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Surprisingly, many findings show there is not. Malcolm Gladwell explains this well in his book Outliers. https://www.honorsociety.org/articles/trouble-geniuses

Surprisingly, many findings show there is not. Malcolm Gladwell explains this well in his book Outliers. https://www.honorsociety.org/articles/trouble-geniuses-malcolm-gladwells-outliers-story-success https://www.honorsociety.org/articles/trouble-geniuses-malco... “Gladwell cites studies done by Arthur Jensen that indicate the IQ level needed to successfully attend and graduate from undergraduate college is 115, after which Jensen believe IQ becomes relatively unimportant. For comparison, Albert Einstein, a well-known and commonly agreed upon genius, had an IQ of 150. Studies by Liam Hudson indicate that, ‘a mature scientist with an adult IQ of 130 is as likely to win a Nobel Prize as is one whose IQ is 180.’” He gives the example [paraphrasing from memory] of an individual with an IQ of 170 who was so intelligent it impaired his ability to relate to normal people and hold a job.

plemer 8y ago
Gladwell generally badly oversimplifies and mischaracterizes.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cpsempek 8y ago
  While I agree with the intentions of your comment, it fails to be a persuasive rebuttal. Not saying you’re wrong, just saying a more productive comment would have responded to the specific claims of Gladwell’s in the comment, versus an ad hominem dismissal.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> He gives the example [paraphrasing from memory] of an individual with an IQ of 170 who was so intelligent it impaired his ability to relate to normal people and hold a job. High IQ doesn't do that (in fact, it makes it easier to understand other people, including those of average intelligence, if you are so inclined), though people with high IQ and a problem that does impair their social interactions may be inclined to prefer to attribute the social difficulty to their strength (IQ) rather than some problem. Some of the problems that do that may be loosely correlated with IQ, despite being distinct from it, though.
- keldaris 8y ago
  Humans do seem to generally prefer the company of those with a sufficient degree of shared traits, interests and preferences. Being an extreme outlier in IQ, as in any other area, may just make it statistically harder to find such company.
- syn0byte 8y ago
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616303324 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961... You sure?
- CompelTechnic 8y ago
  Relating to somebody has two parts: understanding them and empathizing with them. The empathizing part is largely built on feeling similar to them, which could be hard with a big IQ difference.
- madaxe_again 8y ago
  It makes understanding people easier - much easier, in fact - but it doesn’t necessarily help you use that understanding any better. Firstly, as others have observed, it makes it hard to relate to others when the majority of people you meet seem to have the intellect of a child - I don’t mean this unkindly, rather more that one ends up looking at most folks as making grievous and avoidable errors incessantly, and almost as overgrown children. You want to help, but you can’t, because nobody likes being patronised or made to feel inferior, but if you don’t help, they resent you for not having helped. It isn’t intractable, but it’s most readily avoided by avoiding interaction in the first place. Secondly, intimidation. Ties back to making people feel inferior, and generally stymies social interactions. It’s tough, even in a marriage, as they either know you’re playing dumb, or feel like you’re beating them over the head with your intellect. Either way you end up hurting their self worth every time you notice something or think of something and unwisely decide to share it. Thirdly, overshoot. I tend to assign far more intelligence and cunning to others than there is, and resultabtly second, third, fourth guess their mind-state, as it’s hard to comprehend the disappointingly facile motives behind behaviour. Finally, expectations. Once you let on that you can solve the intractable while half-asleep, you’re expected to do it day in, day out, and find that the world beats a path to your door with their petitions and demands, which feeds more than a degree of misanthropy. I’ve met maybe three people in my life who I’ve felt on a level with, and one of them is my brother.
Retric 8y ago
150 IQ is extremely high ~1/1,125 relative to the general population and that score may or may not be that accurate. Which seems to disagree with your suggestion. Winning a Nobel prize is a highly random process as someone needs to be in an 'open' field ripe for major discovery.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  That's what I was thinking. Nobel prize is like a lottery that requires a high IQ and a desire to work in academia and research among other factors in order to buy a ticket. You also have to be lucky enough not to have contemporaries with equally impressive work in more popular fields.
pickleman 8y ago
If the standard is "likely[ness] to win a Nobel Prize" that makes sense. The Nobel Prize is not purely meritocratic, to say the least.
JamesBarney 8y ago
I don't think there would be too much disagreement if I said von neuman was one of the smartest 10 guys to live in the last century. But he seemed to relate to people just fine.
- phaus 8y ago
