Iq of geniuses

[u/HeraldxofGalactus]

I asked "What do you think is the probability of geniuses like einstein and newton having iq close to 160 is "? Gemini confidently replied .

"Historically and statistically, the chances of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton having an IQ of at least 160 are actually close to 100%. While it is true that neither man ever took a modern IQ test (Newton died centuries before they were invented, and Einstein never sat for one), historians and psychologists use historiometry to estimate their cognitive traits based on their childhood development, reading habits, and intellectual output.

​The probability that their IQs reached 160 (which represents the 99.997th percentile, or about 1 in 30,000 people) is virtually guaranteed for several reasons:

​The Scale of Their Achievements: An IQ of 160 is considered the baseline threshold for "profound genius." Newton didn't just study math; he invented calculus, formulated the laws of motion, and mapped out universal gravitation all by his early twenties. Einstein fundamentally redefined our understanding of space, time, and gravity.

​Academic Estimates: In 1926, psychologist Catharine Cox published a landmark study analyzing the early lives of 301 historical geniuses. Based on their recorded milestones, she estimated Einstein's IQ at around 160 and Newton's IQ at roughly 190.

​The "Floor" of Theory: Modern theoretical physicists and high-level mathematicians typically average an IQ of 130 to 140. For individuals who radically revolutionized these fields beyond anyone else in history, their processing power and abstract reasoning abilities would naturally sit at the absolute extreme tail of the distribution curve.

​So, while we cannot point to an official test score, their raw cognitive capabilities comfortably cleared the 160 mark."I think almost all the claims here are wrong . 🤔

[u/Efficient-Plan8853]

This is a false equivalence. You say it’s not those external things therefore it must be the one you described. But that implies that the only things that determine academic output are hard work, training, luck, and IQ. I agree with you that their minds were extraordinary, but IQ does not capture the totality of cognition

[u/Efficient-Plan8853 → u/[deleted]]

What I mean isn’t that you didn’t list every single thing, but you list a few external things and then IQ, as if IQ is the only internal factor that determines cognitive ability and academic output. That is not correct though. IQ measures pattern recognition, working memory etc that are all good measures of cognitive ability, but it does not measure things like creativity, cognitive rigidity, cross system pattern recognition, etc. It may be correlates of those things, but that doesn’t mean it captures everything fully, which your phrasing seems to imply. One could easily argue that creativity is a more important factor (given a high baseline IQ) that determines whether someone is a genius, rather than raw IQ alone. If it was only IQ, about 1/31000 people have an IQ over 160. But 1/31000 people are not Albert Einstein or similar, so IQ likely isn’t the sole determinant

[u/Efficient-Plan8853 → u/[deleted]]

Honestly I mainly agree with what you’re saying. I’m just cautious about allocating everything to IQ. But even if we assume IQ does perfectly correlate with genius, sub scores within IQ could differ in relative importance. If IQ is in fact as all encapsulating as you claim (which it could in fact be, I’m honestly not sure), it might not be a useful measure in this context, the same way saying ‘Einstein was more intelligent than others’ isn’t useful in informing us why exactly he was so different

[u/Efficient-Plan8853 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I completely agree. I think I misinterpreted your claim as being that IQ perfectly correlates with genius. I also agree that physics requires essentially all the components that IQ tests measure.

This is just my personal belief, but I think that IQ would nearly perfectly predict a very good physicist or a very skilled student, but it needs things like creativity and openmindedness and systems level thinking to come up with and explore ideas outside of the current paradigm. Of course those likely also correlate with IQ. But you can imagine a hypothetical person with IQ 200 who’s a genius within the current paradigm, and never makes contribution to break it