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Comment by paisawalla | Hacker News Reader

Great insight.

Regarding Mensa itself, or any claims to intellectual superiority: one of the big lessons of my life has been that being intelligent has no intrinsic value. If you are unable to manifest your intelligence in a way that can substantially (disproportionate to your effort) improve your life or the lives of others, then your mind doesn't matter. It has no impact in the world, and I am not the first person to observe that having a powerful mind is at many times a burden.

You can see that other people may be more stupid than you, forwarding simpler arguments and relying on less rigorous thinking than yours, but if they don't want to be convinced of that, then you are powerless to make them see it. They go off blissfully, and you burn with anguish. Again, if you cannot manifest your intelligence in a way that forwards your agenda, who cares?

To phrase it in a more confrontational way: if nobody is forced to contend with your mind, nobody knows it exists. Or to summarize it in a quote:

"[Intelligence] is like being a lady: if you have to tell people you are, you aren't." -- Margaret Thatcher

This clicked for me during my final year of college, when a friend of mine was taking an LSAT preparation course. During a break, he was chatting with the instructor about realistic outcomes, and said earnestly that he hoped to get a score of 168 (which IIRC is a very high score.) The instructor, a man of maybe 30, who had been out of school for several years, scoffed and replied, "Good luck, I only got 165 and I'm a genius."

And what did the genius do when not teaching LSAT prep courses? Why, he worked at Target.

Edit: expanded a little on the first couple of paragraphs.

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"And what did the genius do when not teaching LSAT prep courses? Why, he worked at Target."

Kafka was a clerk at an insurance company. Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher.

Van Gogh only ever sold one painting during his life, and that was to his brother.

There are hordes of other people widely regarded as "geniuses", who lived and died in dire poverty. Many others were cheated out of the fame and fortune they deserved by others who got the credit. And many more are probably still unrecognized.

The cold hard fact of the matter is that the world generally does not reward intelligence, "genius", or even hard work. True, some have the temperament and luck to scale the greasy pole of "success", but many others don't -- or choose to focus their energies elsewhere.

Kafka and Einstein had white collar jobs when those were rare and Wittgenstein gave away his (inherited) fortune.

The OP was judging a person by his job, and implying that the person in question couldn't be a genius because he worked at a menial job.

I simply provided some counterexamples.

Furthermore, white collar or not, I doubt that many would contend that Kafka or Einstein were some sorts of models of "success" if judged by their jobs, and few would judge them "geniuses" solely by looking at what they did for a living.

The fact that Wittgenstein gave away his inheritance is completely irrelevant. We were talking about jobs as marks of genius, not about inherited wealth.

However, I will grant that being born in to a wealthy family, being given a first-rate education, and being surrounded by highly accomplished individuals (as Wittgenstein was) does usually give the beneficiary a tremendous head start over most people.

I would certainly have bet on someone born in to Wittgenstein's highly privileged position making something of himself than on someone born in to poverty.

That said, plenty of people born in to tremendous wealth squander it and their lives. A couple of interesting, relatively recent documentaries on the subject are "Born Rich"[1] and "The One Percent"[2].

[1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342143/

[2] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819791/

The OP was judging a person by his job, and implying that the person in question couldn't be a genius because he worked at a menial job.

No, I was judging him by his accomplishments -- a measure by which your counterexamples shine, and the LSAT instructor falls down. All of the people you mention were successes in some way outside of their job, and they met my other criteria: they disproportionately advanced the state of the world.

We were talking about jobs as marks of genius ...

You were talking about that, but nobody else was.

But still, don't you think it's a little premature to judge your Target worker? Einstein was a patent worker while he thought about and conceptualized Special Relativity. Do you know what that fella' was doing in his free time?

I still agree with the main point though - IQ doesn't mean anything except another avenue of high potential. Just like being extremely physically fit and a better athlete leaves you with high potential to succeed in something physical. A high IQ gives you the potential to succeed in something mental, but you still have to put in the work and do something with it.

You learn a lot more about Einstein's potential by testing his IQ than by looking at his job history. If it turns out that the Target Einstein is too lazy to do any physics, that's OK, the IQ test will still tell you vastly more about what he COULD do under the right incentives.

"No, I was judging him by his accomplishments"

What made you think your LSAT instructor's accomplishments were limited to his job titles?

