Articles like this one at Big Think on the “Top 20+ Smartest People Who Ever Lived” always bug me. For one thing there’s little reason to believe that a half dozen of the people on the list ever lived at all.
And even if they did live how in the heck would you figure out what they would have scored on an IQ test? Based on works for which no originals survive and that have been edited and re-edited over the period of several millennia? IQ test by committee?
That’s even a problem for people we’re pretty sure existed, like William Shakespeare. Papers are still being written on the authoricity of the works attributed to Shakespeare and those were written just 400 years ago.
But there’s an even more serious problem. How valid is it to compare IQ test results in excess of three standard deviations above normal? Above four standard deviations? More? It seems to me that’s an instance of the false precision fallacy. Isn’t the margin of error higher than the actual variation?
Finally, IQ isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. For example, this should give us pause:
William Siddis (1898-1944) was an American child prodigy, whose IQ was reportedly between 250-300, perhaps the highest ever. He had outstanding abilities in math, entered Harvard at age 11, and claimed to know 40 languages. An MIT professor predicted the young Siddis would become the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. William crashed and burned as an adult, however, holding menial jobs and getting in trouble with the law, never finding an avenue to live up to the expectations.
High IQs aren’t particularly well correlated with success in life. Social and emotional development are.
There are certainly some very smart folks on that list. No one will argue that Leibniz or DaVinci weren’t clever boys. But of course it’s nonsense to try and extract IQ numbers from them, let alone from Cleopatra about whom we know mostly what Shakespeare made up.
My view is that IQ is a rough equivalent to horsepower. If you don’t have the horsepower you are not going to break 180 mph. You just aren’t. But that analogy has another dimension: is the fellow driving the 180 mph car a genius as well? No? Just some kid? Smart ≠Wise.
IQ can also be analogized to inherited wealth. You do nothing to deserve it, you may have no idea what to do with it, and it may give you feelings of superiority or cause you to feel contempt toward your fellow humans.
It is psychologically alienating. It can’t help but be. To go back to horsepower, if you’re driving a Bugatti, and other people are driving Priuses, you’re getting to the objective minutes ahead of everyone else. There’s no avoiding the conclusion that the Priuses are just slow in relative terms, and that leads to arrogance and contempt.
I’d teach little geniuses in very self-directed programs, but insist on a healthy dose of ethical and moral instruction. At least that was my approach with my 150 kid. Didn’t work especially well, but some core of decency, humility and an awareness of privilege seems to have taken root. I guess I’ll see.
In general though, look at that list, and the ones we all agree were smart are the ones who left some tangible evidence, who did something smart as opposed to just being smart. We know Newton was clever with numbers, we don’t have to guess. I resist playing the old man criticizing the younger generation, but their focus on identity over accomplishment is misplaced. IQ tests won’t mark you as another Newton. Come up with FTL, then you’re Newton. It’s not about identity, it’s about action.
Then again, what do we expect of a generation raised on standardized tests?
Cleopatra is a great example. There are no contemporaneous accounts of her. Almost all that we know of her was written by the historian Cassius Dio and most people (including Shakespeare assuming he actually wrote Antony and Cleopatria) rely on Plutarch. Neither of them knew her and it’s likely that neither of them knew anyone who knew her. There are a few fuzzy profile images on coins and maybe a statue or painting or two. No written works of hers have come to us. I know of no official accounts of her. She might have actually existed. She might also just be a personification of Hellenic Egypt.
How do you calculate her IQ? It must have been high because she attracted powerful men? By that standard Kim Kardashian should be on that list.
The link was bad when I tried it.
I found it with a search. That was laughable even as a quick skim. Kasparov himself has discredited the 190 claim, for example. For another, any such list that doesn’t include Jon von Neumann is, in the word of Keyser Soze’s attorney Mr. Kobayashi, “ludicrous.”
But the folks behind the article were correct about one thing: it is stupid to compile such a list.
Fixed. Thanks.
Gauss. Note how heavily they’ve relied on certain very specific signatures, e.g. math, chess, Ivy League education. I’m reminded of one of my early posts in which I observed that the smartest person in human history might well be lying in an unmarked grave in Africa somewhere.
However, I return to my earlier point. Assuming normal distribution a 300 IQ is 20 standard deviations out. Seven sigma is something like one in 390 billion. You can test for that? Really? I don’t believe that 5 sigma (IQ = 175) at about one in 1.75 million is reliably assessable let alone 20. IMO IQ is one of those 1,2,3, many things.
Plutarch, greatest historian of his era by virtue of being the only known historian of his era. For all we know he was the Alex Jones of his age.
You’ve written of this before. What we know prior to maybe Augustus ain’t much. You can only get so far on stone inscriptions, potshards and oral traditions. Most of what we think we know even about the last couple of centuries is wrong. And of that not 5% sticks to the brain of the average high school graduate.
This is for the self described analytically challenged children’s book author, who was simultaneously wetting himself and scolding Doug Mataconis for not cheerleading the reported increase in median income recently.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/deconstructing-median-income-bs/
One would think if it sounds too good to be true…. Well, no extraordinary IQs to be found……….
You can test for that? Really?
Sure, why the fuck not? We’ll get the same geniuses on that as worked on solving the banking crisis and vetting foreign nationals in the USA. Really, THOSE are the guys that deserve to be on this list.