There Have Been Quite a Few ‘Smartest Persons in the World,’ Actually

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/13

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. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about some claims to the ‘smartest person’ and some critical analysis of these claims from a cohort when IQ was much more salient in daily academic and ordinary American life. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s an article by David Redvaldsen from Norway published in the peer-reviewed journal Psych. It examines the validity of the Mega and Titan tests by Ronald K Hoeflin. After a thorough review, the conclusion is that the Mega test can measure IQ at the one in a million level, while the Titan test can measure up to the one in several hundred thousand levels. On an SD-16 scale, the Titan test’s cap is 168+. You achieved the only perfect score on that test. The Mega test’s cap for one in a million is around 45 or 46. Marilyn Vos Savant, dating Ronald K Hoeflin at the time, raising concerns of conflict of interest, is the only person to score 46 on her first attempt. Chris Langan and you achieved the other two scores of 47.

Rick Rosner: On my second attempt.

Jacobsen: Right. I give more weight to first attempts. Getting feedback from a first attempt before taking a second gives you tacit information about your performance.

Rosner: Exactly. It doesn’t specify which items were incorrect but tells you how many were wrong. It also gives you the confidence to reassess and figure out the errors. For instance, I knew I had skipped one question on my first try, which I spent about a hundred hours on. I was also fairly sure about a few others I got wrong. So, for the second attempt, I wondered how much more time it would take, maybe another 40 hours, to find three more correct answers, which I did.

Jacobsen: The first attempt truly reflects an honest effort without any prior feedback, in my opinion. That qualitative aspect is crucial. Notable scores on the Mega test include Chris Langan with a 42 on his first attempt, your 44, and Marilyn’s 46.

Rosner: And John Henry Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire.

Jacobsen: Yes, he was a significant figure under President George Bush Senior, even writing a book about him.

Rosner: There were also a couple of mathematicians who scored 45 and 44.

Jacobsen: Yes, that 44-45 range is essentially the threshold for entering the one-in-a-million category on a first attempt. These tests, considered ‘power tests’ at the time and perhaps even now, are designed to measure more than just quick thinking. They allow open reference books and as much time as needed, aiming to evaluate cognitive power, effort, motivation, and intelligence level to determine a marker of general intelligence. They’re tapping into multiple factors, including aspects of personality.

Rosner: Let’s delve into why this paper is significant, especially considering the relevance of ultra-high IQ tests.

Jacobsen: Right. To add to what I just mentioned, this indicates that one of these tests is among the most rigorously attempted, with large sample sizes and test items with precise, verifiable answers. This sets it apart from many alternative high IQ tests.

Rosner: The test was normed by Hoeflin based on about 4,000 submissions, probably ten times more than the number of people who have attempted any other ultra-high IQ test.

Jacobsen: However, one important caveat is that the individuals taking these tests are self-selected; it’s not a randomized sample. While it represents a certain segment of the population, it’s not reflective of the general population.

Rosner: Let’s discuss norming the test and determining the IQ scores corresponding to the number of correct answers.

Jacobsen: As a footnote, based on that paper, your IQ on the Mega test on your first attempt would be 167, SD 16, and 168+ on the Titan.

Rosner: Okay, let’s discuss how these ultra-high-end IQ tests are normed. The test creators ask participants to submit scores from other IQ tests or equivalent assessments, like the SAT. This process relies on self-reported scores, and although there’s no verification to ensure honesty, most people are likely truthful. Based on these scores, the test makers establish correlations. For instance, if you score 41 on this test and have a 158 on another, or a certain score on the SAT, they can estimate that a score of 41 corresponds to an IQ of, according to Hoeflin’s calculations, around 163 or something similar. That’s the general method for norming these ultra-high-end IQ tests. This paper is significant because it’s one of the first to lend credibility to these tests, which have existed since the late ’70s.

Jacobsen: There are three notable figures in this context: Christopher Harding, Kevin Langdon, and Chris Langan.

Rosner: Kevin Langdon was among the first to publish these super high-end tests around 1979-1980. They’ve existed for about 40 years but have often been dismissed by psychometric professionals as merely hobbyists’ work and not legitimate. This paper you mentioned is one of the first to give legitimacy to these efforts. However, I heard it’s a pay-to-publish journal.

Jacobsen: I’m not certain about that.

Rosner: I thought I heard you mention it. Some journals require payment for publishing and peer review.