What do you know about this man apart from those two facts?

Kafka and Van Gogh were completely unknown and unappreciated during their lifetimes. Kafka even burned 90% of his work before he died.

There are countless other examples of people who were only discovered and appreciated after they died -- often long after they died.

Conversely, many (if not most) of those who achieved great fame and fortune during their lifetimes are largely forgotten now, or considered of minor importance.

"You were talking about [jobs as marks of genius], but nobody else was."

On the contrary, that seems to be exactly what you were doing. Your lack of knowledge or appreciation of someone's accomplishments and apparent eagerness to judge this person by the job they held is what I was responding to.

If you want to debate the merits of inferring accomplishment from a person's job, that's fine. To call that my main argument, and countering it with your sample size of three, is trolling.

Considering your sample size of one, calling me a troll for using a sample size of three is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Also, I never claimed that was your main argument. I just said that that's the part of your post I was replying to.

Here is the point: if all you know about someone is that they run a cash register, that doesn't tell you that they are unable to do anything else. This argument does not rely on sample sizes.

No, here's the point: if you run a cash register, don't scoff at someone who aims higher than what you've achieved, and don't throw your genius status in their face when you do it.

If you want to argue that a person's job is not indicative of ther level of achievement in life, then you absolutely do have to argue inductively. But I personally do not care about that argument. It is a stupid premise, and gnosis is picking an argument when one is not being forwarded. And he is doing it in a completely fallacious manner (overgeneralization, tu quoque), against what I clearly stated was an anecdote and life lesson.

Who does that? A person's own experiences, related as such, are anecdotes, not arguments.

I don't think jessedhillon was saying that someone working a menial job must not be highly intelligent. His point was that such a person isn't getting much value out of being highly intelligent (he was presenting it as a supporting point in favor of his claim that 'being intelligent has no intrinsic value').

I believe that the idea that someone who works a "menial" job "isn't getting much value out of being highly intelligent" is the fundamental misconception here.

If you are a genius, your time is not necessarily well spent on ANY job, whether it is considered menial or not by the intellectually unwashed masses, unless it is for exercise, relaxation, sustenance, or pleasure.

I refer you to the classic essay The Outsiders http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/outsiders.html

'The second kind of social adaptation may be called the marginal strategy. These individuals were typically born into a lower socio-economic class, without gifted parents, gifted siblings, or gifted friends. Often they did not go to college at all, but instead went right to work immediately after high school, or even before. And although they may superficially appear to have made a good adjustment to their work and friends, neither work nor friends can completely engage their attention. They hunger for more intellectual challenge and more real companionship than their social environment can supply. So they resort to leading a double life. They compartmentalize their life into a public sphere and a private sphere. In public they go through the motions of fulfilling their social roles, whatever they are, but in private they pursue goals of their own. They are often omnivorous readers, and sometimes unusually expert amateurs in specialized subjects. The double life strategy might even be called the genius ploy, as many geniuses in history have worked at menial tasks in order to free themselves for more important work. Socrates, you will remember was a stone mason, Spinoza was a lens grinder, and even Jesus was a carpenter. The exceptionally gifted adult who works as a parking lot attendant while creating new mathematics has adopted an honored way of life and deserves respect for his courage, not criticism for failing to live up to his abilities. Those conformists who adopt the committed strategy may be pillars of their community and make the world go around, but historically, those with truly original minds have more often adopted the double life tactic. They are ones among the gifted who are most likely to make the world go forward.'

You might be interested in Colin Wilson's book "The Outsider"[1], which was written more than 30 years before the essay you quote.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsider_(Colin_Wilson)

I have read it. It's excellent. "Outsider" is the term chosen by Grady Towers high IQ society correspondents.

> Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher.

I take your point, but Einstein and Wittgentsein are not good examples. You list jobs they held, but those jobs don't reasonably express the success either man had in his lifetime. Einstein was also a member of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies from 1933 to 1955 (when he died)[1]. Wittgenstein was also awarded a PhD at Cambridge - without having done coursework or exams - on the basis of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and was an idolized professor for many years there[2].

Neither man was by any stretch of the imagination an unrecognized genius - they were both absolutely recognized as huge intellects with superior achievements in their respective fields when they were alive.

[1] http://www.ias.edu/people/einstein/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#1929.E2.80....

