Politician IQs
After reading Game Change, watching the political scene and using academic evidence I estimate the following IQs for the major politicians of the 2008 election.
Bill Clinton-150
Went to Yale Law, whose student body has a median IQ of 140. Quick on his feet, charismatic, impresses everybody he meets.
Mitt Romney-150
Valedictorian at Brigham Young University, then completed joint JD/MBA program at Harvard graduating with honors in both. Clinton and Romney might be higher than 150, but I’d need evidence of accomplishment in physics or math before I ever considered anybody that smart. The amount of people gets exponentially smaller the higher you go in IQ.
Hillary Clinton-145
Once again, a Yale Law grad.
Barrack Obama- 140
It seems from Law School Numbers that a black can occasionally get into Harvard with an LSAT of 155, or 116 IQ. We must take that as the bare minimum for Obama’s IQ. Only a handful of blacks every year could actually get into Harvard by merit but the president is probably one of them. First we have to look at his biohistory. His mom was a PhD and his dad appears to have been the smartest man in Kenya. Obama graduated with honors from Harvard Law but with affirmative action who knows if that even means anything. I give him the high IQ based on his ability to think on his feet and reports from people who’ve met him. See him here taking on the Republicans.
John McCain- 130
Did very poorly academically, but took two IQ tests in the military and scored 128 and 133. It’s good to have solid numbers for somebody as we can classify politicians as stupider or smarter than McCain.
Joe Biden-115
Went to an extremely low ranked law school. Seems to be able to talk for long periods of time without saying anything. Still, he did well for himself in the Senate and had the respect of his colleagues.
John Edwards-115
Like Biden, graduated from an awful law school. Unlike Biden, was universally seen as a phony by other Senators. We can chalk this up to personality differences between the two. A male Palin.
Sarah Palin-108
I struggled between 110 and 105. Who says I have to round everybody to the nearest five? I’ve already explained why she has a low IQ before. While I once thought that maybe she just had a breakdown during the campaign I’ve seen her on FoxNews since and she still makes no sense. From her biohistory: so far has two kids old enough to be in college but neither one has gone. Hopefully she continues to raise money for right-wing candidates and doesn’t embarrass everyone conservative and white by trying to be president again.
It’s worth mentioning that even if I didn’t know which law schools the politicians went to I would still have guessed that Obama, the Clintons and Romney were smarter than McCain and the rest dumber than him from observation. Good evidence that IQ measures what people call “intelligence” in normal parlance.
44 Comments
Feb 2, 2010 11:06 pm |
What’s your IQ?
Feb 2, 2010 11:42 pm |
I would put Richard Hoste around the three standard deviation mark (like Half Sigma).
Good guesses on the politicians but I’d put John Edwards higher. He’s probably at least as smart as John McCain.
Feb 2, 2010 11:48 pm |
1.I’ve seen the data for several different years, and in no year did more than 9 blacks score higher than 170 on the LSAT. Hernstein and Murray looked at one year’s data in The Bell Curve where only two blacks scored above 170.
2. Smooth talking, or “thinking on his feet” isn’t necessarily an indicator of a high IQ. Steve Sailer has hypothesized that improvisational thinking is a skill unconnected to IQ that blacks are particularly likely to possess.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/04/rev-wright-on-black-white-cognitive.html
Salesmen of all types are likely to be good at thinking on their feet (at least when discussing their area of expertise) and the successful ones will be charismatic. Do you think that car salesmen all have high IQs?
Feb 3, 2010 12:02 am |
Giving my IQ would be in bad taste. I hate the Sailer threads on tests where everybody uses it as an excuse to brag about their scores.
As far as Obama, I hear that law school grading is mostly blind and he graduated with honors from Harvard law. It’s not just that he thinks quickly on his feet. It’s thinking on his feet + Harvard Law Honors + biohistory + testimonials from others.
I know how rare blacks who score 170+ on the LSAT are. I wrote a long article about it. But even fewer become president.
Feb 3, 2010 8:39 am |
Hoste:
A is rare. B is also rare. Unless A and B are strongly positive correlated, A+B are more rare than A or B. Hence your reasoning is fallacious, because having a high LSAT is not strongly correlated with becoming president. The truth is that it is impossible to gauge very much about Obama’s score from his grades. At that time in Harvard, there was a lot of “diversity outreach” going on, apparently, viz. students being coached on what answers to give, or on how to reveal themselves to the blind grader. Also, in his second and third years, he probably took a lot of courses like “Law and Critical Race Theory.”