  >I don't think there would be too much disagreement if I said von neuman was one of the smartest 10 guys to live in the last century. Obviously there won't be much disagreement on a platform dominated by computer scientists. If you went to forums for other fields they would also pick their favorites and see no reason to disagree that they are not only the best and brightest in the field, but also the best and brightest in general. And to be clear I'm not saying he isn't. I don't really know.
  - pedrosorio 8y ago
    von Neumann was a lot more than a computer scientist though...
  - extragood 8y ago
    He's huge in computer science, legendary in mathematics, and contributed significantly to nuclear physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann He should make top 10 for anyone in math or science at least.
- ABCLAW 8y ago
  I don't think we're at the point of having a strict definition of 'smart' let alone a system for ranking by it.
  - extragood 8y ago
    If multiple Nobel Laureates say things like "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man" that's a pretty good indicator that the man was beyond brilliant and I think it's fair to say that they have the better authority than any of us here to make that classification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Cognitive_abilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Cognitive_abi...
Bartweiss 8y ago
Gladwell has a real problem with appealing-but-unsubstantiated claims, and Outliers is perhaps his worst offense. The IQ content is less egregious than other flaws - his famous "10,000 hours" bit is so oversimplified that the authors of the study he cites have condemned Gladwell's treatment of their work. But even the IQ stuff is quite bad. The first note would be that the initial statement here is a shockingly strong claim which goes far beyond Hudson's studies. (115 to 130 is the difference between 15% of the population and 2.3%.) And, of course, the followup reference to Einstein seems entirely self-defeating - how does it discount IQ to note that a famous genius was well above three sigma? I don't have a copy of Outliers to reference, but the paraphrase of Jensen is also extremely surprising since he's widely criticized for over valuing the role of heritable intelligence in success. All I can find outside of his much-condemned racial work is a brief statement that he believed (in 1969) there were many unfilled jobs requiring an IQ upwards of 110. This is basically what I would have expected from his legacy - not a claim that higher IQ is irrelevant, but instead that +1 SD is enough to open many professional doors. Meanwhile, the high-end claims raise several other questions. Most damningly, any discussion of 170 and 180 IQs is garbage for the common 15 point SD. 5 sigma (IQ 175, depending on normalization) is a 1-in-1.7M event. No IQ test ever devised has been calibrated on that population; Raven's Advanced Matrices only goes to ~150, and other high-IQ tests are also seen to cap at 4 SD or lower. Test-retest and inter-rater variation are high enough that's it not entirely clear whether IQ tests can be calibrated out to 170+, at least without a massive test population. I can't find Hudson's actual study, only replications of that quote, but it's a disaster coming and going. IQ 180 cannot possibly be a value he found in accurate studies, and a work on Nobel winners isn't necessarily relevant to high-IQ success anyway. Nobel winners are generally people whose research succeeded in a major way, not just those who did very good work, and often features mixed groups like "the theoreticians who made the theory" and "the experiments who confirmed the theory", where quite likely only one side is exceptional in the field. Finally, the example of a very high IQ person leading a dysfunctional life fails on several levels. I'll let the Gladwell's use of anecdote slide, because studies on very high IQ children generally do find large rates of non-success, but those outcomes are heavily distorted. First, because childhood IQ testing is heavily age-adjusted, with the result that fast development can produce astronomical IQ scores in children who will be merely quite smart when their peers have caught up, both undermining the relevance of the result and creating unsustainable high expectations. Second, because it ignores the tendency of extreme outliers on one axis to be unusual on other axes also. High IQs might impede socialization, but they're also correlated with mood and anxiety disorders, torsion dystonia, and a variety of other conditions which have obvious negative effects on life outcomes. For these purposes, causation doesn't matter - it's enough to note that without correction, any study of success-by-IQ will be distorted by these conditions. We can imagine a case where success in certain fields is dominated by those very high IQs people who don't get nasty side-effects, while the overall performance for high IQ people is unremarkable. None of which is meant as an attack on you, or even a claim that the people at the peak of e.g. physics are higher-IQ than the field's average. I just think it's worth noting how fractally wrong Outliers manages to be in even a brief statement like this one.
benbreen 8y ago
Worth noting in this discussion: Einstein never took an IQ test, at least none that historians know of. Pretty much any time I see a claim about a historical figure's IQ, it turns out to be an invented figure made on the basis of a totally unscientific "estimate." The tendency of pop writers about intelligence to use these invented historical IQs as a measuring stick makes me doubt the whole enterprise (though I'm not singling out Gladwell here, whose books I generally like).

