
greycel
It's hard to be Good in a World of Evil 🧑🏻🌾
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Take Chris Langan, self proclaimed “smartest man in the world”
I see users such as @enchanted_elixir quoting him, as if he is some gospel of truth. Of course indirectly as a way to associate with him to appear smarter (ego) and/or less dumb (insecurity)
Langan has just built that image of becoming the “IQ guy”. But how?
People overestimate him because verbal IQ is prioritised since it immediately highlights extent of capability (similar to
, surface-level) - depth & breadth of thought contain too many variables to be accurately condensed + the perceived range of which can only be expressed in terms of actions (i.e words).. and he excels in this.
This being an example itself
But also like I said earlier, he forces himself to live up to being the “IQ guy”.. so he’s not guaranteed to be relatively superior than others (what IQ suggests), because others don’t —> see no benefit from using jargon + adding empty overcomplexities, that detract from the point
It’s clear he prioritises how he’s presented over what he contains (
)
This guy dismantled him pretty well:
I don’t doubt he has a high IQ, around 160. I just think he’s full of himself + grossly exaggerating the figure + hasn’t amounted to anything, so any sense of superiority he gets from his “claimed ceiling”, is limited by his shortcomings in other factors (reduced ceilings relative to others) —> overall is barely above average (at least from society’s subjective frame)
Btw, this guy likely had the highest IQ of all time:
This guy had the best God-given intuition of all time:
These two had some of the best minds (overall, what matters) of all time:
TLDR Correlation does exist, but it’s weaker than people think. That overestimation is a

I see users such as @enchanted_elixir quoting him, as if he is some gospel of truth. Of course indirectly as a way to associate with him to appear smarter (ego) and/or less dumb (insecurity)
Langan has just built that image of becoming the “IQ guy”. But how?
People overestimate him because verbal IQ is prioritised since it immediately highlights extent of capability (similar to
This being an example itself
But also like I said earlier, he forces himself to live up to being the “IQ guy”.. so he’s not guaranteed to be relatively superior than others (what IQ suggests), because others don’t —> see no benefit from using jargon + adding empty overcomplexities, that detract from the point
It’s clear he prioritises how he’s presented over what he contains (
This guy dismantled him pretty well:
I don’t doubt he has a high IQ, around 160. I just think he’s full of himself + grossly exaggerating the figure + hasn’t amounted to anything, so any sense of superiority he gets from his “claimed ceiling”, is limited by his shortcomings in other factors (reduced ceilings relative to others) —> overall is barely above average (at least from society’s subjective frame)
Btw, this guy likely had the highest IQ of all time:

This guy had the best God-given intuition of all time:

These two had some of the best minds (overall, what matters) of all time:


TLDR Correlation does exist, but it’s weaker than people think. That overestimation is a