IQ 200+

Here are some video clips I had recommended to me by a commenter recently showcasing some of the people alleged to be (or claiming to be) among the smartest ever. I’d just gotten around to watching them, and thought they were worth sharing. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mjIO5YVaxo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1AwKVZzKqE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ3CaGagNKY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeNNQ_mIYpI

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Who is the greatest genius of them all?

If a person, any person, is going to promote himself as the smartest human being to walk this Earth, or the greatest genius of all time, that is a big claim.

Anyone making such a claim must expect other people to scrutinize the evidence, and ask for proof if necessary. Right or wrong, that’s just what people will do. Can you blame them?

If the person making the claim to be the world’s No. 1 intellect then writes some rather dubious stuff about IQ testing that doesn’t stand up to even the most casual online search for data on the test in question, then can you blame members of the online community for calling him on it?

If the person making the claim apparently has nothing better to do with his time than scouring the Internet and harrassing bloggers for re-posting a third party review of his work, which doesn’t infringe any IP law (I checked), despite his claims to the contrary, then doesn’t it raise some interesting questions?

And perhaps more importantly, doesn’t it behove the person making the claim to at least write something original, if he is indeed smarter than any of the figures who have contributed throughout history?

Frankly, I do not care if Jim Diamond copied from Tesla, Newton, Jesus Christ, Sigmund Freud, Count Alfred Korzybski, Napoleon Hill, L. Ron Hubbard or the Tooth Fairy. Just because the “source” of much of his info in turn probably in turn copied information from elsewhere is absolutely irrelevant! The point is, it shouldn’t have been so easy for me or anyone else to spot another author as so clearly having been a major source of inspiration for him.

I didn’t write to the deceased author’s copyright holders after all, despite the fact that one of my lawyer friends suggested this option. That’s not simply because most of the links to the articles on the “Mega Genius” site have now been pulled down. It’s because if he is a member of what I think he’s a member of, then perhaps I just can’t be bothered to invest the time writing the report. I guess any claims to genius just bec0me irrelevant right there.

A fellow member of the online self-development community suggested in a private email that it appeared that I had used the genius formula back on his extraordinary claims. Maybe, but not consciously. I was only looking for evidence that would back up the claims I was reading, and the stuff about the WAIS-R test fell at the first hurdle. (It has a ceiling full scale IQ score of 150, with out-of-range scores able to be extrapolated perhaps up as far as the 180’s. It doesn’t measure all the way up to IQ 200 and beyond, as he would have us believe.)

Extraordinary, improperly substantiated claims don’t scare me. I can’t say the same of the people who go leaping to his defence. If the idea was to model after some other organization and create a c-u-l-t following, then that objective has been resoundingly achieved.

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