the first time, Harris was in the top 30% of that bottom 27% for not failing a second time. In other words she’d be around the 19th percentile of law students.

“The average national LSAT score for full-time, first-year JD enrollees for fall 2022 was about 159” according to bestcolleges.com. The 19th percentile would be 0.87 standard deviations less so about 150 given the SD on the LSAT is 10. A 150 LSAT would equate to an IQ of 111 or roughly 116 (U.S. norms) in Harris’s day when the average IQ of college grads and by extension, LSAT takers was higher. This converts to 114 using white norms, so 8 points lower than expected for America’s most powerful hybridized black, but still higher than 82% of white Americans.

Of course the Bar exam is not an actual IQ test so this remains only a rough guestimate.

IQ of self-made Presidents vs Legacy Presidents

12 Saturday Oct 2024

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Self-made PresidentIQ (U.S. norms)IQ (U.S. white norms)Notes
Richard Nixon
154154In 1991, Daniel Seligman wrote “Nixon biographer Roger Morris says RMN tested at 143 on the Otis test when he was in Fullerton High School in California. Nixon attended Fullerton circa 1928 and thus was tested around age 15.

In a 1930 paper by P. Cattell, it’s noted that 108 on the Otis index of brightness equates to the 75th percentile, implying a standard deviation of about 12, which would make Nixon’s IQ a spectacular 154 on the now commonly used sigma 15 scale (white norms since tests in that era were normed only on whites).
Barack Obama
140139Likely scored around 43.5 out of 48 on the 1980s LSAT which equates to an IQ of 148, but reportedly scored 128 on the childhood WISC IQ test (likely 124 after adjusting for norm inflation). A composite score of both tests would be around 140 (U.S. norms)
Average IQ of self-made Presidents (n = 2)standard deviation
147 (U.S. norms)10 (U.S. norms)
147 (U.S. white norms)11 (U.S. white norms)
Legacy President IQ (U.S. norms)IQ (U.S. white norms)Notes
George W. Bush130129National norm studies suggest that if all American 17-year-olds had taken the SAT in 1960 (not just the college bound elite) the mean and SD would have been 784 and 210 respectively, making Bush’s score of 1206, +2 SD or IQ 130 (U.S. norms)
JFK
125 124In 1991, Daniel Seligman wrote about how Kennedy biographer Thomas C. Reeves claimed JFK tested at 119 on the Otis test just before entering Choate Academy. JFK entered Choate around 1931 and thus was tested around age 14.

In a 1930 paper by P. Cattell, it’s noted that 108 on the Otis index of brightness equates to the 75th percentile, implying a standard deviation of about 12, which would make JFK’s IQ 124 on the now commonly used sigma 15 scale (white norms since tests in that era were normed only on whites).
Average IQ of legacy Presidents n = 2standard deviation
128 (U.S. norms)4 (U.S. norms)
127 (U.S. white norms)4 (U.S. white noms)
Average IQ of all Presidents n = 4standard deviation
137 (U.S. norms)13 (U.S. norms)
137 (U.S. white norms)13 (U.S. white norms)

Because sample sizes are tiny, only tentative conclusions can be drawn but based on publicly available data, the average IQ of self-made U.S. Presidents is an astonishing 147 suggesting only one in a thousand (white) Americans have an intellect this high. To come from nothing to become the most powerful person in America (and by extension the World) requires considerable intellect in most cases. This is similar to my earlier finding that the average IQ of all living people to hold the title “richest self-made American” is 151.

Whether measured by money or political power, it seems America is a meritocracy, at least when it comes to IQ. Ethics might be a different story.

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

Given the 0.45 IQ correlation between fathers and sons, we’d expect the sons of self-made U.S. Presidents to be only 45% as far above the mean of 100 as their fathers were, and thus IQ 121. And so it’s not surprising that legacy Presidents average somewhat higher at 127 (white norms). This suggests that even among children born into obscenely rich and powerful families, there’s still some meritocracy, with the smarter ones being able to replicate the achievements of their self-made fathers and the less bright ones, squandering the family legacy.

Quick correction to Obama’s IQ

12 Saturday Oct 2024

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After playing the decisive role in electing America’s first black President, America’s first multibillionaire black accepts her medal.

