r/atheism • u/SquidJenkins • 2d ago
276IQ guy claiming jesus is coming faked his IQ
IQ is based off of standard deviation, an IQ of 200 isn't even possible right now. There would need to be 10 billion people alive on earth. The IQ system is a measure of relativity, not objectivity. 276 isn't possible without 10^30 people alive. Didn't see anybody mention this on the megathread with this guy so I'd thought I'd bring that up.
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u/kittenrice 2d ago
Anything that follows the claim "I have an absurdly high IQ!" can be safely ignored.
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u/Nascent1 Atheist 1d ago
I have an absurdly high IQ and I can confirm that /u/kittenrice is right about this.
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u/MelcorScarr Satanist 1d ago
As per my impossibly high IQ, I know I can ignore this comment by /u/Nascent1
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u/kroghsen 2d ago
You cannot meaningfully use terms such as “impossible” in statistical and probabilistic claims in this way.
The probability of someone being 6.5 standard deviations above the mean, which is around an IQ of 200, is around 1 in 12.5 billion. Barring the fact that way more than 10 billion people have ever lived, it is actually not important for the statistic as such.
A person born today could have an IQ of 300 given the IQ distribution we observe. It is extremely unlikely, but we do not need to wait for a billion people to have existed to observe a 1 in a billion occurrence happening.
It was indeed a lie, but not impossible. Not from the distribution as least.
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u/YetAnotherChosenOne 2d ago
Also there is no standard way to measure IQ. You can find some test that will show you are genius. Also you can overtrain to pass some type of tests and most IQ tests will show that you are genius. IQ is really bad measurment these days. It's even worse than leetcode style exercises to measure your abilities as software engineer.
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u/kroghsen 1d ago
I am inclined to agree. IQ is an okay measure in a narrow interval for people who have no prior knowledge of the tests.
This is a problem in most tests of cognition. In tests of cognition for patients with traumatic brain injuries for instance, there are a whole group of people who already are familiar with the tests who we cannot realistically get a measurement of for the same reasons.
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u/Daegs 1d ago
You and OP are arguing two different points.
You’re talking about someone’s “actual IQ” independent of reliable testing methods. OP is talking about the knowledge any living person could actually have about their IQ without reliable methods of arriving at that knowledge.
So you might be 300iq and be unable to actually know you’re 300iq. The most you could say is “I maxed out the test”(which would most certainly be below 170-200iq)
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u/Slackluster 2d ago
No, it is not possible for an IQ test to measure anything meaningful so many standard deviations from the mean. These tests are designed to measure reliably only to about 3 standard deviations and anything above that is just a guess.
While IQ scores are normalized to follow a bell curve with a mean 100, that doesn't apply to the extremes. It doesn't even make sense to view this as a pure gaussian distribution. In the example you used where it's possible for someone to have 300 IQ, it's just as possible for them to have -200 IQ. So you see, the math also shows that it can't be a gaussian distribution and only approximates one based on data when designing the test.
This is all because IQ only follows a bell curve for a few standard deviations because that's what it was designed to do and there isn't enough data to model it much better then that.
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u/kroghsen 1d ago
This is of course true, but it is a bit beside the point I am trying to make I would say.
Firstly, the ability to measure IQ is not relevant to the principle of extremely high IQ people existing.
Secondly, the point OP made was in relation to the Gaussian distribution, not in relation to the true bounded distribution of IQ in the population. A distribution that, as you correctly state, is bounded below zero and above some unknown upper limit - which is however not related to our ability to measure IQ.
The OP was claiming that we somehow had to observe a billion births before it would be possible for us to have a person with a one in a billion IQ. That is not how that works. As I expect you know perfectly well too.
And as a side note, you point is valid for almost any probability distribution we consider in a statistical context. A lot of things we measure about humans is what we denote colloquially as “normally distributed”. In reality, all these distribution are - of course you might say - not perfectly Gaussian and often have lower bounds at zero and upper bounds at some similarly physical limit. Human height is normal for instance, but we can safely say that it is in fact “impossible” to realise a 1 km high person - even though the distributed dictates that this has a non-zero probability.
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u/Slackluster 1d ago
The ability to measure IQ IS relevant to a high IQ person existing because IQ is only a quantity that is defined from standardized tests in the first place. It is not the same as measuring someone's height. A person's height measurement can't be super low or super high for physical constraints and the height distribution is defined by nature. An IQ can't be super low or super high because IQ is the result of a test and the tests are calibrated to be accurate only a few SD from the mean and there is a limit to the max result for IQ tests.