My point was the OP appeared to be judging by the jobs an individual held at one point in time. Judged by the same criteria, Einstein, Wittgenstein, and Kafka would have fared no better.

The fact that Einstein and Wittgenstein held more prestigious positions at other points in their lives would not have spared them from an attitude like the OP demonstrated at the time they held the more menial jobs, and judging only by those menial jobs.

Who knows what heights of glory this particular Target employee will climb to in the future? History is even more full of people who once held menial jobs but then went on to achieve vast fame and fortune (and perhaps even be judged a "genius" by many).

We also don't know what this particular Target employee did before he worked at target and taught LSAT courses. Perhaps, like Wittgenstein, he'd been a lecturer at Cambridge and was awarded some prestigious degree.

Ok, I know that's stretching credibility. He probably wasn't. But my point is that we don't know his past or his future. All we know are two job titles and his boast of being a genius. Should we judge him based on just those couple of facts? Or should we withhold judgment? My vote is for the latter.

Finally, I never claimed that Einstein or Wittgenstein weren't recognized during their lifetimes, just that Kafka and Van Gogh weren't, and that many others who are generally considered "geniuses" now weren't either.

Your original post sounded very different from what you're saying now, but I apologize if I misunderstood you. Your last two paragraphs talk about whole lives and what the world recognizes without in any way distinguishing between the examples you gave initially. Kafka, Einstein and Wittgenstein are all listed in the same paragraph; again, there's no distinction between them there.

I'm not trying to nitpick, just to say that I doubt I was the only person who took the post differently than it sounds now like you meant it.

They were listed in the same paragraph because they were examples of people who are widely considered to be "geniuses", but who either held menial jobs at one point in their life, or who weren't "successful" (in the common sense of the term) at one point in their life (in Van Gogh's and Kafka's case it was at all during their life, in Einstein's and Wittgenstein's case, during significant portions of their lives, though Einstein was certainly vastly more successful than any of the others during his lifetime).

The OP was talking about one point in the Target employee's life, the point at which he was a Target employee and an LSAT teacher, and he seemed to be judging solely based on job titles. That's a very myopic, and I would contend, unfair vantage point from which to judge a person's life, contribution to humanity, or achievements... as the examples I mentioned (and many others that I didn't mention specifically) demonstrate.

Please look again at your original post. This whole business about "at one point in their life" simply isn't there. You didn't say those words. Just the opposite: in one of the later paragraphs, you talk about people "who lived and died in dire poverty". You seem to be moving the goalposts of the argument. Either that or your first post was very unclear.

> in Einstein's and Wittgenstein's case, during significant portions of their lives, though Einstein was certainly vastly more successful than any of the others during his lifetime

No, see, you're doing it again. Wittgenstein was regarded from early in his life as a genius. He was considered a very eccentric genius (that's putting it mildly), but in his own lifetime he was successful and well regarded. If anything, he held lower status jobs because he chose to run away from the world of fame and regard that he already had.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#Teaching_po...

You guys are both right. The point really is that prior to hitting a career grand slam (a Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") one can find oneself in a menial job where one is looked upon as an unfulfilled genius. There's nothing to say that this Target employee isn't writing the next great American novel in his spare time.

In summary, the "menial" job in and of itself should not be seen as a failing for the genius.

I thought the point was that one can find oneself in a menial job where one is not looked upon as anything other than a bozo. Before the grand slam, nobody is going to recognize you as any kind of genius. Probably agreeing with you, but wasn't sure about the wording.

"You're a loser until you're a winner."

Also most people even though hit a career grand never get recognized for it.

Gandhi never won the Nobel prize for peace, Just imagine- Gandhi!!! Although there is hardly anyone in the past century who did explicitly more for peace than he did. He not just preached, but demonstrated an entire moment for independence of India and even succeeded all on non violence.

Not that he complained about it. But the world never recognized it at the time.

Come on, being unclear is not the same as moving the goalposts. Unless you think gnosis is lying about what they meant.

"Who knows what heights of glory this particular Target employee will climb to in the future?"

Quite possibly none. Intelligence doesn't equal success, ever.

We all have plenty of examples of people who, though very smart, fared poorly in the world and then later, in their own lives or afterwards, fared much better and even became famous---because those people became famous.