In a previous post I argued that Obama reportedly scored 43.5 on the LSAT, and that since the ratio of whites to blacks in this score range is about 99 to one, it can be deduced that his score equated to an IQ of 129, since that’s the expected ratio of whites to blacks in this IQ range.

However such ratios assume a perfectly normal curve in both races and in fact there might be more blacks with high IQs than the normal curve predicts, because like Obama, many black Americans are not only largely white genetically, but even their black ancestry is hyper-elite, descended from the most educated immigrants, and not from the slave trade.

Because these atypical blacks could skew the numbers, I decided to equate the 1980s LSAT to IQ using the same technique Ron Hoeflin used to equate Mega Test scores to IQ: score pairing.

Using data from nine people with reported scores on both the 1980s LSAT and tests with known IQ equivalencies (SAT/Mega Test), placing scores in rank order from highest to lowest and then equating scores of equal rank, I obtained the following formula for equating the tests:

IQ (U.S. norms) = [(LSAT – 41.5)/4.5](13) + 142

Applying this formula to Obama’s LSAT score of about 43.5 gives an astonishing IQ of 148 (U.S. norms); also 148 (white norms).

The notion that Obama has an IQ pushing 150 is consistent with what Lion of the Blogosphere has been arguing for years, which he based mostly on the fact that Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law. Though ironically, Obama’s LSAT IQ of 148 would actually have been below the Harvard Law average which at the time would have been about IQ 152.

However given that Harvard Law class was constructed to have an average IQ of 152, they would have regressed to the mean of all LSAT takers (IQ 116) and thus average IQ 138 (U.S. norms), and assuming Obama did not regress (since his score was a random sample of his ability and not an intrinsic property), or regressed to a much higher mean (the mean of self-made Harvard Law star Presidents who wrote first rate memoirs) he’d tower over his classmates intellectually.

However a self-proclaimed former CIA guy claims Obama scored IQ 128 on the WISC IQ test as a child, which after corrections for the Flynn effect, becomes 124. This too is a very high score, but nowhere near 148.

Assuming a 0.61 correlation between the LSAT and the Wechsler, then an LSAT IQ of 148 and a Wechsler IQ of 124 give a composite IQ of 140. Perhaps this is our single best guess.

Harvard Law > Harvard undergrad IQ gap in the 1980s/90s

08 Tuesday Oct 2024

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I’ve blogged about this before but I wanted to revisit it now that I have better data.

Harvard undergrads 1991: SAT IQ 147; expected WAIS IQ 129

Harvard undergrads from the class of 1995 (and thus took their SATs around 1991, had a mean SAT score of 1390. National norm studies suggest that if all American 17-year-olds, not just the college-bound elite, had taken the SAT in this era, the mean would have been 787 with a standard deviation (SD) of 193. Thus by general population standards, 1390 was +3.12 or IQ 147 (U.S. norms); 147 (white norms).

However because Harvard students were selected by SAT scores, they were selected in part for SAT overperformance. We saw this with Dartmouth students who scored only about 61% as well on the WAIS IQ test as they did on the SAT. Assuming the same would have happened to Harvard students circa 1991, instead of scoring 47 points above the U.S. mean, on the WAIS they’d score 47(0.61) = 29, so IQ 129 (U.S. norms); IQ 128 (white norms). Indeed a study by Harvard scholar Shelley H Carson found that in the early 21st century, Harvard students averaged around 130 IQ on the abbreviated WAIS-R and that was BEFORE deductions for inflated norms.

Harvard Law students 1980s: LSAT IQ 152; Expected WAIS IQ 137

I could not find the mean LSAT scores of Harvard Law students from the same era, but I did find a source (see table 7 of this paper) that the top 19 law schools in the 1980s had mean LSAT scores of 40 to 45 out of 48. It is likely that Harvard Law was the law school with a 45 point mean. My own preliminary research suggests that a 45 out of 48 on the 1980s LSAT equated to an IQ of 152 (U.S. norms); IQ 152 (white norms).

They too would regress to the mean except instead of regressing to the general U.S. mean of 100, LSAT takers are pre-selected by university so they would have regressed to the much higher mean of LSAT takers which would have been 116.

  • Average Harvard Law student WAIS IQ = (LSAT IQ – 116)(0.61) + 116
  • Average Harvard Law student WAIS IQ = (152 – 116)(0.61) + 116
  • Average Harvard Law student WAIS IQ = (36)(0.61) + 116
  • Average Harvard Law student WAIS IQ = 138 (U.S. noms); 137 (white norms)

Some readers might argue that if the WAIS-SAT correlation is 0.61, the WAIS-LSAT correlation should be lower, given it’s a more restricted sample, however surprisingly, people who take graduate school admission tests appear to be at least as variable as the general population.