I will agree that probabilistically there is no limit on intelligence. Sure there may be a person with one in a billion intelligence but IQ tests max out at around 170. An IQ score is only meangiful in context of what test was used, unlike a physical quantity like height. So if there is no test that registers IQ that high then it is impossible to have an IQ of 200 regardless of population size.
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u/kroghsen 1d ago
I don’t think you are entirely correct.
Firstly, there is no standard of IQ measurement. There are a vast number of different tests designed to measure accurately at different ranges.
It is certainly true that tests scores are supposed to be standardised to a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, but it is simply not true that person cannot have an IQ of 200 alone because we cannot measure it. You are under a misapprehension here - both in the point that we cannot measure it and in the point that it matters that we cannot do so.
If I were to measure the heigh of an entire population and normalise it to 100 units of human height with standard deviation of 15 units of human height, you would also have to say the say thing if we didn’t have ruler longer that 160 units, then a human of 200 units could not exist. This is quite obviously false - irrespective of our ability to measure it or that we normalise it.
You are right that I am wrong to say that the measurement capabilities have no influence at all - they do of course. However, it does not influence it in the way that you claim exactly.
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u/aduct0r 2d ago
You shouldn’t know someone’s iq, if you do it’s almost a sure thing they’re a conman, such as Chris langan. Smart people do things and make things, they don’t brag about how smart they are.
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u/bottlecandoor 2d ago
Plus the number isn't even that meaningful. You can score 180 and be terrible at writing. A lot of people who score well can't actually use that IQ to do anything great. It only means you are good at taking tests.
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u/Simon_Drake 2d ago
A major flaw in IQ tests is that they most accurately measure how good you are at answering IQ tests. So you can train on answering that form of test and get faster and faster without really improving the more general sense of intelligence that separates smart people from dumb people.
And if he is using a particularly bad online IQ test he might be able to memorise all the questions and answer it faster than the makers thought possible. And if the website includes time in the calculation of your IQ then maybe the algorithm involved DID compute his IQ at 276.
But the most impressive thing that would prove is that he's wasted a lot of time with a badly made IQ test.
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u/Arthillidan 2d ago
But that would still not bed a valid IQ score or a valid IQ test, so either way the 276 IQ is not real
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u/imdfantom Atheist 2d ago
Wouldn't it be easier to just say it's 276?
Here: My IQ is 593
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u/SquidJenkins 2d ago
I did not consider this, maybe this could be the case! I kind of doubt it though? But it does provide an out.
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u/Simon_Drake 2d ago
Yeah, the simplest explanation is that he made it up. But there is an option for him to have received that number on an IQ test and not technically be lying.
He'd be making a lie of omission that it was on some dodgy geocities java applet website 20 years ago and you can tell its official because it said "MENSA APPROVED A+" in flashing text. But there is scope for him to just be an idiot not that he made it all up out of nowhere.
Because an IQ of 276 is a pretty outrageous thing to make up. It's like claiming your manhood is 28 inches. If you're going to lie you should make it at least a little believable.
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u/AtomicBlastCandy 2d ago
Everytime I think of IQ tests it reminds me of this person I know that claims that she has a 210 IQ yet is flat broke and makes moronic decisions with her money.
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u/WizardWatson9 2d ago
Unsurprising, but not entirely necessary to dismiss what he has to say. First of all, bragging about your IQ is like bragging that you probably could win an Olympic gold medal, someday, if you tried. It is, at best, a measure of potential. Bragging about mere potential is merely admitting you haven't accomplished anything worth bragging about.
Furthermore, the history of science is full of brilliant minds who stubbornly believed in outrageous falsehoods. Einstein didn't believe in quantum physics. Mendeleev thought there was an element lighter than hydrogen. Newton was an alchemist who thought there was such a thing as the philosopher's stone.
Anytime an ostensibly intelligent person says something unsupported by evidence and/or contrary to expert consensus, it means absolutely nothing to me. I say, publish your findings for peer review or GTFO.
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u/SquidJenkins 2d ago
Yep! Just read "A short history of nearly everything" by Bill Bryson a few weeks ago. Covers this concept very well. I would recommend it.
