The Lie of IQ

Young Hoon Kim only has a 210 IQ score. Kim parades around his IQ score of 276 as a badge of honor and trump card for his own views, but where did that number come from? If you ask me this number is quite a dishonest way to share your IQ with the world. Let me explain. He took an exam with Dr. Kirk Butt which came out to be a score of 210 based on a standard deviation of 15 which is the norm used when speaking about IQ. Then he took this score and applied the Cattell scale which is based on a standard deviation of 24. Don’t believe me? He says so himself on his video about how he got his high score. What does all that mean?

The simplest way to explain is that he changed the metrics for his IQ score to make it sound bigger. His score of 210 and 276 are exactly the same thing. Imagine that I told you was doing 160 on my way to work this morning. You might think that is crazy. Then later I explain that it was 160 kilometers which is actually 100 mph. The 160 sounds way higher but once you understand that it was mph it isn’t nearly as impressive. That is all that is happening with his IQ score. He scores it with the higher metric so that he blows everyone out of the water.

All of this is very deceptive because even on https://gigasociety.net/ which champions Kim’s high IQ the number 2 spot lists Terrence Tao with an IQ score of 230. That’s a problem since Tao’s score is technically higher than Kim’s. Not only that but Marylin vos Savant who is placed third on gigasociety.net’s list was officially recognized as the highest IQ from 1985-1989 when they retired the category. Therefore, why are we talking about YoungHoon Kim when according to gigasociety.net his score is actually lower than Savant and Tao who are both still living today? This is little more than fudging the numbers to sound impressive.

Adam Terry