I also watched the question and answer session. Nothing there is supportive of an IQ above 125. He was expertly coached prior to going in, and he still gave a lot of answers like, “Well, we’ll have to talk about that later…” etc. Then there is the point brought up earlier about improvisational oral fluency not equating very highly with intelligence. (Check out an interview of Nabokov some time.) Don’t mistake pause-fillers and flourishes for intelligence.
Feb 3, 2010 8:40 am |
Correction: EVEN IF A+B are strongly correlated, A and B is more rare than…
Feb 3, 2010 10:56 am |
What you’ve demonstrated is that IQ does not translate into leaders who govern well. They seem more concerned with form than consequences!
Feb 3, 2010 12:03 pm |
A is rare. B is also rare. Unless A and B are strongly positive correlated, A+B are more rare than A or B. Hence your reasoning is fallacious, because having a high LSAT is not strongly correlated with becoming president.
I disagree. An obvious affirmative action case like Sonia Sotomayor would’ve been exposed as a fraud during a presidential campaign. Even when she was nominated to the Supreme Court there were stories about her having been in over her head during college. I don’t remember smart people saying that they were impressed by her. Who from Obama’s past has questioned his intelligence?
The truth is that it is impossible to gauge very much about Obama’s score from his grades. At that time in Harvard, there was a lot of “diversity outreach” going on, apparently, viz. students being coached on what answers to give, or on how to reveal themselves to the blind grader.
Do you have any evidence that this happened and students are coached into working info on their race into law exams?
Feb 3, 2010 5:35 pm |
I think Obama is smart but 140 seems a little too high. His IQ is probably no higher than 130. Basically, he’s as smart as Al Gore but not as smart as Bill or Hillary. I also think it’s hard to get an accurate estimate of Obama’s IQ because we don’t have his test scores or a large body of his written work to make an educated guess. Also, Bill is not good at math. In his memoir he wrote that he had to stop helping Chelsea with her math homework once she got into high school. I suspect Romney is good with numbers because graduating top 5% in your Harvard business class cannot happen if you suck at math.
“Who from Obama’s past has questioned his intelligence?”
Obviously nobody because saying he isn’t smart would be tantamount to outing yourself as a Klansman or a playa hater if you were a black man. Instead we got ridiculous testimonials overexaggerating his intelligence and praising him for ordinary things like taking good notes.
Feb 3, 2010 6:11 pm |
I have never felt that Barack Obama’s intelligence much surpassed that of the oft-feted Kobe Bryant. Bryant scored a 1080 on the SAT in the late 90s.
Feb 3, 2010 6:28 pm |
Good estimates I think; I think I’d knock 5 points off Bill C (145) and Obama (135), Hillary 145
looks right; about as smart as Bill but lacking in all his political talents. Obama is a smart 135 though, while
McCain is a very foolish 130.
(Dis)claimer: I went to the same Oxford college as Bill, also doing Law.
Feb 3, 2010 10:51 pm |
Mr. Hoste,
Of course, I have no hard evidence about Obama’s being coached or breaking blind grading. However, I would like to know which second and third year classes he took. It would be entirely possible to not do very well first year, and then get magna based on careful course selection in the remaining years. Isn’t it suggestive that he had to transfer into Columbia, rather than going there directly, or to Harvard directly? Further, based on background statistics, I’m assume his LSAT was under 170, which suggests an IQ below 140. I’ve seen nothing to contradict this assumption.
As far as people questioning his intelligence, I’m not saying that he’s not smart. I just think 140 is pushing it. Being black and likable insulates one from criticisms better than being Hispanic and prickly doesn’t.
Oh, also, I forgot to mention, Hillary’s estimate seems pretty high. Didn’t she flunk the bar on the first try? That is VERY unusual for a Yale law student–their bar passage rate is stratospheric. You only need to be around 75th percentile to pass the bar, generally.
Feb 3, 2010 11:23 pm |
Yeah, 140 for Obama seems pretty absurd.
I once calculated that only 1 in 220,000 Blacks would have IQs of 140 or higher.
