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Originally Posted by jaamkie  erm... I don't know why you're so skeptical that people are telling the truth about their IQ tests (online or real), or why you're so sure because someone posts on a high IQ thread they arrogantly believe high IQ leads to life success.
As far as likelihood of several posters with some legit claim to "high IQ", Steve's website selects people who don't mind the arrogance of "For Smart People" and enjoy his smart-person observations. Then even within the thousands of forum members, who do you think is going to post on a thread originally asking high IQ people for their subjective opinions? And of course online IQ tests aren't the same as those done by a psychologist- but I for one am basing my comments on a psychologist-admin'd test (I originally foolishly posted on this thread as a newbie forum member not realizing the age of the thread - I'd been following related thread links and didn't notice the timestamps until after replying... and I'm now foolishly replying again to postpone starting my next coding task =P).
And as far as IQ==success... I was originally interested in this thread/topic BECAUSE an abnormal IQ is not necessarily a blessing, but instead seems to have some correlation with social problems/isolation- the focus of this forum. Sure IQ is imperfect etc, but it is a long-established measure for some mental processing traits, and it is interesting to hear others on the forum describe experiences I relate to. Because IQ is such a touchy subject, I don't know/ask the IQ of most people I meet, so (pre-hijacking/bickering) I thought this was an interesting discussion. |
Ok, one at a time.
To your first point: I don't recall alleging that anyone on this thread "arrogantly believes high IQ leads to life success." Since I didn't write that, I see no need to address it.
To your second point, which is much more interesting.
I think your point is this: I say the people on page 6 who submitted their IQs are lying. You say it's plausible they are telling the truth, because among other things, smart folks are attracted to this discussion by the nature of it's content.
Let's talk a little about the likelihood that all the people on page 6 are telling the truth about their IQs.
There were 6 people who volunteered their IQs. Of those, all 6 said they had a score which landed them in the top 1% of the population. That is 100% of the sample.
Now, the odds of 6 random people selected from the general population all having an IQ in the top 1% are about 1 in 63,195,232,636,900. That would be 63 Trillion with a "T".
However, as you pointed out, these people aren't just any people, they are smart people. How smart? If you believe them, REALLY SMART. But for our purposes, let's make an assumption.
Let's assume all the visitors to this thread (not just the 6 smart ones) are above 115 (solid college material). The mean IQ in the general population is 100 with a standard deviation of 15. So, our population is reduced to roughly 16 people in every 100.
Even given this very limited population, the odds of those 6 having the IQs they claim to have are 1 in 927,048,304 - slightly better than 1 in 1 billion.
To put this in perspective, the chances of winning a lottery where you have to pick 6 out of 50 numbers are 1 in 15,890,700.
I must point out that these are pretty long odds. I don't doubt these people's claims because I think they are morons (which they might be) or because I believe it is human nature to embellish (which it is). I doubt these people because the math says it's nearly impossible.
Some or all are lying.
Cheers!