Jacobsen: That’s a different discussion, especially considering the publishing costs. Even Harvard Library struggles to afford all journal subscriptions despite having a multi-billion dollar endowment.

Rosner: I’m not well-versed in whether this practice diminishes a journal’s legitimacy.

Jacobsen: To refocus, this was about psychiatric sciences and psychology. A serious effort to validate these alternative IQ tests must come from a psychometric professional and be published in a peer-reviewed psychometric journal. I’m not sure if that has been done yet.

Rosner: Regardless, this paper does provide a bit of legitimacy to these tests. For instance, the score I got on the Titan test, according to Hoeflin, was 190, but this article suggests it’s more like 168.

Jacobsen: Yes, 168 or higher.

Rosner: Significantly lower, right.

Jacobsen: It’s a 22-point difference. Christopher Langan’s first attempt was 163 SD-16, but he’s claimed scores between 190 and 210; others say 195. That’s an even wider gap. The discrepancy between your Titan test score and what’s claimed is smaller, about 10 points less.

Rosner: I haven’t reviewed the paper, so I can’t comment on whether its methodology is more convincing than Hoeflin’s. We can, however, discuss the implications.

Jacobsen: A side note: the most egregious exaggerations often appear in popular articles. People in alternative IQ communities tend to be somewhere in the middle, while the more serious assessments come from psychometricians. For example, popular articles might absurdly claim that some historical figure who never took a test had an IQ of one in three billion rarity.

Rosner: Langan was featured on the cover of Esquire magazine around 20 years ago, hailed as the smartest man in America, or perhaps the world. Similarly, I was featured on a Denver newspaper cover and even in a Domino’s sandwich advertisement. Domino’s launched sandwiches back then – quite delicious, especially if you like pizza-based sandwiches. The ad claimed I had a 200 IQ. They were later challenged, not due to my IQ claim, but because Subway argued that Domino’s made unfair comparisons in their ads. They claimed Domino’s only used delicious ingredients in their sandwiches, making Subway use less appealing items like lettuce and peppers. The ads didn’t last long, only about two or three weeks.

Jacobsen: There are both serious and not-so-serious efforts to measure high IQs. However, while he is a good journalist, Mike Sager’s article in Esquire was quite irresponsible as a piece of journalism.

Rosner: True, but in journalism, sensationalism often sells. No one wants to see a cover featuring Chris Langan with a headline saying he’s smart.’ It’s far more enticing to proclaim him as the smartest guy in the world, or at least in America.

Jacobsen: Let’s consider a more realistic scenario. Say Langan is in Mercer County, with a population of 3,000-4,000. He’s the most intelligent person there.

Rosner: That’s not a headline that grabs attention. People usually read articles looking for something more enlightening or extraordinary. But I get your point. Let’s delve into the implications. Assuming the article you mentioned, which I haven’t read, is accurate and the toughest IQ tests in the world can only measure up to 170.

Jacobsen: 170 plus, to be precise.

Rosner: Right, but that’s still lower than Hoeflin’s claimed reach of up to 190.

Jacobsen: Even so, 170 is pretty impressive.

Rosner: Yes, but by the standard deviation model of IQ, 170 doesn’t quite reach the one-in-a-million mark. I believe you need to hit around 172.

Jacobsen: It depends on the standard deviation used.

Rosner: Exactly. If we’re considering four standard deviations, that gets you around one in three million. You’d need about 4.75 standard deviations, which I think equates to an IQ of 176, to hit the one-in-a-million threshold.

Jacobsen: Yeah, yours would be one in a hundred thousand or something.

Rosner: Yeah. Let’s say just for the sake of this stupid discussion, stupid because it’s trivial. It’s splitting hairs.

Jacobsen: Remember that famous quote, the reason the fights are between people and societies in high IQ communities is…

Rosner: Academics. It’s taken because the stakes are so low.

Jacobsen: Yeah, there is so little at stake.

Rosner: Let’s say the toughest tests could only measure up to 170 or so, and I don’t know because I just don’t know. What is stopping tests from going higher? And it could be, ‘well, IQs don’t go higher than that,’ that’s possibility one. Possibility two is you can’t measure performances higher than that in any reasonable way except by looking at real-world achievements, which is what you just called out as a different form of IQ bullshit which is like looking at Einstein and Newton, historical figures, and saying based on what they did inventing calculus and writing Dr Faustus or whatever the fuck they did. They must have had IQs of 200. I mean, that’s an argument you can make or coming up with a theory of evolution that it takes real-world achievement to demonstrate IQs above 170.