That’s only 113 Blacks with 140 IQs or higher in the entire freaking United States! And that’s of all ages, the number of Blacks in the right age range for politics will be even less than that.
Feb 3, 2010 11:52 pm |
Undergrad matters less than law school. The former depends on how you did in high school when some of us aren’t very mentally stable. I was ranked 390 out of 410 one year. Obama admits to having been into drugs. Plus, if he could’ve got into Harvard Law with AA he certainly was smart enough for the undergraduate school with AA.
I very well could be wrong on Obama though. Even though only a handful of blacks score 170+ a year, I think that a guy who is half white, graduated with honors from Harvard and ended up president would be a better candidate for being one of the few than anybody else I’ve ever seen. We’ll never have hard evidence until his exams are released.
As for Hillary failing the bar exam, this is the quote from her book
I had taken both the Arkansas and the Washington, D.C., bar exams during the summer, but my heart was pulling me toward Arkansas. When I learned that I had passed in Arkansas but failed in D.C., I thought that maybe my test scores were telling me something.
Seems as if she studied for two bar exams and her heart wasn’t into the D.C. one.
Is it true that the bar passage rate is the 75th percentile? Meaning 3/4ths of the people who’ve been to law school end up unable to practice after taking each exam? That can’t be right. Liberty University, not an elite school at all, has a passage rate of 94%.
For a 145 IQ for Hillary, all we have to assume is that she’s a little above average for a Yale Law student.
Feb 3, 2010 11:56 pm |
I once calculated that only 1 in 220,000 Blacks would have IQs of 140 or higher.
No, not even close.
Feb 4, 2010 12:23 am |
Assuming a normal distribution with a mean of 85 and standard deviation of 15, 140 IQ or higher is about 1 in 8100. The 1 in 220,000 threshold would be about 151.
Feb 4, 2010 1:27 am |
MGLS,
The Black standard deviation is smaller than 15.
Feb 4, 2010 1:28 am |
“No, not even close.”
Why do you say that?
Feb 4, 2010 2:20 am |
Indeed, La Griffe says the black distribution is narrower than the white distribution and his figure for the black standard deviation is 13.5. Assuming a normal distribution with a mean of 85 and standard deviation of 13.5, 140 IQ or higher is about 1 in 43,000, and 145 IQ or higher is about 1 in 225,000.
Feb 4, 2010 2:46 am |
Sure, I was going by 12.4 as the Standard Deviation, which was probably lowballing it.
Feb 4, 2010 10:42 am |
Mr. Hoste,
I’ve made many embarrassing errors in these posts. Oh, the perils of not being very smart and posting late at night. It would have been more accurate for me to say that roughly 75% of people pass the New York bar, which is considered one of the hardest. Source here. That includes foreign born students. Excluding foreign born students, the rate skyrockets.
The DC bar is similarly difficult. The Arkansas bar is very easy. Now, Hillary’s after-the-fact justification is very nice, but isn’t it more parsimonious to assume she didn’t pass the more prestigious California bar because she had problems studying for it?
Feb 4, 2010 11:30 am |
Regarding Obama’s grades at Harvard Law: While it is true that law schools generally use a “blind” grading system, it is very easy to distinguish between exam reponses drafted by Whites and Blacks (and by men and women, for that matter). I have assisted, on accassion, with the grading of first-year exams, and I found the diction and “voice” used by Blacks to be very distinctive. In fact, because there were so few black students in the class, I could almost figure out whose paper I was grading. I presume this is also true among blacks at Ivy League schools (See: Michelle Obama’s thesis, which could only have been written by a black). That being the case, Barry Obama Soetoro was likely the recipient of the “black advantage” that usually accompanies the awarding of (inflated) grades to black students.
Feb 4, 2010 3:31 pm |
“Indeed, La Griffe says the black distribution is narrower than the white distribution and his figure for the black standard deviation is 13.5. Assuming a normal distribution with a mean of 85 and standard deviation of 13.5, 140 IQ or higher is about 1 in 43,000, and 145 IQ or higher is about 1 in 225,000.”
That’s just La Griffe’s data. All continous breeding human populations universally hover around a standard deviation of 15 points.