I think a far more revealing point about Kafka is his self-view and the fact that in his will he wanted all of his works burned. I don't think Kafka was ever a very happy man in his life, so you really got to wonder how much good did the "being a genius" do for HIM regardless of how much he contributed to the world and humanity and our culture.

I met a genius that worked in the shipping department of the first software company I worked for. (Back when people shipped software.)

But working in the shipping department was only what he did in order to persue his passion, which was bird watching and photography. That is where he expressed his genius, although he couldn't make a living from it, it made him happy.

Reminds me of http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley who first photographed snowflakes. His genius never gained him fortune.

There's a great deal of the population who spend their lives working in shops and so forth doing relatively menial work. Why they're doing it is not about intelligence at all, it's all about drive.

A driven person who's terrified of Maths and Sciences is unlikely to become a leading Physicist, but they might well power through enough basic sums to successfully establish businesses.

An intelligent person who's not driven might never achieve anything like fame, at least in their lifetime, but they still probably enjoy their free time and passions.

There are plenty of people doing "menial" work who have plenty of drive. The work is to earn a paycheck and their life isn't about that. The drive is centered on something that doesn't earn them a living (e.g. family, bird watching). Not everything in life is about work and money.

Nicely put, very much agreed.

That's interesting. I'm an LSAT instructor. My first reaction to reading the instructor's comment was, 'Ha, only 165, he's no genius'.

But, MENSA accepts 163 as a cutoff LSAT score for entry. So if MENSA == genius, then he is a genius.

Among people who take the LSAT though, he's only 92nd percentile. He doesn't have much business teaching the test. Anyone who's at an Ivy League law school has a better score than him.

I completely agree that intelligence, on it's own, is near useless. It needs to be combined with the other elements that make someone effective. THEN, and only then, do you have the ingredients for something powerful.

Our society lionizes intelligence to the point that many people with little but intelligence smugly rest on their laurels, and accomplish less than their potential due to defects in social skills, initiative, etc.

Anyone at an Ivy League law school might have more lucrative opportunities than teaching LSAT classes.

You'd be surprised ;)

On an hourly basis, you can earn more teaching the LSAT than as an Ivy League law grad. Mind you, I don't work 80 hour weeks, so I don't make as much on an absolute basis, but the work is more interesting, and I've branched out into LSAT books and an online LSAT course.

But mainly, I wanted to point out that the instructor is unreasonably arrogant. By comparison with his reference group, he's far from exceptional.

By implication, the Mensa cut-off is also far from 'genius'. Top 2% is 1 in 50.

To be fair, that's 1 in 50 from a group that was relatively accomplished in an academic setting before the test. But I agree that it doesn't qualify as "genius."

I may not have been clear, my posts mix LSAT percentiles and IQ percentiles.

The Mensa cut-off is top 2% of the general public. 98th percentile on an IQ test.

For the LSAT, they accept 163 as meeting that cut-off. Relative to other LSAT takers however, a 163 is 92nd percentile. So the top 8% of LSAT takers are qualified to enter mensa, or roughly 1 in 12.

I took the LSAT in 2009. I scored 166, which was in the 93rd percentile. Mensa lists their cut-off as the 95th percentile, so your 163/92 figure is inaccurate, at least for recent years.

Being an LSAT instructor is surprisingly remunerative. One of the big test prep companies pays $50/hour, which is about the same as what a first year associate makes at a big law firm (when you account for the fact the the associate probably puts in 3000 hours a year).

I don't think of MENSA == genius. More like the top 5% in smarts. True geniuses IMO are much rarer.

I'll add that being able to work well with others is usually what determines whether you can manifest your intelligence in a useful way.

Working well with others takes many forms: being able to inspire and lead are obvious ones; but also the ability to take constructive criticism from others and learn from their perspectives -- which can be hard to do when you perceive the other person to be less intelligent (and perceiving others to be less intelligent is a problem by itself).

Absolutely. Lots of really intelligent people seem to fall into the trap of being too individualist and selfish. (Ayn Rand!)

While some of them eventually shine really bright, most fail to achieve anything significant.

I find interesting the backlash against those who may have any interest in knowing their IQ, or god-forbid even feel good about it. What your anecdotes tell me is not that IQ itself is meaningless, but that success has a large factor of luck involved.

