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Yes, a significant proportion of those brilliant people who defied consensus opinion were considered crackpots before their insights produced results. There is only enough space in this response to go into detail on one example, but I will provide links to brief bios of some others at the end of this post. At the beginning …
If we were to take the average IQ of those who have earned a Ph.D. (as opposed to honorary Ph.D.’s) we would find that it would be significantly higher than average because it would contain the IQ’s of some of the brightest people on the planet. In 2001, Lubinsky et al* published a study of …
Genius is generally measured by achievement. Someone who is classified as a “genius” is usually a person who has discovered or created something entirely new that is a great departure from what was already known or developed. For example, Albert Einstein was considered a genius because he changed the paradigm in physics by challenging the …
While IQ tests provide very good estimates of intelligence for most people, there are individual cases where the results are highly inaccurate. This can occur for a variety of reasons. Among the most common reason is a lack of familiarity with IQ test items. For example, some of the pattern recognition items that are found …
The good news is that we are all born with the innate ability to think abstractly and logically to some degree. However, we humans differ significantly in the extent to which we apply logical reasoning or engage in abstract thought. In his bestseller, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman outlined the two modes of thinking …
On an IQ scale for which the mean is 100 and standard deviation 15, a person with an IQ of 140 is in the 99.616957th percentile. This means that they have scored higher than 99.6% of the population on the test, an achievement equalled or bettered by only 1 in 261 people. A person with …
What abilities or skills might a person with an IQ of 140 possess? Read More »
We are living today in an environment that is highly polarized and perhaps one of the most politically polarized in modern history. In the US, families gathering together at Thanksgiving and other festive occasions are often cautioned that politics is a divisive and potentially incendiary topic. The tribalism evident in the religious wars in history …
The most commonly used instrument for measuring intelligence is the IQ test. However, intelligence is a multi-faceted human attribute that involves many dimensions, such as imagination, creativity, and long-term problem solving ability that are not measured in an IQ test. This means that judgements about intelligence, yours or someone else’s, are somewhat subjective. So, the …
Einstein had the intellectual capacity to learn mathematics at the advanced level, but in his early youth, he thought that most abstract mathematics had little use. While at the Zurich Polytechnic, he scored 5 out of 6 points in this theoretical physics courses, but only 4 out of 6 in his mathematics courses. Believing that …
The intelligence that we have when we reach adulthood is generally attributed to two factors: our DNA and our environment. For years, psychologists engaged in what was called the “nature vs. nurture” debate about the relative importance of each factor. Those on the “nurture” side of the debate argued that every human begins life as …
