

Christopher Langan: the other guy with the "highest" IQ on the planet. - someplacecold
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0
Without opining one way or another about the debate happening here...<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1158589<p>...I'd just like to let you all listen to what someone with an IQ that high actually sounds like. Regardless of which side you come down on, let us not forget that these people are not inhumanly, insolubly brilliant. Like all other people, they and their brains are puzzles, and when we measure their (or our) intelligence, it is NOT certain what it is that we're measuring.<p>And by the way, it's often said that such-and-such the historical figure was supposed to have an IQ of like 180, but I would also like to remind everyone that these figures were given by an assistant to Lewis Terman, whose ill-fated and decades-running IQ experiment successfully proved that IQ doesn't actually indicate how successful one is at much of anything, INCLUDING doing sort of computation except those types that appeared on the test. Those figures were manufactured before we had any indicator that really smart people like Einstein have necessarily high IQs. Just a thought. Lewis Terman. Look him up.<p>Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBmnjD4Fw2U&#38;feature=related
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-cOe6AxtdE&#38;feature=related<p>His website: http://www.ctmu.org/
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someplacecold
OP here. Without opining one way or another about the debate happening here...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1158589>

...I'd just like to let you all listen to what someone with an IQ that high
actually sounds like. Regardless of which side you come down on, let us not
forget that these people are not inhumanly, insolubly brilliant. Like all
other people, they and their brains are puzzles, and when we measure their (or
our) intelligence, it is NOT certain what it is that we're measuring.

And by the way, it's often said that such-and-such the historical figure was
supposed to have an IQ of like 180, but I would also like to remind everyone
that these figures were given by an assistant to Lewis Terman, whose ill-fated
and decades-running IQ experiment successfully proved that IQ doesn't actually
indicate how successful one is at much of anything, INCLUDING doing sort of
computation except those types that appeared on the test. Those figures were
manufactured before we had any indicator that really smart people like
Einstein have necessarily high IQs. Just a thought. Lewis Terman. Look him up.

Part 2:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBmnjD4Fw2U&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBmnjD4Fw2U&feature=related)
Part 3:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-cOe6AxtdE&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-cOe6AxtdE&feature=related)

His website: <http://www.ctmu.org/>

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projectileboy
Two unrelated comments:

1) In the book "Outliers" there's an interesting profile of Langan that looks
more closely at the ways in which Langan has been unable to capitalize on his
genius, and why.

2) Am I the only person who thinks Errol Morris is the worst filmmaker on the
planet? The constant filler images and incessant, droning new age music makes
me want to crucify the innocent.

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teeja
Reminds me of a segment I once saw (60 Minutes? years back) about a mailman
with an IQ of 145. He didn't see any reason to knock himself out just because
he was born 'that way'. Happy doing what he was. What more is there?