It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind. This growing trend of derision for those who acknowledge their own raw intelligence is only making it worse.

Success contains a large factor of luck for sure, but I'd say also a large factor of something not measured by IQ tests.

Charisma? "Emotional Intelligence"? Mental flexibility? Gumption? Who knows.

Grit.

> It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind.

Or maybe it's a failing of those high IQ people? The genius who proudly saves the codebase at Zynga every single day is completely useless compared to any single nurse working her shift right now. Even the doctor at the top of the hospital does not necessarily have a stellar IQ. What other way is there to put it? Should we feel bad for smart people because society tricks them into financial services rather than less-paid cancer research? (No one would look down on someone who does the latter.)

(I would love to be proven wrong by somebody who knows what Mensa spends their brainpower thinking about :))

>Should we feel bad for smart people because society tricks them into financial services rather than less-paid cancer research?

No, we should feel ashamed that we've created a society where the brightest are funneled into financial services. We should feel utterly devastated that we let genius wallow in menial jobs. It is a failing of the system at every level that these people fall through the cracks and end up doing nothing with their gifts.

Raw intelligence is a resource that society should work hard to 'exploit'. Sure doctors and nurses save a lot of lives and that doesn't necessarily require genius. But compared to, say, the guy who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, their impact on humanity doesn't even come close.

> It is a failing of the system at every level that these people fall through the cracks and end up doing nothing with their gifts.

Are we speaking of different groups of people? I agree that young geniuses should be treasured and given all the freedom they need to grow. But as adults, if they take on a job in HFT and stay there, it is not falling through the cracks anymore. They're irresponsible by choice, not because a faceless society forces them to (well, in most cases).

I agree about the double-helix discovery, but does anyone really need to do an IQ test to find out whether they'll be a scientist? I don't want to say "the proof is in the pudding", because there is lot of chance in science, but "the proof is in the job" comes close IMHO :)

I was attempting to comment on those on both sides of the spectrum, the finance gurus, and who fall through the cracks or otherwise don't thrive in our educational system. But I don't think laying the blame solely on those who choose a lucrative path is being completely honest with ourselves. People as a whole respond to incentives, and when we give a genius every incentive possible to buck science and research in favor of finance, we as a society bear a large amount of responsibility for this choice. We must change what we value as a society first, then we'll see this trend reverse itself. Admittedly, I haven't the slightest clue how to accomplish this.

If you think that "high IQ" and "genuinely intelligent" are the same thing, you are sadly mistaken.

Granted, IQ is correlated with intelligence. But there are lots of undeniably intelligent people who do not have remarkable IQs (eg Richard Feynman would not qualify for MENSA). Conversely your average MENSA chapter is full of people with undeniably high IQs and little sign of remarkable intelligence.

(Disclaimer. Based on my GRE scores, my IQ is about 1/10,000. Based on my experiences in the real world, I believe myself to be intelligent, but nowhere near what that hypothetical IQ score claims. I've always considered MENSA membership to be a filter for people whose only biggest accomplishment is a good score on an IQ test...)

The problem with these arguments is that we waffle on the definition of intelligence. Feynman was admittedly no genius. There's no reason to claim he was obviously highly intelligent (and therefore IQ is meaningless). He had many gifts, a .1% intellect wasn't one of them. This doesn't take away from his accomplishments nor the impact he's had on society. There's no reason to redefine intelligence just to make sure it includes guys like him at the high end of the spectrum. His work stands on its own.

Defining intelligence is complicated, and probably a wrongheaded way to look at things. See http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html for more on that.

But with that said, any definition that says that Feynman wasn't a genius is obviously wrong. In every environment that he was in, he was given the genius label because he obviously was one compared to (usually quite intelligent) peers. If a test says that he is not a genius, then the test isn't capturing what common usage says that genius means.

Conversely the flip side of the point stands as well. The fact that someone is labeled a genius by a test does NOT mean that they have whatever intellectual abilities would be required to better society. There is a correlation - they are more likely to have those abilities. But not a guarantee. And the fact that we see high IQ people failing to use their brains life is not always evidence that those people's gifts are being used. The true gifts may simply not be what was recorded on the test.