Maybe so, but it’s certainly smarter to come up with the theory of evolution, even though the other guy contests Darwin’s invention claim. It was kind of in the wind then, and Darwin just came out with the most convincing in-depth argument. So, your IQ can’t blossom to its full above 170 potential except under special circumstances where super smartness meets an opportunity to come up with some super smart thing or where you don’t get fully flowered IQ without obsession, without some other extra mental quirks. You don’t get Einstein’s IQ without what Einstein called Sitzfleisch, the ability to sit down even though he works standing up and thinking about a problem for hundreds of hours. And you also don’t get Einstein without Einstein being born in 1879. The turn of the century is when you know science goes from being solved in a classical sense to being totally up in the air in a Quantum sense and about relativity. So Einstein was there to pounce on all that stuff.

So, various issues exist about what makes for a world-beating IQ. It may depend on external circumstances or other internal mental quirks. That’s what I got.

Jacobsen: Anyway, I think an important part of getting those scores so high does make an argument for the idea but per tests themselves. The idea is that you need other factors outside of just speed, and I think one of those is motivation, and another is the narrative around that motivation. So, how strongly are you driven to do something to take these tests and solve those problems? Also, the narrative you have for yourself to have that motivation is sort of a frame for that drive that motivation. I think those are really important factors. We can discuss that with you, but that is a big factor in your high performance.

Rosner: Taking these super high IQ tests is a minority activity. Even among the people who could potentially score high on these tests, a tiny fraction of those people take these tests. For one thing, you don’t get anything really direct for doing this stuff. It’s not a sport that’s recognized, there are no monetary rewards, the fame off of this is very iffy, the social cachet is non-existent, and the opportunity cost is huge that if you’re so smart the scores of hours you’re going to spend on this could be more productively spent in a zillion other ways. So, taking these tests takes a quirky situation and/or a quirky person. Just that means that you’ve got a self-selected weird group that automatically skews your sample and makes it questionable as to what it reflects about the supposedly normally distributed population about IQ.

Jacobsen: And so maybe there should be different statistical distributions when considering these other factors, but things like digit span, vocabulary, spatial rotation, and other things.

Rosner: We should talk about the three things you just mentioned. There are three subtests from standard, well-regarded IQ tests like the ways in the Stanford Binet, which consists of, depending on how thorough your tester wants to be, you can be given more than a dozen of these subtests. The test you just mentioned, all these subtests, a lot of them have a time component. Well, almost all of them have a time component, that’s how you test somebody’s IQ in a reasonable amount of time. You find a task where supposedly somebody smart will be able to complete more of the task in 90 seconds or something, right?

Jacobsen: I mean, the difference between these tests and a real problem solver is probably something like an extreme version of the difference between, in more normal circumstances, free weights and non-. Solving a millennium prize problem, making some big discovery, or inventing a new product of great utility to most people is a much more honest test of intelligence than an IQ test.

Rosner: You can’t use it like that because there are too many variables, and it’s just an uncontrolled kind of exposure to the world.

Jacobsen: True. I mean, it’s also, as far as I know, most of the billionaires came from rich families.

Rosner: So there’s another thing that came to mind: humble bragging regarding IQ. I know at least two people who are famous for doing that. Richard Feynman used to say that he had average intelligence; he just was inquisitive, used everything he had to think about things, and anybody could do what he did with his average intelligence. I think Francis Crick did the same thing, the DNA guy; it might have been Watson. It was one of the DNA guys. Even Einstein was modest. He didn’t go around bragging about their intelligence. They bragged about more egalitarian things: diligence and inquisitiveness, not just god-given intelligence.

Jacobsen: There’s also some sort of social lies that we tell, too. I mean, if someone is objectively more educated, they have a PhD versus an undergraduate degree. If they were to act as if they didn’t have that education, that wouldn’t be considered humble or modest; that would be considered psychosis because it would be a denial of reality. So you can be sort of honest but not brag.

Rosner: Yeah. You mentioned how most billionaires came from wealth in the first place.

Jacobsen: As far as I know, I haven’t looked.

