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World record #78 – the highest IQ in the world
by Marshall Brain | April 13, 2009
This world record is interesting because it may be that we will never know who really, truly has the highest IQ. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is Marilyn Vos Savant:
Is a high IQ a burden as much as a blessing?
In 1985, Guinness World Records accepted that she had answered every question correctly on an adult Stanford-Binet IQ test at the age of just 10, a result that gave her a corresponding mental age of 22 years and 11 months, and an unearthly IQ of 228.
However:
For many people, the story of Savant and “Ask Marilyn” are just two more pieces of evidence in a larger, decades-long argument about the accuracy and objectivity of intelligence testing. Even Guinness has succumbed. In 1990, two years after inducting Savant into its Hall of Fame, the publisher, in its parlance, “rested” its high IQ category altogether, saying it was no longer satisfied that intelligence tests were either uniform or reliable enough to produce a single record holder. Depending on how you look at it, Savant will either never be beaten, or was not worth beating in the first place.
Here is another person who is up there in terms of IQ scores – Christopher Langan:
One researcher says his IQ is “unmeasurable”. Another estimates 195.
The article also mentions Ron Hoeflin:
In between conversations with Marilyn vos Savant, I also spent time in New York with a man called Ron Hoeflin. Hoeflin is two years older than Savant, also from St Louis, and also has a remarkable IQ score – 190 – yet has frustratingly little to show for it. He lives only a few blocks from Savant’s penthouse, above a café/Laundromat, and describes himself as self-employed.
It’s an interesting article, for sure.
[[[World record #77 - the world's most bizarre mating ritual]]]
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I’m one of those genius’s that have decided not to get rich
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Marshall Brain says:
You are in good company! Seems to be a common thread amongst geniuses. On the other hand, the narcissists seem to get rich: How does Narcissistic personality disorder work, and what’s the best way to handle a person with this?
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I believe that rather soon the highest IQ in the world will be scored by random tests that have unlimited precision. One of them is Random Intelligence Test.
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OneEyedLimey says:
Can you elaborate on these “random tests” and on what basis you say they have “unlimited precision”
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There is more info at “Oleg Goryunov says” link. As to unlimited precision, indeed, the precision is limited only the properties of a testee, for example, his/her life time. The test program is able generate up to 999*9999 tasks (the more tasks, the more precison) and can be easily changed to get any precision.
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Kirklopedia says:
The very simple and curiously overlooked answer is that the highest IQ belongs to God, whose IQ=∞ (infinite).
Intelligence of humans can never be accurately measured by humans because our tests are devised by humans, who are inherently finite. Do we ask “the Temperature” to measure itself? You see the problem?
It’s also worth noting that IQ tests are heavily skewed in favor of mathematical reasoning, as if that is the highest form of “smarts.”
Here’s a simple question that proves my point: If the universe is expanding (which is the general consensus), into “what” does it expand?
And don’t even get me started on E=mc² …Food for thought:
Wisdom is knowledge seen through the lens of God’s perspective. -
A day ago was a polemic at forum.mista .ru/topic.php?id=446040 on IQ (in Russian).
The value 195 is wrong due to reason that using the normal distribution, we can’t simply to cut the band 195-∞ and give a certain value for the most IQ gifted person even on the Earth.
To Kirklopedia. The God can be viewed as a process and intellect of Universe. -
Let me preface by saying that I am nowhere near as intelligent as the academic community. I am only smart enough to know that you smart people are not as smart as you think you are.
“The God can be viewed as a process and intellect of Universe.”
I wish your English were better, and I don’t speak Russian. However, I believe that you are essentially saying that the Universe is God. This is incorrect. The Universe does not have a personality. And the universe is not the sum of everything. God (and I mean specifically the God of the Bible) both has a personality (trinary) and is outside of the universe. The human intellect is insignificant. You cannot find God through reason. Mathematics is an exercise in futility. The more we learn, the more we realize how little we know. -
I meant that the intellect is a part of Universe. The part possess a finite IQ, since the speed of signals is limited. The intellect can be named as God; at least I can name it so for myself.
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We discussing whether God is here or there is like eggs discussing whether they were laid by hens. That analogy may sound lame but that is what I think it is.
To measure anything, we need intelligence because only with intelligence can one perform the measurements and understand its implications.
Since humans possess sufficient intelligence they can measure things which they can.
One of them is their intelligence itself.
Temperature can’t measure temperature because it doesn’t have consciousness and intelligence as a basic requirement.
But intelligence can measure intelligence because it meets the minimum requirements of having sufficient intelligence.
We cannot measure or understand or comprehend God because He is a concept beyond the scope of human intelligence.
Our language itself is not compatible with discussions of God as there is a dilemma of what do we address God as. We cant call Him ‘He’ or ‘Who’ or ‘Him’ as they refer to a person. But God is not a person. We cant refer to Him as ‘It’ or ‘What’ as they refer to any thing. But God not a thing.
This shows the limits of human language and intelligence such that we have come across an idea of God but we struggle to explain it. -
Edward Sedward says:
ya about this Ron Hoeflin. He claims to have an IQ of 190 but according to another source in the late 1980’s (which focused more on another High IQ individual Keith Rainier) it said he had an IQ of 150 and still another source said Ron Hoeflin said he has been tested between 125 and 175 but then says he has an IQ of 164(he says its complicated.
The truth of the matter is that IQ is hardly an exact science. The concept of intelligence is hard to define and yet we are to measure it with a precise #? Furthermore I read of geniuses of the past being attributed a specific IQ based on some so called “rigorous” study done in the 1920’s even though IQ tests were not around back then for these geniuses to take(17th through 19th century). Its BS. Then we have the overly inflated ratio scores that some people get when they are just children (Vos savants 228/218 9depending on who did the calculating) was a child ratio score. Still impressive of course but it was ratio score) Then we have numerous different IQ tests including these untimed and unsupervised tests that are supposed to measure IQ above say 150 and usually almost always developed just by one person. One of these was the Mega test in which Vos Savant scored 46 out of 48 which supposedly equates to a 186 or 175/176 depending on who did the norming. These tests are supposed to measure into the 99.9999(1 in a million) precentile even though the sampling is very small. One high IQ organization (giga) claims to measure in the 99.9999999 precentile(1 in 1 billion). Ya right. Who really believes that? If we are to take some of these tests seriously then others would would be on a paar with Vos Savant (maybe more impressive) such as Mislav Predavec, Nik Lygeros, Petri Widsten, Andreas Gunnarsson, Rolf Mifflin, Paul Johns,Evangelos Katsioulis and Thomas R.A. Wolf(maybe a few others). But many of those people just mentioned(probably most) scored high on these untimed and unsupervised test that don’t correlate very well with more standarized IQ tests and of course (as implied earlier) do IQ tests even really measure what they claim?
I would like to see how Edward Witten, Grigori Perelman, Terence Tao, Chris Hirata, Murray Gell-Mann, Marvin Minsky, Sho Yano,Alia Sabur, Erik Demaine or Ruth Lawrence do on some of these tests but why would they take such a test? Do they have something to prove? Of course not. They already have proven themselves.
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The truth of the matter is that IQ is hardly an exact science. The concept of intelligence is hard to define and yet we are to measure it with a precise …
We have a science for measuring an “intelligence” of computer processors. Brain is a processor. So the question is what tests we should use. Now we have a paradoxal case when test random tasks for measuring brain IQ surpasses the static processor tests. I.e. computer science should use the tests for human brain instead of the their static tests.
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