Perhaps Feynman was a poor example. I was going by his claim that his own IQ was 125 (or something to that effect). I suspect that there is more to that number and that we shouldn't take it at face value. I see no reason why he wouldn't score much higher.

You are so wedded to your theory that you are unable to accept facts at face value. Presented with evidence that Feynman's IQ was not exceptional, you conclude that he was not a genius. Presented with evidence that he was a genius, you conclude that there must be an external reason that he did not do better on the IQ test, and the test result can be thrown out.

The conclusion that you seem to think impossible is that someone can clearly be a genius and yet that genius would not be reflected on IQ tests.

Let me offer you two alternate hypotheses.

The first fits the criticism in the above post. Many questions on IQ tests are ambiguous - there are multiple logically possible answers, and to find the "right" one you have to figure out what line of reasoning the test maker was most likely to have followed. This is a question about conventions, and Feynman clearly was extremely unconventional. He therefore is an example of someone who was literally too creative to do well on the test.

A second possibility is that Feynman's gifts were overwhelmingly mathematical, not verbal. His graduate entrance exams stand as evidence of this, as do comments from people who have examined his work. See http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstei... for an example. Since an IQ test has a large verbal component, on which Feynman would have only been somewhat above average, he did not score exceptionally well.

I like the first theory better, but there is significantly more evidence for the second. But either way there is no evidence from anyone who knew him, including Feynman, that the IQ score he got is not what he should have been expected to get based on what an IQ test measures.

The fact is that there is overwhelming evidence that IQ tests highly correlate with other measures of intelligence (SATs, GREs, job advancement, etc). I'm sorry but one outlier does not invalidate the whole body of research regarding IQ tests. The reasonable conclusion regarding Feynman is to suspect other factors at play. I'm simply changing my opinion in the face of new evidence.

>A second possibility is that Feynman's gifts were overwhelmingly mathematical, not verbal.

And of course this would be the "other factors at play". There are plenty of people who are savant-like in specific areas but aren't a "genius" in the generic sense. In a mathematical/scientific setting, Feynman would appear as a genius. In other settings, he would not. There's nothing surprising about any of this that would warrant a redefinition of genius.

Where to begin? I'll just make random points in no particular order.

- When a man widely recognized as one of the top geniuses of his generation is determined by a test to not be a genius, it is not Feynman's status as a genius that should be questioned.

- "Correlated with" is very different from "the same as." See the second half of http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-is-intelligence.ht... for some sample calculations on exactly how meaningful the correlations measured between an IQ test and other measures of intelligence likely are. (Short summary. If there is a 0.7 correlation between IQ and "true intelligence", then people with an outstanding IQ should be expected, on average, to merely be of somewhat above average intelligence. And vice versa.) Thus the measured correlations are actually evidence that IQ tests are at best moderately effective at identifying true genius.

- The body of data that we have on IQ and intelligence is COMPLETELY CONSISTENT with the prediction that we should expect a top mathematical genius to have only a somewhat above average IQ. Feynman's relatively modest IQ is therefore not a surprise. The fact that it is not a surprise is again evidence that IQ tests are a flawed method of identifying genius.

- We actually have no real evidence that IQ, g, or other related measures are measuring anything directly meaningful at all. The arguments about this are complex, please see http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html for an explanation. As a side note, to the extent that by "genius" we mean something other than the weighted average of random abilities actually measured by IQ tests, we should expect that IQ tests are not that good at identifying geniuses.

Yes, I know that I just gave you a lot of complex stuff to digest. But please give me the courtesy of assuming that I have at least a passing familiarity with the subject of IQ tests, have put some thought into it, and my opinions should not be immediately disregarded without investigation.

At the very least I hope I gave you enough to cause you to reconsider whether "top 2% in IQ" effectively captures what the word "genius" means in common usage.

In Feynman's case it seems quite plausible that the 125 is not an accurate report of a rigorous testing environment.

He is certainly the type of fellow who would intentionally misreport his score for personal/philosophical/fun reasons, or not care enough to remember the number correctly decades later.

Why do people keep trying to argue that an IQ of 125 is not reasonable for someone like Feynman?

The 125 figure might or might not be exactly correct, but it is reasonable given other data we have about him. For instance, according to James Gleick's biography, Feynman was the only person to ever get a perfect score on the math and physics graduate entrance exams to Princeton. At the same time he scored below average on the verbal and history tests. (Note that the "average" at Princeton would be well above average in the general population.)