Feb 4, 2010 3:44 pm |
This whole post is also completely retarded. A blogger with his own interpretation of LSAT validity judging politicians this way. Really, Clinton a 150? Genius level? Fuck that.
The rest of Obama senior’s family, when introduced to academia, is high-achieving, and Obama didn’t regress either. One of the many reasons to doubt the genotypic IQ being around 70.
If you do believe that, then it leads you brilliant deductions like this: http://carrefoursagesse.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/president-obamas-iq/#comments
“The simple facts
In 2003, three African nations, Botswana, South Africa, and Ghana, participated in TIMSS physics. The average score for the 5,150 students in Botswana who took the test was 366, of whom 7 scored higher than three standard deviations higher than their mean or 581, and none of whom scored 604, the AVERAGE for Singapore. This makes the liberal presumption that IQ’s in Africa follow the typical Gaussian Distribution that our IQ’s follow, which is the most optimistic assumption we can make about Black African intellect. It also ignores that many of the test takers in all three of these African nations are WHITES whose brethren back in Europe (e.g., the Dutch in South Africa) have some of the highest test scores in the world. The average score for the 8,952 students in South Africa who took the test was 263, twelve of whom scored higher than three standard deviations higher than their mean or 585, and none of whom scored over 604. So also in Ghana, where the average score for their 5,100 students was 275, seven of whom scored higher than three standard deviations higher than their mean or 549, and none of whom scored over 589, the AVERAGE for Korea, whose IQ Professor Lynn estimates to be an average of 106.
Since the average score for the 6,018 students in Singapore was 604 and their standard deviation was 80, only eight of their students scored lower than 364 [the AVERAGE for Botswana], and none of whom scored lower than 284 [the AVERAGE for Ghana]. At best we can say that eight students in Singapore MAY have scored lower than SEVERAL of the thirteen highest scoring students in South Africa and SEVERAL of the seven highest scoring students in Ghana. We can also safely assume that 8 students in Singapore would have scored three standard deviations higher than their mean or 844 had the test allowed them to score higher than 800.
So out of 19,202 African students, less than 19 or 0.1% of them scored higher than 581, and NONE of them scored as high as the AVERAGE of 604 for Singapore whose average IQ Professor Lynn estimates to be 100.
It simply boggles the imagination for us to be expected to believe that Obama was the ONE Kenyan in the entire world who scored not just one but TWO standard deviations higher than a place where NO Ghanan, Botswanan, nor South African ever ventured. To claim that his IQ is 132 IQ points, yet another standard deviation higher than the impossible, is the height of absurdity. It would make Obama more valuable as a Wringly Brothers’ Circus freak than a six legged elephant. Yet that’s exactly the claim that his presidential campaign made, and you should be embarrassed to the hilt to see so many of your fellow countrymen fall for this vicious circus act.
Average IQ of Kenya is Only 71
The average IQ of Kenya is 71 IQ points, the same as for Ghana, and 1 point lower than both Botswana’s and South Africa’s of 72 IQ points. So even though Kenya did not participate in TIMSS, there’s no reason to expect that they would have performed any better than South Africa or Ghana, and plenty of evidence that they would have scored even lower. The most liberal estimate for the intellectual skills of Black Kenyans would be that they follow the same Gaussian Distribution as that of White Americans, AND that the standard deviations reported by TIMSS are representative of that for all Blacks, NEITHER of which is the case. We should note that the standard deviations for non-multicultural societies like Sweden, Slovenia, Netherlands, Estonia, Morocco, and Lebanon are close to 70 (or lower), whereas those for multicultural societies like Taipei, Ghana, Indonesia, Palestine, Romania, and South Africa are closer to 90 (or higher).
No Quadroon Geniuses in South Africa
If there’s any place on Earth where we’d expect mixed breeds (“Coloreds”, “Quadroons”, “Mulatos”, “Mestizos”, or whatever other name you’d like to apply to the offspring of Whites who marry Blacks) to illustrate an IQ higher than that of their lowest IQ parent, it’s not Kenya, it’s South Africa where 15% of the population are “coloreds” and the majority of the 4.3 million Whites (9.1% of the population) are from the Netherlands who have consistently scored higher than us on all the international tests. In 8th grade TIMSS, the Netherlands scored 35 points higher than us, but by the 12th grade they scored 560 or 99 points higher, and in PISA they scored 531 (almost as high as South Korea) which was 57 points higher than us.