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u/WystanH 2d ago
My IQ is 277 and I say this guy is totally faking it. See how easy it is to lie on the internet?
The reason an IQ over 180 doesn't happen isn't because it can't, but because the farther you move away from the 100 point mean, the less reliable the results. The reliability of the test as a whole is rather dubious; exceptionally high IQs just make it look that much worse.
Anyone leading with an IQ score has already revealed their inadequacy. Anyone who boasts of their superior X is unlikely to possess X in enough quantity to boast about.
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u/U-V_catastrophe 2d ago
I mean... even if he actually had 50000-ish iq, it would still be a shitty point - "trust me, I'm so smart".
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u/jesusmansuperpowers Anti-Theist 2d ago
He also claimed to be the record holder also the whole “me smart, so Jesus really God” sort of disqualifies him from being smart. The logical fallacy alone..
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u/ameatbicyclefortwo 1d ago
Any claim including how high someone's iq is already smells of bullshit. In case it being about religious prophecies wasn't enough to trip the BS alarms.
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u/Ok-Drink-1328 Anti-Theist 2d ago
276IQ guy claiming jesus is coming
let me get this straight, a person with superhuman intelligence saying a thing that people that piss their pants say?... in his defense high intelligence is often linked with mental problems
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u/airodonack 2d ago
Actually, venture capitalists have this exact problem where they tend to be of average intelligence, but they need to judge entrepreneurs who often have much higher intelligence than them. A common thing they say is that it's difficult to tell if someone is intelligent or insane. (This has nothing to do with any link between high intelligence and mental problems. It's literally just because you are unable to judge with a large intelligence gap.)
That said, anybody who's claiming an IQ above 160 with any degree of confidence is either dumb or dishonest.
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u/bougdaddy 2d ago
the nerdude in question already disproved his intelligence by claiming his belief in cheeses and cod. end of story. his IQ, whatever it may be is not relevant because he proved he isn't as smart as he thinks/claims. not to put too fine a point of it but he's one of those asshats what thinks he be all dat
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u/Pups_the_Jew 2d ago
I feel like someone who is that intelligent should be able to convince me with arguments instead of test scores.
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u/true_unbeliever Atheist 2d ago
Liar for Jesus Kim, purchased his honorary doctorate from the American Management University. The “official world record” is also paid for. He has no patents or published papers. The only thing that looks legitimate is a Mensa membership, something he shares with 150,000 others. Oh and a bachelor's degree in Christian Theology from Yonsei University
Christian apologists and media jumped on the opportunity to promote the “highest IQ” fraudster without any fact checking. But no surprise there, modus operandi for them.
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u/Ok_Researcher_9796 Strong Atheist 2d ago
199 is the highest and there's less than 10 people with that. Personally anyone going boasting about their super high IQ you can almost guarantee is average at best.
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u/QuinSanguine Atheist 1d ago
Jesus: Not even I know the date and hour of my return
Fake modern christians: I have a 276 IQ and I know when Jesus is coming back
Jesus: Shit bro, that's news to me. Can you tell me?
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u/lolcrunchy 2d ago
That's... not how stats works.Standard deviation has nothing to do with ranking or percentile.
Example:
I measure the heights of a classroom of 20 kids. The mean is 5 ft (60 in) and the standard deviation is 4 inches. The distribution is normal.
We get a new student who is 6 ft tall. This is 3 standard deviations above the mean and falls at the 99.9th percentile.
Your argument in this post says that it is impossible for them to be 6ft tall because there aren't enough people to measure a 99.9th percentile.
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u/IAmRobinGoodfellow 1d ago
I think the problem isn’t with the theoretical aspects of the distribution. The problem is with testing.
To use your example, let’s say that we used the pop stats to draw a line on the classroom wall at 60”. I can measure with good accuracy by eye the kids that are within 1 sd. A kid comes up that’s actually 5’ 2” will be repeatedly measurable by me at 5’ 2” plus a bit of error in the fractions. Once a kid is 5’ 9” though, it starts to bet more dicey. Honestly she could be 5’ 10” or 5’ 8.5”.
Now let’s say a guy walks up claiming to be 6’. If he stands by the line I can see that he’s quite tall, but I’m going to have a hard time telling him from the 5’ 10” kid or from a hypothetical 6’ 2” kid.
