Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3)

Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Numbering: Issue 30.D, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (25)

Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Title: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

Individual Publication Date: May 15, 2022

Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2022

Name of Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Frequency: Three Times Per Year

Words: 1,464

ISSN 2369-6885

Abstract

Chris Cole is a longstanding member of the Mega Society. Richard May is a longstanding member of the Mega Society and Co-Editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. Rick Rosner is a longstanding member of the Mega Society and a former editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. They discuss: fraudulent activity; messianic posing; criminal behaviour; the three interpenetrating cubes problem; above 4 standard deviations above the norm; the hardest IQ test; and IQ.

Keywords: Chris Cole, IQ, Richard May, Richard Rosner, Mega Society, Mega Test, Titan Test.

Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3)

*Please see the references, footnotes, and citations, after the interview, respectively.*

*Rosner section transcribed from audio.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What would you define as fraudulent activity in a high-IQ community or an individual?

Rick Rosner[1]*: Making claims that you know aren’t supported by your performance on tests.

Chris Cole[2]*: Fraud takes many forms just as it does in common law. Because of the Internet, tests with fixed questions are particularly vulnerable to cheating.

Richard May[3],[4]*: I have nothing to add.

Jacobsen: What would you define as messianic posing in a similar regard?

Rosner: If you end up with a cult, that’s messianic posing.

Cole: The common language definition of messianic behavior will serve. 

May: I have nothing to add.

Jacobsen: Similarly, what about criminal behaviour?

Rosner: If you end up in jail for the rest of your life, if the FBI has a thick dossier on you because you are considered a potential threat in certain ways, that’s criminal behaviour. The FBI has dossiers on lots of people because, historically, the FBI has done good things and asshole things.

So, if they have a dossier on you, because you’re a legitimate psycho who has the potential to do bodily harm to people for some weird political reason, then there you go.

Cole: Again I have nothing to add here to the common language definition of criminal behavior. 

May: I have nothing to add.

Jacobsen: On the Mega Test, why was the three interpenetrating cubes problem seen as the most difficult?

Rosner: It is widely agreed that the three interpenetrating cubes problem was the hardest problem on the test. So, the problem that is agreed upon as likely being the correct answer has not, as far as I know, been proven to be the correct answer.

Interestingly, you can look it up. It depends on what shit is online. But at various times since the ‘90s, it has been agreed upon that the correct answer is floating out there. But you can’t be sure that you’ve found the consensus correct answer.

But the figure, the geometric figure, that corresponds to the consensus correct answer can be found in popular culture, but I won’t tell you where.

Cole: It’s the only problem on the test where the answer that Ron accepts has not been proven. There are a few of these on the Titan.

May: It was the certainly most difficult, but my spatial ability is not sufficiently high to understand why this is so.

Jacobsen: Above 4 standard deviations above the norm, why should there be more scrutiny more than any other cutoff?

Rosner: Isn’t there some claim that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”? You could argue that because claiming to have one of the world’s highest IQs gets you more than claiming to have a 120 IQ.

In practical terms, not so often, it can get you on a quiz show. It can get you on the cover of Esquire magazine. It can get you interviewed. It can get you on TV. It kind of got me laid once. I was going to get laid anyway. But it was part of that package that got me laid, I guess.

Cole: A credible high range score requires credible high range test questions, which are hard to formulate and norm.

May: I have nothing to add.

Jacobsen: What was the hardest IQ test you’ve ever taken in the high-range? What lesson can be learned for test-makers from this?

Rosner: I say that I’ve had a lot of success, but I’d say that I’ve had the most difficulty with Cooijmans’ tests. Because he brings in stuff from a lot of areas. I don’t want to say too much about his tests because he doesn’t want people talking about his tests and helping other people.

But by the time the Mega Test had been published in Omni, it had been through a number of revisions with hinky problems getting knocked out or revised until they were clear and bullet-proof. The answers were tight. I think Cooijmans talks about the pleasure of when an answer clicks into place. That click of satisfaction of when you know you found the answer.

I would say that on some of Cooijmans’ problems. The click is, maybe, not as loud as on some Hoeflin problems. On Cooijmans’ problems, you can find some really good answers that aren’t as good as the intended answer. That’s, maybe, the mark of one type of really good ultra-high-IQ test.

That there are stopping points. On multiple choice tests, those are called distractors. There are answers among the choices that seem right for various reasons if you’re taking desperate stabs at an answer.

On high-IQ tests, you can come up with answers that make a lot of sense. But do they make as much sense as the intended answer? No. But you’ve fallen for an inferior answer. On tough tests, a lot of problems on hard tests are finding the signal among the noise.

I’m writing a book in which somebody or the recipient of what he thinks is a coded message, thinks that it is a true message because it is based on the first letters of four consecutive sentences. That spell out a word.

The odds that this would happen by chance are 26 to the 6^th power, which is 676 squared, which is 400,000 to 1. Then you have to knock that down because there are a zillion four-letter words. So, anyway, the odds are tens of thousands to one that it’s not a coded message, especially since it is specific to the character situation.