South Africa’s score of 264 and standard deviation of 107 is a composite of three different races, each of which undoubtedly had a standard deviation of 70 or less. The 9.1% who are Whites most likely scored in the range of their brethren in the Netherlands, or 536 who had a standard deviation of 69. At BEST, the 15% who are Coloreds scored an average of their Black and White ancestors, and Blacks there managed to score low enough to reduce South Africa’s score to the lowest of any of these international tests:
(9.1% x 536) + 15% x (536 + X)/2 + (75.9% x X) = 264
48.776 + (80.4 + .15X)/2 + .759X = 264
97.552 + 80.4 + .15X + 1.518X = 528
1.668X = 350.048
X = 210
(536 + 210) / 2 = 373
TIMSS Math 1 SD 2 SD 3 SD 4 SD 5 SD
South Africa Whites 536 605 674 743 812 881
South Africa Coloreds
373 443 513 583 653 723
South Africa Blacks 210 280 350 420 490 560
NO African Black Has an IQ Higher Than 105!
Less than 0.00003% of any population scores higher than five standard deviations higher than their mean, which for Blacks in South Africa is a score of 560. IF all 800 million Blacks on the entire Continent of Africa follow the typical Gaussian Distribution, the MOST optimistic assessment of their academic performance, then less than 240 of them scored as high as 560, ten points lower than the 570 average for Japan who Professor Lynn estimates have an average IQ of 105. This would mean that the 240 most intelligent out of 800 million African Blacks have an IQ lower than 105, and NONE of them have an IQ higher than that. Out of 38 million Kenyans, less than 12 would be expected to score higher than 5 standard deviations higher than their mean, which would have been an even lower TIMSS Math score than 560 had Kenya taken this test (iow, much lower than an IQ of 105)!
Obama’s not even a pure Kenyan. He’s a mixed breed and most mixed breeds of most species are of lower quality and intelligence than the pure breeds (otherwise why don’t mules race in horse races)? Believing that Obama has an IQ of 127 is worse than believing that a mule will finally win the Preakness!
By what process did Obama achieve something that NO African of either race has ever achieved, an IQ between 127 and 132 IQ points as his ads claimed? Where could his White mother possibly have come from to produce such an offspring? Even worse, if she’s a Russian jew or an Israeli as the rumors indicate, then she’s from a race which scores even lower than Whites, and much lower than Whites from the Netherlands. Israel (where the vast majority of the population of her race are) scored only 442 in PISA Math, a whopping 107 points lower than Hong Kong and only 36 points higher than Mexico whose average IQ is only 87. Even IF we would expect Obama’s IQ to be an average of the IQ’s of his Black father and jewish mother, the very BEST we could expect using this logic is that his IQ is only 82, not 127 nor 133.”
This comes from a long-running, though currently defunct christian identity site by the name of the christianparty.net.
Obama not being mentally retarded might be understandable if:
-Kenya’s IQ is higher than 71
-The TIMSS isn’t as valid as an IQ test (it isn’t)
Feb 4, 2010 4:30 pm |
“One of the many reasons to doubt the genotypic IQ being around 70.”
Um, no it wouldn’t. You’re from academia, right? You should know better – you cannot judge the entire average based on the value at a single data point or just a few points of data (his family).
Fail. Big time fail.
Feb 4, 2010 5:17 pm |
“Um, no it wouldn’t. You’re from academia, right? You should know better – you cannot judge the entire average based on the value at a single data point or just a few points of data (his family).”
People like Obama senior’s family would be freakishly unlikely if the genotypic IQ is around 70. Even moreso when there’s been no major regression observed. In cases like this, extreme figures like that average are highly doubtful.
“Fail. Big time fail.”
Save the 4chan memes for elsewhere.
Feb 4, 2010 7:03 pm |
Bill Clinton – Occasionally a little over 100, mostly 0.
Does not think with the head above his shoulders. Has affairs with ugly broads, and ejaculates all over their dresses. Commits perjury, a felony and an impeachable offense, because he’s terrified of his old lady.
Hillary Clinton – 110 on a good day
Married Bill Clinton. During legal career, served mainly as a conduit for bribes to Bill Clinton. Still married to Bill Clinton.