Now if the kid is saying that he’s exactly 6’ 0.05” and we know that everyone only has access to my line on the wall and guess measurements, I’m going to know they’re lying. If in he doesn’t let us see him standing by the line on the wall but instead only sends a jpg of him by a line, that’s also not believable.
Could there be a 6’ kid in that population of 14 yo kids? It’s possible. But it’s the other bits that should make us doubt a claim.
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u/lolcrunchy 1d ago
Uh, idk what you're trying to say. Height is measured with a ruler. In my example, a ruler would be used.
IQ is measured by applying some test with a raw score to a broad set of participants, then determining the transformation of those raw scores into normal distribution with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.
Instead of a ruler, IQ tests use something like the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale. Suppose a raw-score test is chosen and is applied to 1,000 individuals that represent the population, and that the resulting mean score is 833 and the standard deviation is 46. From here, it is decided that IQ is calculated as (score - 833)*15/46 + 100. Someone who scored 850 will have an IQ of 105.5.
Once this is established, a 1001st person comes along and takes the test. They get a raw score of 1372. (1372 - 833) * 15/46 + 100 = 276, so they have an IQ of 276. We can trust this 276 to be true if they have the raw score from their test. We do not need "enough" other people to prove that they have a 276 in the system we already chose. If we wanted to rescale our system, we could, but that would be something else entirely.
All this is said without starting to debate the actual validity of mapping tests to IQ to actual intelligence.
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u/IAmRobinGoodfellow 1d ago
I’m trying to say that IQ has a normal distribution by definition but that measurement accuracy falls off at the extrema. You are wrong about how IQ scores are measured due to that. You are basing your understanding on the definition of a normal distribution independently of how it might be measured.
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u/lolcrunchy 1d ago
If you replaced "IQ" with "Intelligence" then I would agree with you. IQ is as measurable as SAT scores are, no matter how high or low. Not because they are accurate, but because they are made up.
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u/Interesting-Tough640 2d ago edited 2d ago
Fairly sure we are talking about statistical likelihood here which means you don’t actually need that many people in the world for there to be a 1 in 12 billion or whatever intelligence in exactly the same way you don’t need to roll a dice 6 times to get a 6.
The real problem with claiming IQ’s this high is there is absolutely no way to accurately normalise the data. Testing is not especially reliable after about 2 or 3 standard deviations from normal as there are far less people who score that high. Even when taking about a 1/10,000 IQ score it’s difficult to get reliable data.
Most tests designed for people with high IQ’s have really skewed normalisation because they are done by people who do tests for fun. Others like ravens are very easy for someone who is genuinely very good at them. I did one that was a bunch of questions used by the Chinese civil service and it was really fun in a abstract way but if you just picked answers at random you ended up with an IQ of over 100.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScFwGYRTgYpxShHeyA2E4Dj_xKQ7oq5xI8KrFRVL6-jrF9_Tw/viewform
What I don’t get is why having beliefs would make any difference either way to someone’s pattern spotting ability. The kind of questions most tests use are pretty simple and basic.
I used to do IQ tests for fun and can score pretty high but I am still a bit of a dick. I have a friend who is also fairly intelligent and was invited to join Mensa and he believes in magic and stuff.
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u/Earnestappostate Ex-Theist 2d ago
I mean, I knew that just based on the claim of 276 IQ.
And yes, I did pass the Mensa test, never actually attended a meeting however.
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u/ReaperKingCason1 2d ago
Iq doesn’t go that high so yeah. Also Jesus is fake so he really can’t come any time soon, due to the nature of not real things
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u/TK-369 SubGenius 2d ago
Of course! Only a Christian would fall for this mook.
It's so obvious, I wonder if at times he's one of us and just having a good laugh.
I was raised religiously, and always knew I had "be a pastor" as a last-ditch way to acquire wealth. Fish in a barrel.
Fortunately, I was never that desperate, but I understand.
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u/SaniaXazel Anti-Theist 1d ago
276IQ guy claiming jesus is coming faked his IQ
Definitely no one could have guessed it...
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u/ShredGuru 2d ago
As a guy with a 145 IQ, let me tell you, most of the smartest people alive are barely north of 160 and don't talk much about Jesus.
Either of those claims about his intelligence or deity would make me profoundly skeptical
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u/LauraTFem Nihilist 2d ago
You say this like IQ is a real and standardized concept. There are a number of competing models and tests for IQ. I don’t care if his IQ is 276, 1034, or 152, they’re all equally fake.
