Ask A Genius 1268: IQ’s Black Swan
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/02/15
Rick Rosner: So, I’ve read two debunkings in the past couple of weeks. What’s the name of that Black Swan guy? Nicholas Taleb. He demolishes the idea of IQ. Then, the guy you interviewed said that IQ is bullshit beyond three standard deviations from the mean—that is, below 50 or above 150. What the fuck are you doing with IQ? And all that is true—unless you consider an IQ above 150 a sport, it is a stupid sport that few people are interested in or play. In some ways, you could equate it to the World’s Strongest Man competition—except that the World’s Smartest Man has never had a TV show. It’s been pitched a million times in various ways. I’ve been involved in some of those pilots, and none have taken off.
I still believe that, at some point, we will have a competition built around smartness. But nobody has gotten it on TV yet. And even if they did, it would be the same as the World’s Strongest Man: they come up with a series of events—walking, lifting rocks two and a half feet in diameter and placing them on posts, towing trucks, or even hauling trains by grabbing onto ropes—and running 100 yards with a refrigerator strapped to your back. Forty years ago, that refrigerator race blew out Franco Colombo’s knee.
He was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best friend; they lifted together and came up together in the bodybuilding ranks in the sixties. Then he went on that show with the refrigerator race—even though Colombo wasn’t a big guy (probably around 5′4″), packing 200 pounds of solid muscle. They had this dumb, unsafe event. It’s a series of arbitrary challenges where you need to be incredibly strong to compete, but do all those events truly determine the strongest man in the world? Not exactly—they could have chosen different events or weighted them differently, and you might have gotten a different outcome.
One thing that Taleb argues is that IQ is multidimensional. It is not just IQ; intelligence itself encompasses a range of abilities. Someone who might be brilliant in one area can be terrible in others. There isn’t necessarily a single dimension of smartness, often called “g.” Of course, you can debate whether g even exists.
But still, every sport is fucking arbitrary. Some sports are purer than others. The 100-meter dash is one-dimensional—who’s fastest at running a set distance from a dead start with blocks to help get you off the line? We have the Olympics to determine the winner of that specific event. However, sports like football, basketball, or hockey incorporate various skills, and success often depends on the machine built around you. Take Tom Brady—he’s won seven Super Bowls (and has been to ten). Part of his success comes from having a coach who believed in him and an organization that worked for him. Brady was not a high draft pick out of college; he replaced the starting quarterback with a stroke of luck, and things worked out. He’s a great quarterback—arguably the greatest of all time. However, that’s highly debatable because there are so many dimensions to football’s success. But you can say he’s the Super Bowl–winningest quarterback ever. Suppose you set up criteria based on an IQ test (or a battery of tests). In that case, you might conclude that he did the best as a measure of raw intelligence above 150—but that’s highly questionable.
But if you consider IQ to be a sport that only lunatics compete in—something that no one cares about—then, sure, it’s fine. Except there’s no governing body. It’s not even a sport in which, if you want to have one, you need someone to set up the rules and ensure they’re followed. It also helps if there are people genuinely interested in competing. By those criteria, IQ is fucking weak.
Let’s add an addendum:
It would be fucking great to have a TV show where a bunch of egotistical, smart motherfuckers compete in various challenges in the style of every reality show—start with 24 or 12 contestants, knock them out one by one until you have a champion. It might not prove much, but at least you’d have a competition. IQ could play a part in determining the contestant pool. But really—above 150, it doesn’t freaking matter.
For example, LA Public Schools once had a gifted program (at Walter Reed Junior High or Middle School, whichever) where you needed an IQ of 150 to get in—which is fucking ridiculous, a 1-in-1000 threshold. They said that because of score variation, they’d let you in with, say, a 145, but they didn’t choose 150 because it was a theoretically sound cutoff; they did it because LA public schools are fucking broke and needed to set the bar high to limit the number of qualifying kids.
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