Chris Langan, popularized for his performance on the Mega IQ test, ostensibly the smartest man in the United States, is revered on a false pretense. This is interesting because a plurality of comments on a YouTube video where he is interviewed indicate that most people don’t believe IQ tests are representative of intelligence. This nothing new; however, though they aren’t aware of it, they aren’t exactly wrong. Though IQ tests are obviously the best metric available and for the most part capture the defining aspects of intelligence, the test Langan took in particular falls somewhere short of painting an accurate picture of his cognitive abilities (at least relative to the general population.)
The Mega Test at face value is highly g loaded, with the assessment partitioned into verbal analogies and visio-spatial problems. But I’m not arguing against that. I am, however, vehemently contending that the test has been normed sufficiently to produce a full range of scores and a distribution that mirrors the Gaussian curve found in the general population.
Given that the test is open source and has no time constraints, I doubt the validity of his score. Nothing on his Quora page indicates profound intelligence, either. Though he seems to embrace real science more now; this hasn’t always been the case, evidence by his CTMU.
At least he’s a solid writer.
Brutal 