Fortis said:
I do agree that he doesn't have to do anything, but as a man, I tend to look at people in the scope of their accomplishments, especially exceptional men like this one.
What has he done aside from being born with a high IQ and putzing around?
I do think he will look back on his life in 20 years when he is in his 70s and go "wow, I really did waste this opportunity I was granted on this earth."
It makes me think of this scene from "Good Will Hunting" :
If this guy was your friend wouldn't you feel slightly resentful that he has something you'll never have but instead of scoring a great victory with it, he's just content to sit on a farm and piss away his time and energy. Fuck, he doesn't even appear to have kids, so this great intellectual lineage is actually threatened by time itself. Imagine how you'll feel when you hear about this guy's death in 20 years and the only thing he's left behind is some horses and a widow.
No great ideas, no strong, masculine, intelligent sons, just a cool story about being a drifter with an exceptionally high IQ who parlayed it into a farm with some horses and some quirky theory that no one knows about.
Seems to be a waste to me.
Here's perhaps something to consider: why would you expect a man with an IQ of 200 to be exceptional? Would you also expect a man with a height of 10 feet to be exceptional in life, simply because he's taller than even the tallest NBA player? Nature has optimized mankind to stay within certain bounds for each trait. An extremely high IQ is as dysgenic as extremely low IQ - as the case would be for height or other traits.
My theory is that IQ has a inverted U-shape benefit:
- low IQ is obviously a negative trait for success in life
- middling IQ (around 120) is great for professional success
- but the higher you go, the worse it gets
Ever wondered why the most successful nations seem to peter out with an average IQ of a 100. I think it's because that's what
optimal.
In the 120s range, you're smart enough to succeed because the majority of mankind is dumber than you. But you're dumb enough to believe your own bullshit. Most medical doctors, lawyers, engineers, and Fortune 500 CEOs are in the 120 range. So are the vast majority of authors of self-help books that hit the NYT Best Seller list imho.
There's a good reason for it. There's about a 30 point IQ gap in communication - if you're more than 30 IQ smarter, you can easily come across as functionally crazy. This is why I highly doubt there are many Fortune 500 CEOs with IQs above 140, they'd come across as insane to most of their employees - a fatal flaw if you're supposed to lead.
Hit the 130 range, maybe 140 range and you end up on forums like RVF because you're too damn smart for your own good and for women.
A small minority of the 140+ succeed tremendously well, but they are like Travel Museum said, privileged to have intellectual opportunities. Take Einstein, Newton, Musk, Gates, and have them be born in a remote village in Africa or India and they'd do worse in life than their 100 IQ neighbor.
Note that Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg and the like only exist in the world of tech - this is because to be a good programmer, you need an IQ of at least 120 (I'd guess). So those guys can be effective leaders of a bunch of high IQ nerds. But they'd fail catastrophically if they tried running John Deere, GE, Proctor-Gamble or any other non-tech Fortune 500 company.
A healthy society is optimized for the 100s to have a good life, the 120s to have a great life and a few 140s to have an exceptional life. And that's because a
healthy society is in accordance with nature.
Increase your average IQ and you get killed by dumber groups. Neanderthals were supposedly smarter than Homo Sapiens. And yet we're the ones still standing.
Europe is getting conquered by barbarians with an average IQ in the 80s.
People with higher IQ reproduce less. They always, eventually, get outbred by dumber people - leading to civilizational collapse. We've got low IQ criminal dumbasses being baby daddy to four different women, meanwhile, high IQ men are flocking to the manosphere because they're literally too smart to get laid.
Incidentally, this is why China is potentially on a suicide path with their focus on using CRISP to edit their babies' genes. Long-term it's a terrible idea because although their average IQ might rise, the lower IQ people will eventually outbreed the higher IQ people. This is assuming their average IQ actually is ~100 and they're going to try to pump it up by 10-20 points. If it's far less, say in the 80s or 90s, it may end up being beneficial. However I have the feeling they'll keep pushing it, and one day they'll push too far.
Too high of an IQ is dysgenic. There are correlations between a high IQ and autism/homosexuality/transgenderism.
An IQ of 200 certainly is an aberration of nature. And the fact that we have so few people with such high IQs should prove the dysgenic behavior of a too high IQ. The same way that the lack of success of matriarchal or equality societies has proven that men should lead women.
I can't imagine what's it like to have an IQ of 200. I find most things the average person is interested in extremely boring. I have friends who are super excited about tech startups. Personally, I find business very dull. I interviewed for McKinsey and BCG last year and after doing about 20 business case studies for practice, I was bored of them. Meanwhile, many MBAs do upwards of 60 case studies to prepare. I can't imagine doing 60 cases. An IQ of 200? Fuck, that guy would probably be bored out of his mind by the stuff we talk about.
I don't know if I explained it well. The best analogy I can come up with is: imagine you are you, but suddenly instead of interacting with human beings you're now interacting with cows. You live in a society filled with dumb cows, who are going about grazing and farting. Would you really care to succeed in this society?
That's how I imagine life must be like for a dude with an IQ of 200 - I am in no way surprised he moved to the middle of nowhere Missouri. The average human being, and by extension all of the society, must be as boring for him as living amongst cows would be for us. Heck, he probably doesn't see much difference between humans and farm animals, and might even find farm animals more pleasant as animals can't talk. And thus they can't bore him with dumb opinions.
Also unsurprised he's working on a unified theory of everything. I can imagine that only reaching a God-level understanding of reality is the one thing that would intellectually excite him. I'm not sure what guys like him would do otherwise, running a multibillionaire dollar company is probably as boring to him as teaching 1+1 to toddlers would be to us.