Some readers may wonder why I regress Harvard Law students to the LSAT population when I don’t regress Harvard undergrads to the SAT population but rather the general population. The reason is, above about the top 1%, all members of the general population took the SAT, so regressing them to the SAT population would have been redundant.

Conclusion

Even though the Harvard Law > Harvard undergrad IQ gap was only 5 points when measured by the tests used to select them respectively (LSAT IQ 152 vs SAT IQ 147); the gap should nearly double if they were given a test independent of the admission process (WAIS IQ 137 vs WAIS IQ 128). This is a reminder that we should never measure the IQ of a group by the test used to select them and consistent with the general rule that law students are about 10 IQ points smarter than undergrads, though unlike Harvard, at a typical university circa 1990, the respective scores would have been around 120 vs 110.

Jon Gotti vs Donald Trump: An IQ comparison

23 Monday Sep 2024

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Jon Gotti (aka Dapper Don) and Donald Trump have a lot in common. Both charismatic New York proles who loved media attention; both persecuted by the feds and heroes to the working class man, to the point they were long considered Teflon, though both became convicted felons. Both rose to the pinnacle of cut-throat fields using charm, street smarts, and animal cunning.

Of course Trump was an Ivy League Leader of the Free World, while Gotti was “just” a high school dropout leader of the mob. Trump is worth over $3 billion, while Gotti died with “only” $30 million.

However when you consider that Trump’s father was a Forbes certified 400 richest person in all of America, while Gotti’s dad was a barely employed day laborer living in poverty, then both men were freakishly successful, relative to what they came from.

As I’ve previously noted, welfare or welfare adjacent people like Gotti’s dad average IQs around 92 (about 90 white norms) and given a 0.45 father-son IQ correlation, their sons would upwardly regress to the then U.S. mean of 98, (white norms) and thus average IQs of 96.

Thus when Gotti famously scored 110 on an IQ test before dropping out of high school (white norms since IQ tests were normed on only whites in those days), he scored 14 points above the mean of kids from his economic background.

Meanwhile self-made Forbes 400 types like Trump’s dad average IQs around 131(130 white norms) so their sons would regress downward to the U.S. mean of 98 (white norms) giving a mean IQ of 112. So given that Trump is to his family background as Gotti was to his, how much higher would Trump have scored compared to the mean of kids from his economic background?

Also 14 points?

Trump’s estimated IQ = 112 + 14 = 126 (white norms); 127 (U.S. norms).

Indeed in 2018, Trump’s doctor claimed he scored perfect on a dementia screening test, suggesting an IQ of 126 (white norms). Of course given he hit the test’s ceiling (if you believe the doctor was giving his professional assessment free of intimidation from Trump and his goons) it’s possible his IQ is even higher, though given his tiny active vocab, poor general knowledge, and failure to correctly multiply 17 by 6, I wouldn’t bet on it.

LIVE BLOGGING OPRAH’S HARRIS EVENT

20 Friday Sep 2024

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8:14 pm: On her way to the event Oprah says she was stopped by a black man who said he was voting for Trump because he gave him a cheque

8:16 pm: Lots of star power joining by zoom: Meryl Streep, Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez etc

8:28 pm: A black guy is asking Harris about the border. Harris says she’s prosecuted transnational gangs & she’s blaming Trump for blocking a bill that would have put 1500 security agents on the border because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem”. That should be her campaign add!

8:35 pm. Harris just promised to reintroduce and sign that bill

8:44 pm Harris is very Indian in her speech and mannerisms but she has enough black heritage to advance Oprah’s ethnic genetic interests.

8:46 pm: Merryl Streep is crying because a girl who was raped by her step-dad got pregnant and needs an abortion

8:49 pm: Some U.S. blacks don’t like Haitian immigrants either so it was very smart of Oprah to note earlier that the lies about cat eating not only endanger Haitians, but anyone who LOOKS Haitian

9:07: Tracy Ellis Ross used her her high Ashkenazi verbal genes to give a quality monologue honoring childless women but the audience laughed at her for addressing Harris before first kissing Oprah’s ring. Julia Roberts knew better.

