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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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MIT grad and alleged IQ of 180.

I wouldn't put much weight in that allegation. By definition, only 463 people in the world have an IQ that high, which would come out to about 19 people in the U.S. (not accounting for any population bias). I'd be surprised if there were fewer than 30 people in the U.S. we don't hear about who have greater general intelligence than John Sununu, or for that matter anyone else we do hear about. I suppose it's not impossible that an IQ test spat out that number, but I wouldn't trust any test result that far into the extreme end.

Uh, shouldn’t the US have a disproportionately high share of very high IQ people, because so many high level academics from eg China and Israel move here for the universities, and because of a relatively high average IQ to begin with?

Yeah...assuming he did score that high on an officiated IQ test, it was almost certainly a ratio score from an IQ test taken as a child, which are known for sometimes producing improbably high scores.