Joe Biden – Like, genius, dude!
Talks for long periods of time without saying anything – one hell of a politician! Wasted less money on law school than the other pols. Has managed to avoid any really nasty scandals.
American electorate – 83
Elected all of the bozos above to important public offices.
Feb 4, 2010 7:17 pm |
> That’s just La Griffe’s data. All continous breeding human populations universally hover around a standard deviation of 15 points.
That’s not a priori true. And somehow I doubt that the dozens of relevant papers were all ignored by La Griffe.
> People like Obama senior’s family would be freakishly unlikely if the genotypic IQ is around 70.
Not if the heritability is around 0.85+, which it might be, as far as I know. Ever come across that guy BobW who thinks it might be around 0.90 or something, and knows the lit very well (which is to say far far better than I)?
Anyway, regardless, I do doubt that the genotypic IQ is quite as low as 70.
Feb 4, 2010 7:25 pm |
Not to mention, Obama may well benefit from heterosis — so that makes two reasons not to expect a major regression toward the mean. Anyone know if heterosis for IQ has been ruled in or out empirically?
Feb 4, 2010 7:29 pm |
“That’s not a priori true.”
When they’re continously breeding it is.
“And somehow I doubt that the dozens of relevant papers were all ignored by La Griffe.”
La Griffe doesn’t give any cites.
“Not if the heritability is around 0.85+, which it might be, as far as I know.”
Uh, no, that could be expected depending on their population distribution regardless of how heritable you think it is.
“Ever come across that guy BobW who thinks it might be around 0.90 or something, and knows the lit very well (which is to say far far better than I)?”
Not really. From my readings of Jensen’s work, a heritability of 74% implies an average difference 8 points, and a heritability of as high as 88% implies a difference of 4 1/2 points. What does BobW say, though?
“Not to mention, Obama may well benefit from heterosis — so that makes two reasons not to expect a major regression toward the mean. Anyone know if heterosis for IQ has been ruled in or out empirically?”
There’s never been any evidence for hybrid vigor demonstrated in humans, or the reverse.
Feb 4, 2010 7:30 pm |
I’ve come to the acceptance that yes, indeed, the heritability of IQ does seem to be 70-90% within the general first world population, but that implies an average difference of a few to several points, which is rather significant. Ironically, that’s how I viewed an average heritability of around 50% to imply.
Feb 4, 2010 7:46 pm |
I knew where I recognized the name Bobw- he’s posted a number of times on Steve Hsu’s blog.
The guy seems to largely get his ideas and information from readings of the Bell Curve and the g Factor. Those certainly are informative pieces, but to accept those as the defining factors are inane.
Some of his claims are as follows: http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/11/iq-compression-and-simple-models.html
“More importantly, g can be seen as a cause of SES and not a consequence of it. For example, siblings statistically fall into SES classes as a function of their intelligence, even though they were reared in the same SES. And… studies of the shared environment have consistently demonstrated that it vanishes by about age 12 and has no impact on adult intelligence.
correlations for IQ to SES:
.30 to .40 children
.50 to .70 adults
BobW”
The idea of IQ being so heavily correlated with SES is a juvenile idea that’d be too extensive to go into here.
This post suggests that shared environment does have some small effect on adult IQ: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/11/does-family-matter-for-adult-iq.php
But it doesn’t really matter to me. That would just further give the primacy of environmental influence to nonshared environment.
“The genetic basis of g has been established to the satisfaction of the vase majority of researchers. In fact, no social factors have been identified that account for any variance in g. The only environmental factors that have been associated with the variance in g are those that act chemically or biologically (such as toxins and diseases). No environmental factor has (to the best of my knowledge) yet been shown to have a long term positive effect on g; environmental factors degrade intelligence.”
In other words, nothing can positively effect IQ. I see this claim primarily bandied by Jensen. I first became aware of the fact that MZ twins are far more likely to experience adverse prenatal conditions in a conversation here with nooffensebut. It’s something I need to research further, but I’ve always been struck by how the heritability of IQ among DZ twins and siblings is very linear in relation to their genetic similarity when compared to MZ twin heritability and their genetic similarity- this in spite of them being far less likely to experience adverse prenatal conditions, with regular siblings seldom doing so.