9:23 pm: The BRILLIANT Merryl Streep just asked the best question of the year: “What happens when you win, and HE doesn’t accept it”

9:26 pm: I guarantee Trump is watching this.

10:12 pm: CNN is covering the event. Abbey Philip’s noted that Oprah already elevated Obama to the White House and is asking if she can do it again.

The incredible verbal > performance IQ gap of U.S. Jews

18 Wednesday Sep 2024

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Perhaps the most comprehensive study of American Jewish IQ was a 1958 paper on 64 Yeshiva men (age 16 to 31; mean age 21.43). Author Boris M. Levinson states:

Our sample finally consisted of 64 subjects, classified as follows : (a) six senior Yeshiva High School students, (b) 31 Yeshiva College students, (c) 27 graduate students. Among them were four ordained rabbis. Every graduate student was an alumnus of Yeshiva College. The writer believes that the sample secured was fairly representative of the Yeshiva population…

Below are the scores of the sample on the original Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). The 11 subtest scores are expressed on a scale where the average American scores 10 (SD = 3), and the verbal, performance, and full-scale IQs are expressed on a scale where the average American scores 100 (SD = 15). To convert scaled scores to IQ equivalents, just multiply by 5 and then add 50. Because the study, was submitted for publication in 1957 and the WAIS was standardized in 1953.5, there was a trivial Flynn effect I adjusted for.

Unfortunately, this study was restricted to the Yeshiva population who, despite their religiosity, are presumably more educated than the general Jewish American population. However if we assume Yeshiva young adults were somewhat equivalent to Jewish university students (which I suspect virtually almost all of them were or would become), then it’s possible to adjust their scores downward to estimate how the average Jewish American would have scored.

But first we need to know how the WAIS correlated with education among young adults in the 1950s, and fortunately David Wechsler published that data on page 251 of his book The Measurement and Appraisal of ADULT INTELLIGENCE Fourth Edition.

WAIS measuresCorrelation with education in 1952.5 (age 25-34) n=300
Information0.655
Comprehension0.511
Arithmetic0.490
Similarities0.522
Digit Span0.421
Vocabulary0.649
Digit Symbol0.590
Picture Completion0.441
Block Design0.397
Picture Arrangement0.476
Object Assembly0.349
Verbal Score0.662
Performance Score0.570
Total Score0.658

The next question that needs to be answered is how educated were Jewish university students in the 1950s, compared to the general U.S. Jewish population. According to Diana B. Turk of Jewish Women’s Archives,: “By 1960, sixty-three percent of Jewish men and women aged eighteen though twenty-four attended college” This suggests Jewish university students were half a standard deviation more educated than America’s average Jewish young adult.

On a scale where all Americans average IQ 100 (SD = 15) and scaled scores of 10 (SD = 3), if we crudely assume, that Jewish Americans have the same IQ standard deviation as American whites (SD = 14.5 and 2.9 respectively) and the same correlations with education as Americans as a whole, and further assuming a bivariate normal distribution, we can simply take the product of half the Jewish standard deviation and the correlation between IQ and education and subtract it from the median scores in the Yeshiva sample (adjusted for the Flynn effect) to get the general U.S. Jewish average.

This gives the following:

U.S. normsU.S. white norms
Information14.89
Comprehension15
Arithmetic13.15
Similarities11.93
Digit Span12.3
Vocabulary12.8
Digit Symbol10.88
Picture Completion11.1
Block Design10.28
Picture Arrangement9.2
Object Assembly8.3
Verbal IQ121120
Performance IQ9896
Full-scale IQ112110

My analysis suggests the average American Jew has a verbal IQ of 120 (white norms) and a Performance IQ of 96. Until a representative sample of Jewish Americans take a comprehensive test, it’s hard to know how accurate my estimate is.

Of course there have been such studies of Jewish school children, and because virtually everyone attends school in childhood, these are arguably more representative of the general Jewish population. After adjusting for the Flynn effect, Richard Lynn reported two such studies in Canada on page 117 of The Global Bell Curve:

Note that in the first study, spatial IQ refers to Wechsler performance IQ (though the two constructs are not identical )Averaging across both studies, the average verbal IQ is 115 (white norms)and the average “spatial IQ” is 102. This gives a verbal > spatial/performance IQ gap of 13 points (much smaller than the 24 point gap I estimated) however Lynn is citing childhood IQ, and Daniel Seligman notes in his book A Question of Intelligence:

Some studies show rising verbal scores as the Jewish children pass through school, but the reasons for this increase are unclear. Some scholars view it as a maturational change, that is, the group is genetically programmed to improve its already superior verbal skills with age.

