*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 }
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. Now since there are many fewer of high IQ people, they have lower probability of being recognized, simply since 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. 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 average IQ entrepreneurs will still manage to be called geniuses simply by deception, they create the image of pseudogenius, they will pay smart people to tell others they are smart, they will buy or steal authorship of things that were invented by others etc.
{ 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 }