Jensen even admits the validity of the Abecedarian Project. That was subjected to a vigorous debate in the 90’s between the hereditarian Spitz and another researcher, though. But Jensen admits its validity even in 2002, so I’m not sure of it’s outcome as of now.
I’ve found it peculiar how Jensen acts like it doesn’t contradict him in the least, when that enrichment program only focused on early childhood and wasn’t even meant to boost IQ to begin with. Jensen acts like environment doesn’t effect IQ beyond age 5, I suppose.
Finding twins to differ on average by a few to several points even in the general first world population is pretty significant considering the chaotic nature of the nonshared environment over their lifespan.
Feb 5, 2010 12:24 am |
Another data point: Hillary Clinton was a National Merit Scholar (meaning she was in the top 1% of the selected sample of Americans that takes the highly g-loaded PSAT). FWIW, Obama doesn’t appear to have been a NMS and, given the fancy prep school he attended, he probably did take the test.
“As far as Obama, I hear that law school grading is mostly blind and he graduated with honors from Harvard law. It’s not just that he thinks quickly on his feet. It’s thinking on his feet + Harvard Law Honors + biohistory + testimonials from others.”
Where do you get “thinking on his feet?” He actually seems pretty bad off-telepromptor/prepared speech. In one of the debates with McCain he got the relationship between currency strength and imports and exports ass-backwards (but he did say it so authoritatively and smoothly that any idiot who failed to grasp econ 101 would have been impressed).
Legal Eagle and others are correct. There is affirmative grading in law schools. Even though exams are ostensibly blind-graded, it’s not too hard to figure out who’s who and profs can give students “bumps” up and down for things like “attendance” and “class participation.” Basically, how you did on the blind-graded exam is a starting point, which the prof. can tweak (note: for white students, there’s not much tweaking, but I wouldn’t be surprised if blacks get a lot of “tweaking.”). Also, after the first year, most of the required courses are done. We know that Obama took several courses with “critical race theorist” Derrick Bell. I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama, given his interest in “Race and Inheritance” didn’t avoid bar and business courses (generally blind-graded and exam based) in favor of seminars dealing with critical race theory and other leftist garbage where grades are generally based on a non-anonymous paper. Also note that when Obama attended Harvard, honors were based on GPA, not class percentage. After he left, because grade inflation had become so bad in the 70s and 80s that preposterous proportions of the class were qualifying for honors, Harvard switched to percentile rank instead.
Feb 5, 2010 3:48 am |
“I give him the high IQ based on his ability to think on his feet and reports from people who’ve met him. See him here taking on the Republicans.”
You’d think that supposed 140 IQ would allow him to pronounce corps correctly. Bush is an idiot but Obama is a genius for similar mistakes?
There are plenty of examples of his inability to think on his feet. Remember where he mistook a window for a door?
People around 140 have a sharpness to them, I don’t see that in him. I’d peg him somewhere in the 115-125 range. I put Palin in the same range.
I know people who have 130-155 IQs who don’t have advanced degrees.
There are very successful, intelligent men who dropped out of college, billionaires even, like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Feb 5, 2010 4:38 am |
I can’t speak to his IQ level but I can say that love him or hate him Bill Clinton just exudes charisma. I used to cook at Colonial Williamsburg and whenever he stayed I was detailed to prepare his meals and was able to talk and joke with him a couple of times, he was extremely glib and dextrous in his interactions with others. And i wasn’t his biggest fan from a policy standpoint.
I wonder about Romney though, I didn’t think he handled himself all that in the endless walkback and repudiation of his entire political career up to that point that was his somewhat embarrassing presidential campaign.
Feb 5, 2010 9:30 am |
In my physics courses, I learned that scientific quantities have operational definitions. In other words, scientific quantities are defined in terms of their methods of measurement. The operational definition of IQ begins with a raw score on an accepted test. John McCain is the only individual for whom any valid numbers are given in the original post. The made-up numbers in my previous attempt at humor are every bit as valid as the made-up numbers in the original post.
That a politician’s qualifications lie in the same range as those of his law school classmates is not necessarily true. Young politicians seek “preferment,” as the character of Richard Rich in the film A Man For All Seasons puts it. The successful ones get it.
