*IQ follows the normal distribution, measure scales are usually centered at 100 with standard deviation 15, above we see the distribution along with approximate placement of certain groups and individuals. Notice how interesting people are either far to the right or far to the left. Also notice how the smartest you've never heard of while you've heard of all the dumbest.*
**IQ and [race](race.md) and [sex](sex.md)**: IQ is correlated with race and sex. The following is a comparison of average IQs of groups with various combination of the two factors:
**Is IQ a useful measure and if so, how important is the score?** This is the controversial question discussed over and over, modern "inclusive" society dismisses IQ as basically useless because it points out differences between [races](race.md) etc., some rightist are on the other hand obsessed with IQ too much as it creates a natural hierarchy assigning each man his rank among others. True significance of IQ as a measure seems to be somewhere in between the two extremes here. As it's always noted about IQ, we have to remember the term "intelligence" itself is fuzzy, there doesn't and cannot exist any universal definition of it, so we have trouble even grasping what we're measuring and however we define intelligence, it usually ends up hardly even correlating with "success" or "achievements" or anything similar, so firstly let's see IQ just as what it literally is: a score in some kind of game. Furthermore intelligence is extremely complex and multidimensional (there is spatial and visual intelligence, long and short term memory, language skills, social and emotional intelligence etc.), capturing all this with a single number is inevitably a simplification, the score is just a projected shadow of the intelligence with light cast from certain angle. IQ score definitely does say a lot about some specific kind of "mathematical" intelligence, though even if designed to be so, even in this narrow sense it isn't anywhere near a perfect measure -- though a minority, some mathematicians do score low on IQ tests (Richard Feynman, physics Nobel Prize laureate had famously a relatively low score of 125). It's perhaps good to keep the "IQ tests as a game" mindset -- intelligent people will be probably good at it but some won't, performance can be increased by training, there will be narrowly focused autists who excel at the game but are extremely dumb at everything else etc. Having IQ score predict what we normally understand to be "intelligence" is like having height, weight and age predict how good of a soldier someone will be -- there will be some good correlations, but not nearly perfect ones. Some general IQ range will be necessary for certain tasks such as [programming](programming.md), but rather than +5 on an IQ score things such as education and personality traits will play much more important roles in actually achieving something or creating something good; for example curiosity and determination, the habit of thinking about everything in depth, nonconformity, a skeptical mind, all these are much more important than being a human calculator -- remember, the cheapest calculator will beat the smartest man in multiplying numbers, would you say it is more intelligent?
{ Also consider this: even if you're average, or even a bit below average, you're still [homo](gay.md) sapiens, so as long as you're not a [feminist](feminism.md) or [capitalist](capitalism.md) you'll always be the absolute top organism in intelligence, a member of by far the absolutely most intelligent species that ever appeared on [Earth](earth.md), your intelligence greatly surpasses great majority of living organisms. If you are able to read this, you already possess the great genius, you mastered language and are among the top 0.1%, there's no need to compare yourself to others and aim to be in 0.01% instead of 0.02%. Rather think about what good to do with the gift of reason you've been given. ~drummyfish }
**Why are rich people dumb and smart people poor?** Let's clarify this because there is a very common misconception, purposefully established by capitalist propaganda, that rich people are smart and vice versa, while the opposite is always true. Firstly succeeding on the market is basically just lottery, it's more about luck than anything else -- no one can predict the market, it's literally about betting on the right card and then being in many right places at right times. At best if anything gives you better odds, it's having a starting capital, knowing someone in the business, living in a good location etc., but not being smart. No matter what anyone tells you, business is at best an educated bet and a businessman is at best as smart as your average slot machine addict. Now of course, just by statistics, the few people who win the lottery are likely to fall in the majority, i.e. around the average IQ. This is additionally further biased towards lower IQ because success in business is actually favored by lower IQ for a number of reasons. One of them is a stupider man is going to make just plain stupid big risks, have the capitalism-aligned short term mindset, and making stupid risks is how you more likely win the game -- it is also how you more likely lose, but no one cares about the losers, these just disappear. It's like seeing what kind of people survive running through a minefield -- you will find only retards make it because only a retard would attempt it; many of them will die but some manage to run through by sheer luck, while all the smart people just retain from even trying to run through the mine field. That's why so many of the famous rich guys always made some hilariously risky moves like selling everything they had and putting it into their business -- that's just extremely retarded, only 1 in a million will succeed like that, but of course by survivorship bias you will only hear about those who succeed like this so they look smart (plus they will pay for their own propaganda painting them as smart), but no, it's still incredibly stupid. Furthermore success in business is about lack of morality to which intelligence is an obstacle -- an intelligent man sees that investing in some business will e.g. lead to someone in the third world dying, so for a smart man doing business is literally as if he had to murder people for money, which most normal people wouldn't do, but with the extra layer of indirection stupid people can't see the harm they do to others and they happily murder people without even realizing it. Again, this is why the rich guys are incredibly stupid assholes behaving like angry aggressive chimpanzees to their employees, like for example [Steve Jobs](steve_jobs.md) or [Elon Musk](elon_musk.md), they just lack brain cells that you need for empathy. Yet another reason why smart people aren't rich is simply that they see that pursuing money is incredibly retarded, it's just satisfying low material and social needs, it's just like overeating, drug addiction or gambling, it's an arbitrarily set unhealthy goal that achieves nothing but waste one's life on counting pieces of green paper while doing bullshit and immense harm as a side effect, smart people see through this, they want something more from life, they want to spend time with their family, create something that helps others, make art and so on, so they just won't go after money and they even turn down money if they can have it (see e.g. Grigori Perelman).