So, the character reasons that it is likely a true signal. And on a tough IQ problem, you’d like the numerical coincidences to have an unlikelihood of, at least, 1 in a 1,000. When you look at a number sequence, you see a pattern. Then you say, “What are the odds that this pattern would arise by chance?”

On some super-hard IQ problems, there are more than one pattern to be found. Again, you have to ask yourself, “Was this intentional or accidental?” A tough-ass IQ problem really pushes the limit in finding the signal among the noise.

Cole: The only high range test I took was the Mega. 

May: The Mega Test and the L.A.I.T. are the only high range tests I’ve ever taken.
I did not distinguish myself on the latter.

Jacobsen: Is IQ declining in importance now?

Rosner: IQ as IQ is declining in importance because it is a product of the middle of the 20^th century when people really believed in it and used it to skip kids a grade, or not, to put them in gifted classes, get admission to magnet schools.

At some point, probably in the ‘50s, you might be able to get laid by your IQ. Since debunked, it has a greasy feeling about it, weirdo, creepazoid. The Cal. State schools, today, decided to get rid of the ACT and SAT altogether and the SAT is an IQ surrogate.

They decided it is not helpful, not worth the shit people go through to prepare for the tests. We can see enough about a student without some IQ surrogate in their admission packet. I’d say intelligence is increasing in importance because we are tiptoeing up to artificial intelligence.

That when we talk about AI – and AI is a misnomer right now; AI means “machine learning.” Eventually, AI will mean “Artificial Intelligence.” We will need ways to mathematicize and to come up with metrics of the power of thought in brains and in other stuff.

So, old school IQ declining; new school AI shit increasing.

Cole: IQ seems to be about as important now as it was when I was young. The SAT has some problems because it has become easy to improve a score via tutoring, but that is being addressed.

May: There is a theoretical possibility that Nature, specifically natural selection might not be entirely “politically correct.” Theoretically there could be differences among human groups that evolved under different conditions. E.g., If only females could bear children, then males would be the expendable ‘gender’. A small number of healthy males could impregnate a large number of females and the group would survive. A large number of males, if males did not bear children, and a small number of females would not allow the group to survive. Hence, there could be more variability among males, including cognitive variability, because males would be more expendable, than among females, i.e., there would be more male ‘geniuses’ and more male idiots.

Fortunately we now realize that there are no biological differences between males and females. Gender is a purely social construct. We now realize that men can menstruate and have babies too, if given a chance. The only important differences are among large numbers of pronouns, all referring to identical nouns.

Footnotes

[1] According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.

Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.

Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.

[2] Chris Cole is a longstanding member of the Mega Society.

[3] Richard May (“May-Tzu”/“MayTzu”/“Mayzi”) is a Member of the Mega Society based on a qualifying score on the Mega Test (before 1995) prior to the compromise of the Mega Test and Co-Editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. In self-description, May states: “Not even forgotten in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), I’m an Amish yuppie, born near the rarified regions of Laputa, then and often, above suburban Boston. I’ve done occasional consulting and frequent Sisyphean shlepping. Kafka and Munch have been my therapists and allies. Occasionally I’ve strived to descend from the mists to attain the mythic orientation known as having one’s feet upon the Earth. An ailurophile and a cerebrotonic ectomorph, I write for beings which do not, and never will, exist — writings for no one. I’ve been awarded an M.A. degree, mirabile dictu, in the humanities/philosophy, and U.S. patent for a board game of possible interest to extraterrestrials. I’m a member of the Mega Society, the Omega Society and formerly of Mensa. I’m the founder of the Exa Society, the transfinite Aleph-3 Society and of the renowned Laputans Manqué. I’m a biographee in Who’s Who in the Brane World. My interests include the realization of the idea of humans as incomplete beings with the capacity to complete their own evolution by effecting a change in their being and consciousness. In a moment of presence to myself in inner silence, when I see Richard May’s non-being, ‘I’ am. You can meet me if you go to an empty room.” Some other resources include Stains Upon the Silence: something for no one, McGinnis Genealogy of Crown Point, New York: Hiram Porter McGinnis, Swines List, Solipsist Soliloquies, Board Game, Lulu blog, Memoir of a Non-Irish Non-Jew, and May-Tzu’s posterous.

[4] Individual Publication Date: May 15, 2022: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2022: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

Citations

American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S.  Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3)[Online]. May 2022; 30(D). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3.

American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2022, May 15).  Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3). Retrieved from http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3.

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S.  Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 30.D, May. 2022. <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3>.

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2022. “ Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 30.D. http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3.

Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott “ Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 30.D (May 2022). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3.

Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘ Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 30.D. Available from: <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3>.

Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘ Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 30.D., http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3.

Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. “ Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 30.D (2022): May. 2022. Web. <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3>.

Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S.  Debunking I.Q. Claims Discussion with Chris Cole, Richard May, and Rick Rosner: Member, Mega Society; Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society”; Member, Mega Society (3)[Internet]. (2022, May 30(D). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/debunking-3.

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