Rosner: Yeah, but that brings up another thing, which is what’s been going on with Elon Musk, who has been recognized as an engineering genius. Then he bought Twitter, and all this information came out. I think he comes from a bunch of money and used it to buy many tech companies and retroactively have him listed among the founders, even though he wasn’t there when they were founded. He might be just some kind of fucking rich idiot, which is similar to Trump. If you look at it, Trump has time and finances; any period where we know how his money worked is when he was one of the worst businessmen in America. For instance, we know his finances for the ten years starting in 1985, when he lost 1.17 billion dollars, more than anybody else in America. He was the worst businessman in America from 1985 through 1994, and then more recently, his taxes came out for about six years in the 21st century, during which he lost another shit ton of money; if you look at what he did with the money he inherited, he would have done much better had he done no business and had just put his money into t-notes or certificates of the of deposit. So he’s a rich guy who is a fucking idiot who did nothing to increase his fortune, which buttresses your argument that a lot of billionaires had parents who were 100 millionaires and just didn’t entirely fuck up their business life.

So, what are we saying here?

Jacobsen: We are saying even if you take a shift from IQ tests and controlled psychometric psychological testing center case for the proper test into the real world, other confounding factors in the real world could make metrics that can use a naturalistic setting like a business technology invention or discovery success questionable in and of themselves. So, in either case, it becomes a problem of opaqueness up to a point.

Rosner: IQ tests were initially designed to fairly quickly tell you how smart somebody is so you can get them what they need, generally educational resources. And you can ask, “Is this helpful?” A teacher in a reasonable academic setting, let’s say a third-grade teacher with 28 students, has IQ scores for those 28 students, is going to be helpful as the teacher, by working with the students after the first couple months, be able to figure out who’s smart and who isn’t. Or do IQ tests to find hidden gems where there might be a kid who’s underperforming, but maybe that kid’s parents are getting a divorce, and that kid’s all fucked up but is smart, or the kid is fucking up because the kid is bored. I’ve never seen a study, not that I’ve looked for one, that tries to answer whether IQ tests are needed. I think they’re still kind of administered as a matter of course in schools at some point. By fifth grade, you’ve probably taken some kind of IQ test. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s certainly not the big deal that it was when I was a kid. What do you think?

Jacobsen: It seems people use it in formal settings like the army, a little less in college admissions and so on.

Rosner: So there’s the ASVAB in America, Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. It’s an IQ test to see whether you get a shot at being enlisted to go to officer candidate school. In the NFL, they used to give a test called the Wonderlic. I think they phased that out because they decided it was racist. It was a 50-question IQ test, and somebody looked at it and decided this fucks over people from poor black kids, maybe. Those people may not be considered quarterbacks because quarterbacks are supposed to be the smartest players on the field and have the highest scores on the Wonderlic. If the NFL can do without the Wonderlic, everybody else can do without IQ tests, I don’t know.

Ultra-high IQ tests serve no diagnostic purpose and, in my mind, are best considered as a sport, and I’ve pitched this fucking sport a bunch. And also, I’ve been a part of four TV Pilots that try to turn thinking into a fucking sport, and it’s very frustrating because you could make a decent show about this kind of shit. That’s what it’s for meaningless performance, like the world’s strongest man competition. You take all these ridiculous fucking events holding like 300-500 pounds picking up balls that are like 30 inches in diameter and weigh 300 pounds. Very unwieldy; who can pick up the most balls and put them on pedestals in one minute? Who can drag a train, you know, to the farthest in one minute? These things that you have to be strong are shit to do, but it’s still a ridiculous fucking thing. You can do the same thing with mental acuity of some sort, and the people have tried to do this, and no fucking network has ever picked it up because they’re idiots.

Now that I think about it, when you look at the networks that have been pitched this shit, now there’s a deal, it’s a rule I developed; I would think that other people have the same rule that the development execs at the middling TV networks A&E, Nat Geo, Bravo; if they were better at their jobs, they wouldn’t be at these fucking middling networks. They’d be at Netflix or whatever the hot fucking network at the moment is. So these dumb fucks, which is where these brain shows get pitched, maybe those shows don’t go anywhere because they are being considered by dumb fuck because some of these shows are perfectly fine and would make for shows that are at least as good as other reality competition shows and maybe better if it’s a reality competition plus a personality revealing thing like Survivor but with smart people.

Another principle that I’m well familiar with, no fucking development exec, is that smart people can be just as asshole-ish as other people and just as interesting in their assholery. There you go; that’s what super-high IQ performance measures are for. It’s a fucking sport that hasn’t been turned successfully into a sport because the people with the power to turn it into a sport are fucking dumb shits.

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