{ Coincidentally after I wrote this I saw some "REAL STUDY" (as in peer censored etc.) which concluded income is slightly positively correlated with IQ, which is probably true around the average middle IQ (a slightly smarter wage slave will make a bit more money by pressing buttons on a computer than a wage slave moving crates), however the study also noted that by far the few richest individuals that took part in the study (probably some CEOs, they were literally sky high in the graph) were all quite significantly BELOW 100 IQ :D So now it's also official. ~drummyfish }
Most people are called a genius nowadays -- any recent so called "genius" (such as [Steve Jobs](steve_jobs.md)) is in fact most likely of below average IQ; just barely above mediocre idea someone comes up with by chance will be celebrated as that of a genius, **real genius ideas will be met with hostility**; real genius ideas are too good and too far ahead and unacceptable to normal people. Furthermore success in [business](business.md) requires lack of intelligence so as to be unable to see the consequences of one's actions. Your cat watching you solve Riemann hypothesis will not even know what's happening, to it you are a retard wasting time on sliding a stick over table, on the other hand the cat will judge a monkey capable of opening a can of cat food a genius. Society is composed solely of idiots, they can only see if someone is a tiny bit better at what they do than them, and those they celebrate, if you are light years ahead of them they don't even have the capacity to comprehend how good you are at what you do because they can't even comprehend the thing you do. This includes even [PhD](phd.md)s and people with several Nobel Prizes, everyone except the few supporters of [LRS](lrs.md) are just blind idiots playing along with the system, some lucky to succeed in it and some not. This is why shit technology is prospering and [LRS](lrs.md) is being overlooked. It's just another confirmation our ideas as superior.
Consider this analogy (yes, analogies are good): in a race you can only see those who are plus or minus 20 meters away from you, you can assess everyone else's position only by someone else telling you, so if someone is 50 meters ahead of you, you can know but only by someone ahead of you telling you that someone ahead of him told him he saw him there way up in the front. Now since there are many fewer of high IQ people, they have lower probability of being recognized, simply because there are few people capable of recognizing them -- in mainstream places like Universities you still likely will be recognized as there are smart people around, and the knowledge of your genius will be chain propagated to the mainstream monkeys, but if you're a genius outside a mainstream place, the chance is almost zero you will be recognized (and if you're smart you will probably also not try to be recognized, only retards do that). With this mainstream will simply lack information about your intelligence, they will only see a question mark above your head -- they know you're not average, because averages get recognized very quickly, everyone can assess those -- so now they know you're either really smart or really dumb, and since you don't fit the false, twisted idea of mainstream pseudogenius (being rich, famous, ...), they will conclude you belong to the latter class, i.e. that you're a retard. Note that the same effect manifests also with the pseudogenius, just in the opposite way -- the dumbest people, like [CEOs](ceo.md), are too far away from the average (now towards lower values), so the mainstream isn't sure about their intelligence; here however the CEO applies manipulation, he has the money to pay for a biography book that paints him as a genius, he can pay someone to write him speeches so that he appears to say smart things, he pays people to invent things signed by his name, or he simply steals them with the power of money (Edison, Jobs, ...) etc., so he ends up being taken for genius, despite actually being dumber than many animals (even a dog has enough brain cells to feel for example empathy, something way too complex for a CEO).
{ The short story *Country of the Blind* by H. G. Wells is a nice story about this phenomenon of too much competence being seen as a lack of competence, illustrated on a story of a completely healthy man who finds himself in a village of people who are all blind. ~drummyfish }
Here is a quick but extremely accurate IQ estimate. Let *x* be the approximate amount to which you agree with [LRS](lrs.md), expressed in percents. You IQ (SD 15) is approximately *2 * x*. If you can't compute that, subtract 200.
{ NOTE: There used to be a joke about me being the smartest being on the planet by this test but I removed it because I realized it was probably [egoism](egoism.md) masked as a joke. ~drummyfish }