plemer 8y ago

Gladwell generally badly oversimplifies and mischaracterizes.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cpsempek 8y ago
While I agree with the intentions of your comment, it fails to be a persuasive rebuttal. Not saying you’re wrong, just saying a more productive comment would have responded to the specific claims of Gladwell’s in the comment, versus an ad hominem dismissal.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> He gives the example [paraphrasing from memory] of an individual with an IQ of 170 who was so intelligent it impaired his ability to relate to normal people and hold a job. High IQ doesn't do that (in fact, it makes it easier to understand other people, including those of average intelligence, if you are so inclined), though people with high IQ and a problem that does impair their social interactions may be inclined to prefer to attribute the social difficulty to their strength (IQ) rather than some problem. Some of the problems that do that may be loosely correlated with IQ, despite being distinct from it, though.

keldaris 8y ago
Humans do seem to generally prefer the company of those with a sufficient degree of shared traits, interests and preferences. Being an extreme outlier in IQ, as in any other area, may just make it statistically harder to find such company.
syn0byte 8y ago
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616303324 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961... You sure?
CompelTechnic 8y ago
Relating to somebody has two parts: understanding them and empathizing with them. The empathizing part is largely built on feeling similar to them, which could be hard with a big IQ difference.
madaxe_again 8y ago
It makes understanding people easier - much easier, in fact - but it doesn’t necessarily help you use that understanding any better. Firstly, as others have observed, it makes it hard to relate to others when the majority of people you meet seem to have the intellect of a child - I don’t mean this unkindly, rather more that one ends up looking at most folks as making grievous and avoidable errors incessantly, and almost as overgrown children. You want to help, but you can’t, because nobody likes being patronised or made to feel inferior, but if you don’t help, they resent you for not having helped. It isn’t intractable, but it’s most readily avoided by avoiding interaction in the first place. Secondly, intimidation. Ties back to making people feel inferior, and generally stymies social interactions. It’s tough, even in a marriage, as they either know you’re playing dumb, or feel like you’re beating them over the head with your intellect. Either way you end up hurting their self worth every time you notice something or think of something and unwisely decide to share it. Thirdly, overshoot. I tend to assign far more intelligence and cunning to others than there is, and resultabtly second, third, fourth guess their mind-state, as it’s hard to comprehend the disappointingly facile motives behind behaviour. Finally, expectations. Once you let on that you can solve the intractable while half-asleep, you’re expected to do it day in, day out, and find that the world beats a path to your door with their petitions and demands, which feeds more than a degree of misanthropy. I’ve met maybe three people in my life who I’ve felt on a level with, and one of them is my brother.

Retric 8y ago

150 IQ is extremely high ~1/1,125 relative to the general population and that score may or may not be that accurate. Which seems to disagree with your suggestion. Winning a Nobel prize is a highly random process as someone needs to be in an 'open' field ripe for major discovery.

jjeaff 8y ago
That's what I was thinking. Nobel prize is like a lottery that requires a high IQ and a desire to work in academia and research among other factors in order to buy a ticket. You also have to be lucky enough not to have contemporaries with equally impressive work in more popular fields.

pickleman 8y ago

If the standard is "likely[ness] to win a Nobel Prize" that makes sense. The Nobel Prize is not purely meritocratic, to say the least.