A politician’s speeches might be a somewhat imprecise indicator of the IQs of his speech writers, but even a parrot can talk. Political speeches, however well or poorly delivered, cannot yield a valid estimate of the speaker’s IQ.
A politician’s writings might be a somewhat imprecise indicator of the politician’s IQ, if one assumes that the work is actually the politician’s own. Often, this assumption is not valid.
I once read, though I can’t recall where, that a person whose IQ is 30 points higher than the average of his group does not become leader. If that’s true, then Obama’s electoral victory over McCain likely indicates that Obama’s IQ is lower than McCain’s. It also implies that McCain chose the right service; his IQ might have been too high for an effective leader in the Army. It also supplies the answer, many years too late, to my grandfater’s frequent question, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” I’m too smart to get rich, Grandpa!
One can’t help but notice the presumption on this blog that the higher one’s IQ, the better. Perhaps IQ is analogous to the concentration of hormones, e.g., insulin or testerone, in the bloodstream. A sufficiency is good. An excess might be a problem.
The argument by some commenters that Obama’s 140 IQ implies that the sub-Saharan median IQ must exceed 70 is truly absurd. We don’t know Obama’s IQ, but if it were 140, he’d probably let us know. In any case, there’s no reason to suspect that the IQ of an individual Kenyan-American mulatto implies anything about the median IQ of full-blooded sub-Saharan Africans. I’m more inclined to accept the word of J. Phillippe Rushton, who has conducted some actual IQ testing in Africa.
Feb 5, 2010 4:32 pm |
“The argument by some commenters that Obama’s 140 IQ implies that the sub-Saharan median IQ must exceed 70 is truly absurd. We don’t know Obama’s IQ, but if it were 140, he’d probably let us know. In any case, there’s no reason to suspect that the IQ of an individual Kenyan-American mulatto implies anything about the median IQ of full-blooded sub-Saharan Africans.”
Uh, let me break it down for you. Obama’s dad was a harvard educated economist prior to the advent of any affirmative action policies. If Obama’s dad was some kind of freakish outlier, Obama would heavily regress towards a population mean of 70. Since his mom was blatantly of above average intelligence as well, then Obama’s IQ would probably be around 100. Yet, he’s pretty obviously not. Not to mention the rest of Obama’s family has some other very high achieving individuals. The “around 70″ figure would make people like Obama’s dad and his family disturbing rarities and virtually all offspring to regress. Yet that hasn’t happened.
Feb 6, 2010 1:50 am |
I know how rare blacks who score 170+ on the LSAT are. I wrote a long article about it. But even fewer become president.
But how connected to becoming president is IQ?
Feb 6, 2010 1:56 am |
Not very, I’d argue. The public isn’t obsessed with IQ the way HBD-types are. A presidential candidate probably needs between a 115-130 IQ as a floor. Beyond that won’t be much of an advantage as opposed to other traits like good looks, extroversion, charisma, etc.
Or the most important trait, being a light-skinned black who doesn’t act terribly black.
Feb 6, 2010 1:59 am |
I know how rare blacks who score 170+ on the LSAT are. I wrote a long article about it.
A 170 equals a 130 or so IQ, doesn’t it? If single digit blacks reach 130 IQs each year, how many reach 140 each year?
Feb 6, 2010 2:01 am |
Garnet,
You haven’t died in a fire yet? You should work on that.
Feb 6, 2010 11:29 am |
Obama’s IQ is not 140. There was horrific grade inflation at Harvard and “Honors” were bestowed on a large percentage of the students. Professors could also consider “attendance” and “participation” in assigning grades. He also took some soft courses while he was there. He’s a bright guy, but not at a 140 level.
Wicherts et. al. estimate of average IQ of 82 for sub-Saharan Africa is not holding up. Some of his samples were unrepresentative. On the other hand, an average of 70 may be somewhat biased to the low side because the test-takers are oftentimes unfamiliar with tests of abstract thinking (as compared to test-takers in other world regions).
Feb 6, 2010 1:50 pm |
“If Obama’s dad was some kind of freakish outlier, Obama would heavily regress towards a population mean of 70.”
No. Obama’s mother came from a race with an average IQ of at least 100, so he would’ve regression to an 85 I.Q. In other words, he’d be no worse off than the average Black in America.
Feb 6, 2010 1:51 pm |
In terms of how far he’d have regression to the mean.
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