Feynman was an amazing genius. I have the deepest respect for him. That fact notwithstanding, his genius apparently did not evenly extend to all types of intellectual abilities. If so, it is unsurprising that he would merely score very highly on an IQ test.

Feynman is a Putnam Fellow (ie. top-5 placement in the annual Putnam exam for undergrad math majors). That unequivocally qualifies him as "genius".

It seems like a lot of people over think intelligence and success. Properly balanced or even an excess of serotonin and norepinephrine are what primarily ensures survival and procreation, which generally translates into happiness and sufficient wealth. Trying to measure and identify abstract cognitive ability like IQ tests do is almost somewhat of an autism spectrum-esque devotion. While some smart men and women may contribute greatly to society it's unusual for it to be a personal victory or indeed be as significant as dozens of better predictors of personal trajectory. Over-thinking things may even position excess cognitive function as a net negative drag on success.

I think the LSAT is a pretty good... well whatever it is.

It has the salient quality of being almost completely unambiguous. Out of 1000+ of LSAT questions I saw when studying for the test, I found maybe half a dozen that didn't have one unambiguously correct answer and four unambiguously incorrect answers.

Of course, it assumes a level of familiarity with formal logic and English grammar/vocabulary.

Yes, they're surprisingly good at it. I've taken and taught other standardized tests, and often find them frustrating or boring.

I once found an LSAT question I considered ambiguous. I sent in a complaint to the LSAC. They replied with a three page letter that convinced me I was incorrect.

Now THAT is impressive.

> it assumes a level of familiarity with formal logic and English grammer/vocabulary.

Grammar, not grammer.

This is one of those things that can make an otherwise intelligent person look like an idiot. And I'm not talking about the typo.

That's desperately clever. Really.

The LSAT tests grammar and vocabulary, but not spelling.

> being intelligent has no intrinsic value

We value lots of things in life that have no intrinsic value. Art, for example. There's nothing wrong with valuing intelligence too. It's what separates us from the apes after all.

That said, I don't disagree with your overall point. I've known many intelligent people woefully unprepared to deal with everyday life, and it always seemed sad to me. Two of them ended up as alcoholics, one with gambling debts. It doesn't matter how intelligent you are if it means you can't deal with life.

My best friend in HS happened to be a genius on paper. Got straight A's freshman and sophomore year, ended up doing less well junior and senior year, and, when he got to college, failed out. He now parks cars in a garage. I don't really care for IQ levels, I think they're mostly meaningless.

> being intelligent has no intrinsic value

Thinking about this the other day, I was noticing that many people of great intelligence act as though it is a free pass to not putting forward much effort. Similarly they may neglect to pay attention to others who they regard as less intelligent than them (often their teachers or professors).

A lack of high earnings by no means implies a lack of genius or a lack of success.

Mozart drank himself to death by age 30 and was hounded by creditors. Socrates, Nicola Tesla, Oscar Wilde and many other great minds died penniless.

/"one of the big lessons of my life has been that being intelligent has no intrinsic value. If you are unable to manifest your intelligence in a way that can substantially (disproportionate to your effort) improve your life or the lives of others, then your mind doesn't matter."/

It saddens me the number of intellectually bright people I work with who don't grok basics like sound engineering principles. Your code is off little value if it's unmaintainable, or impossible to prove it works, regardless of how clever the implementation may be.

> if nobody is forced to contend with your mind, nobody knows it exists.

I'm sure this has already been explored somewhere, but I've always wondered what it says about us as humans that we consider our lives in isolation to be meaningless, but put a bunch of meaningless people together into a society, and impacting them becomes very meaningful. What's going on here, synergy?

Genetic predisposition to pack living and altruism in service of sexual reproduction of genes.

If your success depends on impacting peoples life through your work, then intelligence isn't even relevant to the discussion of success.

being intelligent has no intrinsic value

Loving what we are has to be worth something, or why bother with progress?

So if you suffered a brain injury, would you love yourself less?

To further your excellent point:

IQ, "intellectual superiority" and improving-life-for-the-better or "happiness" are generally three separate things; or at least much more separate than we like to see them as clearly correlating if not causations.

And the people you meet at Mensa spread surprisingly many/all levels of society...

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