JamesBarney 8y ago

I don't think there would be too much disagreement if I said von neuman was one of the smartest 10 guys to live in the last century. But he seemed to relate to people just fine.

phaus 8y ago
>I don't think there would be too much disagreement if I said von neuman was one of the smartest 10 guys to live in the last century. Obviously there won't be much disagreement on a platform dominated by computer scientists. If you went to forums for other fields they would also pick their favorites and see no reason to disagree that they are not only the best and brightest in the field, but also the best and brightest in general. And to be clear I'm not saying he isn't. I don't really know.
- pedrosorio 8y ago
  von Neumann was a lot more than a computer scientist though...
- extragood 8y ago
  He's huge in computer science, legendary in mathematics, and contributed significantly to nuclear physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann He should make top 10 for anyone in math or science at least.
ABCLAW 8y ago
I don't think we're at the point of having a strict definition of 'smart' let alone a system for ranking by it.
- extragood 8y ago
  If multiple Nobel Laureates say things like "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man" that's a pretty good indicator that the man was beyond brilliant and I think it's fair to say that they have the better authority than any of us here to make that classification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Cognitive_abilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Cognitive_abi...

Bartweiss 8y ago

Gladwell has a real problem with appealing-but-unsubstantiated claims, and Outliers is perhaps his worst offense. The IQ content is less egregious than other flaws - his famous "10,000 hours" bit is so oversimplified that the authors of the study he cites have condemned Gladwell's treatment of their work. But even the IQ stuff is quite bad. The first note would be that the initial statement here is a shockingly strong claim which goes far beyond Hudson's studies. (115 to 130 is the difference between 15% of the population and 2.3%.) And, of course, the followup reference to Einstein seems entirely self-defeating - how does it discount IQ to note that a famous genius was well above three sigma? I don't have a copy of Outliers to reference, but the paraphrase of Jensen is also extremely surprising since he's widely criticized for over valuing the role of heritable intelligence in success. All I can find outside of his much-condemned racial work is a brief statement that he believed (in 1969) there were many unfilled jobs requiring an IQ upwards of 110. This is basically what I would have expected from his legacy - not a claim that higher IQ is irrelevant, but instead that +1 SD is enough to open many professional doors. Meanwhile, the high-end claims raise several other questions. Most damningly, any discussion of 170 and 180 IQs is garbage for the common 15 point SD. 5 sigma (IQ 175, depending on normalization) is a 1-in-1.7M event. No IQ test ever devised has been calibrated on that population; Raven's Advanced Matrices only goes to ~150, and other high-IQ tests are also seen to cap at 4 SD or lower. Test-retest and inter-rater variation are high enough that's it not entirely clear whether IQ tests can be calibrated out to 170+, at least without a massive test population. I can't find Hudson's actual study, only replications of that quote, but it's a disaster coming and going. IQ 180 cannot possibly be a value he found in accurate studies, and a work on Nobel winners isn't necessarily relevant to high-IQ success anyway. Nobel winners are generally people whose research succeeded in a major way, not just those who did very good work, and often features mixed groups like "the theoreticians who made the theory" and "the experiments who confirmed the theory", where quite likely only one side is exceptional in the field. Finally, the example of a very high IQ person leading a dysfunctional life fails on several levels. I'll let the Gladwell's use of anecdote slide, because studies on very high IQ children generally do find large rates of non-success, but those outcomes are heavily distorted. First, because childhood IQ testing is heavily age-adjusted, with the result that fast development can produce astronomical IQ scores in children who will be merely quite smart when their peers have caught up, both undermining the relevance of the result and creating unsustainable high expectations. Second, because it ignores the tendency of extreme outliers on one axis to be unusual on other axes also. High IQs might impede socialization, but they're also correlated with mood and anxiety disorders, torsion dystonia, and a variety of other conditions which have obvious negative effects on life outcomes. For these purposes, causation doesn't matter - it's enough to note that without correction, any study of success-by-IQ will be distorted by these conditions. We can imagine a case where success in certain fields is dominated by those very high IQs people who don't get nasty side-effects, while the overall performance for high IQ people is unremarkable. None of which is meant as an attack on you, or even a claim that the people at the peak of e.g. physics are higher-IQ than the field's average. I just think it's worth noting how fractally wrong Outliers manages to be in even a brief statement like this one.

benbreen 8y ago

Worth noting in this discussion: Einstein never took an IQ test, at least none that historians know of. Pretty much any time I see a claim about a historical figure's IQ, it turns out to be an invented figure made on the basis of a totally unscientific "estimate." The tendency of pop writers about intelligence to use these invented historical IQs as a measuring stick makes me doubt the whole enterprise (though I'm not singling out Gladwell here, whose books I generally like).