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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20117 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026

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120 IQ is considered midwits now? Is this IQ inflation?

But more seriously, many of my super intelligent friends (I’m talking top 1%, ML researcher at OpenAI and the like) are anti-racist and afflicted with TDS. Maybe they just don’t think about politics all that much. Maybe California is a bubble.

120 IQ is considered midwits now?

Always has been.

130+ and maybe you're starting to get somewhere. 120-129 is the "merely bright and curious" range. (I got that from an /r/slatestarcodex comment and my friends thought it was hilarious and we've been calling each other "bright and curious" as an insult for years now.)

They fit into the midwit reasoning pattern, which is by heuristic, instead of direct.

120 is only moderately above average. There are still plenty of schoolteachers at that number (roughly translates to a 1200 SAT).

That correlation only applies to pre-1994 SAT scores. Nowadays a 1200 SAT score puts you at the 75th percentile, the IQ equivalent percentile would be 110. The SAT now tests scholastic achievement more than aptitude/cognitive ability.

120 is the top 9% which I wouldn’t categorize as “mid” in any way but maybe midwit is just a technical term that I didn’t understand.

"Midwit" is the term for "sure okay this person has a life they enjoy and a family and is successful in their mid-level white or skilled blue-collar job, while I am on a range of anti-depressants and still trying to make that seven figure tech salary, but I'm so much smarter than that midwit on an IQ test so I am superior which means I am better even if objectively I am unhappier and failing at life".

No, a midwit is a term for a slightly-above-average intelligence person who is fairly good at learning things... but isn't smart enough or curious enough to actually consider why the things they learned are the way they are, or if in fact they are not. Or what @erwgv3g34 said.

The way I've seen "midwit" being thrown around, there is a definite aroma of sour grapes in the air. But of course, your lived experience may be different and I cannot gainsay that 😁

A midwit is someone who is smarter than average, but not as smart as he thinks he is, and easily fooled by elaborate rationalizations that would fail to impress a dumber man who just sees what's in front of him.

https://en.meming.world/wiki/Midwit

https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-midwit-meme-and-what-does-it-mean-the-iq-bell-curve-meme-explained

My favorite midwit meme:

https://i.redd.it/dkvg2uxbalq91.jpg

Or as I've seen it put elsewhere, knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster, wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.

That is one of my favorites as well.

There are still plenty of schoolteachers at that number (roughly translates to a 1200 SAT).

There are also plenty of OpenAI researchers at that number.

There are also plenty of OpenAI researchers at that number.

Im not really that familiar with AI hiring but that would be surprising. 1200 is an average student at a 2nd tier state school. 1200 is U of I - Chicago, not flagship campus (1400+); Michigan tech, not MI (1400+) or State (1300); University of Southern Florida, not Miami, Florida (both 1400) or FSU (high 1300).

1200 SAT I think is more like 110 IQ, not 120. I think 1300 or 1350 is more like 90th percentile.

Perhaps, I just googled "IQ score SAT equivalent". I'd guess SAT % is not exactly correlated with IQ because a lot of the dumbest kids will not have taken it. Particularly in the South and Midwest where they make the ACT a mandatory test for juniors.

Still, even 1350 doesn't seem like a top level company talent to me. I had a score 200 point higher almost 2 decades ago and didn't get into Stanford or MIT, despite a solid GPA and being a 2 sport athlete and having won multiple academic competitions quite casually. And when I graduated from a T1 state school with an engineering degree I wasn't picking between dozens of offers from FAANG (or the then equivalent) companies, I was deciding between a mediocre private sector offer or law school, again despite not being average at the state school, but being a high performer.

But perhaps OpenAI is not an elite company so I shouldn't think much on it. Or perhaps it is and they have a bunch of 120 IQ people in the place, and maybe that is why AI cant stop regurgitating middling journalist takes and fake history thats part of the official middle school curriculum.

Still, even 1350 doesn't seem like a top level company talent to me.

A lot of the Asians probably start there before studying for the exam for years.

I had a score 200 point higher almost 2 decades ago and didn't get into Stanford or MIT, despite a solid GPA and being a 2 sport athlete and having won multiple academic competitions quite casually.

Are you white? From a conservative state, even?

And when I graduated from a T1 state school with an engineering degree I wasn't picking between dozens of offers from FAANG (or the then equivalent) companies, I was deciding between a mediocre private sector offer or law school, again despite not being average at the state school, but being a high performer.

The subtext of your comment comes off as a sort of naïve faith that we live in a meritocracy. But, in reality, the correlation between wealth and intelligence is around 0.40.

But perhaps OpenAI is not an elite company so I shouldn't think much on it.

Maybe a lot of 120 IQ people are good enough for so-called elite companies? What do they do, anyway? Vibe code? Webscrape? No one really has a „genius job,” like they want you to think.

We don't live in a Sperg's paradise where the nerd gets the job, we live in normieland where luxury jobs are handed out through political means. You should be the right race, right university background, have the right advisor, have the right recommendations, know the right people, belong to the right Party, be from the right hometown. Plenty of 140 IQ men from Alabama end up as prosecutors in Bumpkinsville after getting rejected from HYPSM due to whiteness and conservatism, going to their state university instead of the most fashionable alternative they were admitted to, and failing to relocate to New York City for reasons involving their background, family, race, party, and so on. Meanwhile plenty of 125 IQ Asians from SF end up working in „frontier lab” after „Stanford” or at least „UC Berkely EECS” and recommendation from „prestigious internship” at a company that is 60%+ their race.

many of my super intelligent friends (I’m talking top 1%, ML researcher at OpenAI and the like)

Are they Asian? If so they're probably 1) not top 1%, just appear to be, and 2) racist, just for Asians and not whites.

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