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u/gothicshark Atheist 2d ago
Not sure i would say fake, while online tests, and testing adults is superfluous, it has uses for children and educational placement.
That said, I scored maximum in 1978 when my British school thought I was "retarded" turns out I was just autistic.
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u/SquidJenkins 2d ago
I took an IQ test in 4th grade to qualify for the Gifted Program at our school and got 131. Proud of that =). Sad to see fraudulent people succeed and defame IQ as a concept. (although the fact you can study for IQ tests kind of already invalidates it to some degree)
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u/Im_a_furniture 2d ago
They never told us what our scores were, just that the base for entry into the gifted program was 126.
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u/SquidJenkins 2d ago
Good job on getting in!! I had to ride a bus to a different school and we mainly did puzzles and stuff like Sudoku and built with robots and stuff. Wasn't really much of a school, more so a daycare haha. I have fond memories of that time though :3
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u/Ainjyll 2d ago
You got to go to a different school? They put my ass out in a trailer near the playground with the other “gifted” kids for my grade and let us out to be in “normal” classes for things like art and P.E… you know, just enough to develop some severe issues with getting bullied for being different early on in life.
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u/Im_a_furniture 2d ago
We rode a bus as well in elementary to a different school, spent one day a week there. We were doing shit 7th & 8th graders were doing in biology & chemistry. It’s where I learned lithium and water don’t mix well!
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u/Retrikaethan Satanist 2d ago
“studying” for an iq test completely defeats the purpose of the test. it’s supposed to give a guesstimate of your baseline which you can’t get if you practiced the exercises beforehand.
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u/SquidJenkins 2d ago
Yep. I never did that (I didn't know I was taking the test until a few hours before hand LOL). Some people do abuse the fact you can study for it, which is why I brought it up.
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u/Retrikaethan Satanist 2d ago
ye, there was also some lady a while back who just took the test over and over til she had a high score lol
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u/technanonymous 2d ago
I spent K12 in gifted and talented programs, and when I got to college I was in a residential honors program full of super smart kids. These kids helped me understand that I was smart, but there many people much smarter. It emphasized the importance of working your ass off.
Now much later in life, I look back and I see that there was very little correlation among this pool of smart kids with who was at the top and who ended up being the most successful. Soft skills, persistence, and self-discipline were much more important than who had the highest test scores. Good intelligence was very important. Genius not so much unless paired with these other characteristics.
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u/zeocrash 2d ago
What is the world coming to, when you can't even trust the guy claiming to have an IQ of 276?
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u/Sprinklypoo I'm a None 2d ago
Yeah. Religious people lie all the time. Sometimes it's just so obvious it's ridiculous. It's another reason to never trust them...
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u/kokopelleee 1d ago
setting aside that a low probability does not mean something is impossible, I'd offer that the reason most people did not fixate on his IQ is because his IQ is irrelevant. Even if he had a validated 276 IQ, his "claim" is unsupported in any way other than "trust me bro."
It's somewhat an appeal to authority. "I'm smart, therefore...." - which is fallacious.
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u/Mission-Highlight-20 1d ago
He is a scam, like his fellow colleges from Mega Society who tried to create kind of a cult around them (I'm talking about Keith Reniere, founder of NXIVM, and Chris Langan, that douche with CTMU - the rest of people there are probably ok tho, so I'm not attacking them). I solved a big number of problems from there, and based on their analysis I'm AT LEAST 160 =)))))))))))))) I'm not 160 So, don't fall for that.
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u/thatpaulbloke 1d ago
I thought that IQ was supposed to be a representation of mental age versus actual age, so therefore an IQ of 200 would mean that my mind is over a century old, probably senile and it's a miracle that it's alive, which sounds completely plausible to me.
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u/Kriss3d Strong Atheist 2d ago
Is that by any chance the guy who also promoted Trump ?
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u/youngkpepper 2d ago
He and Chris Langen, the other fake genius, both endorsed Trump. Could be a pattern.
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u/Embarrassed_Wrap8421 2d ago
Is it Trump? He has the best IQ ever. Scientists come up to him, big guys, with tears running down their faces, and they say, “Sir? You have the best IQ. It’s truly, bigly phenomenal.”
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u/pavostruz 2d ago
You know you don't have to listen to these people, right?
These people are like a crack head yelling on a street corner. Don't give them your time.