Does Seligman speak from personal experience? Based on pro-rating the Wechsler scores he describes in his book, I estimated he has a verbal IQ of 146 (white norms) and a Performance IQ of 98!

LIVE BLOGGING the Trump-Harris debate

11 Wednesday Sep 2024

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8:54 pm: CNN is saying Harris is excellent at preparation, but Trump is unpredictable so she will need to think on her feet. Or as Jensen liked to say “intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do”

8:57 pm: Chris Wallace predicts Trump will have a HUGE height advantage, however I don’t think that matters much because women are supposed to be short

9:05 pm: Harris is starting strong, attacking Trump for being too pro-rich.

9:07 pm: Trump looks good and is talking fast and fluently.

9:16 pm: Trump is now calling Harris a Marxist, how stupid does he think we are?

9:19 pm: Harris is winning visually. She gives better reaction shots; he wont even look at her.

9:29: Harris baited Trump into bragging about how rallies. Now Trump is repeating the conspiracy theory that immigrants are eating our pets.

9:39: Harris seems to be winning but Trump has really hammered home on immigration, crime and inflation and that will resonate with a lot of people…Of course Trump is lying about his net worth again. He does not have MANY MANY billions

9:54: Trump lies so much it’s impossible for even CNN to fact check him in real time

10:00: Trump is sucking up to Israel again. Accusing

10:12: Trump just said “we have a president who doesn’t know he’s alive” LOL

10:15: Trump is right on Ukraine but it’s a tough sell

10:39: Harris won, better body language, well rehearsed talking points, good facial reactions, and exceeded low expectations

10:43: Very difficult for a woman to be tough without looking like a bitch, but Harris is the rare woman who can pull it off.

10:52: Not surprisingly CNN agrees with me Harris won. They’re calling it a “devastating” loss for Trump, but we wont know for sure until the polls and focus groups come in.

11:17: Taylor Swift just endorsed Harris. She’s trying to be like Oprah, making the leap from huge pop-culture icon to political king maker like Oprah did in 2008.

11:22: CNN high IQ fact checker Daniel Dale saying Trump lied 33 times; Harris lied once.

11:38: JD Vance doing a great job defending Trump to the gorgeous Katelyn Collins in the spin room, however he doubled down on the Haitian pet eaters conspiracy theory, causing CNN’s Dana Bash to claim racism.

11:46: CNN has an Erie county Pennsylvania focus group of undecideds. 4 think Trump won, 8 thought Harris won. The focus group reacted most positively when Harris defended abortion rights and when Trump trashed Biden’s pull-out of Afghanistan and all the abandoned military equipment.

12:02 am: CNN instant poll of debate watchers just released: 63% say Harris won; 37% say Trump won. Almost an exact reversal of the Trump-Biden debate this summer where 2/3rds thought Trump won. Going into debate, 50% expected Trump to win and 50% expected Harris to.

12:10 am: Trump just told the gorgeous Katelyn Collins that he won all the polls on the debate . Trump claims that in one poll 92% said he won, another 86% said he won, another 77% said he won. It’s lies. All lies…But in Trump’s defense, he’s almost 80 so the fact that he held his own against a much younger opponent and biased moderators is impressive.

12:21 am: More results from CNN’s instant poll of debate watchers. Before the debate, 39% and 41% of debate watchers had a favorable opinion of Harris and Trump respectively. After the debate the numbers flipped to 45% and 39% respectively.

Nice debate between Candace Owens & Rabbi Shmuley

05 Thursday Sep 2024

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Very impressive that Candace Owens defeated an Ashkenazi Rabbi in a debate. Candace is the most famous American woman in new media, so I’m not surprised she did well.

As Rushton speculated long ago:

“There are always going to be those who are WAY OFF in the top 1% and indeed one would have to be to succeed in a field as competitive as television talk shows”.

Candace may not be on television, but the internet today is almost as big as TV was in Rushton’s day, so despite her small head, Candace is arguably the modern equivalent of a successful TV talk show host and thus in the top 1% of Black American IQ.