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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28234 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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Having now read his biography, I'd say he's smart but not genius level. He got a 1400 on his SAT, for example, which is average around these parts.

The main reason for his success seems to be an extreme appetite for risk and zero social desirability bias. That enables him to do things which are possible but which most people wouldn't even consider - such as firing 80% of the workers at Twitter for example.

That’s 1400 in the 1980s, when it was considerably more difficult.

1400 in the 1980s would be 1400-1480 in the late 1990s after the famous recentering. There's been another recent jump with the addition and removal of the New Coke Writing portion, but even at the median it was tens of points, not hundreds. For an older SAT supposedly a 1400 correlates with a ~140IQ. His intelligence is at that 1-in-200 "got accepted into a STEM PhD program" level; his work habits are what are at the literally 1-in-a-million "sleep on the office couch while working hundred hour weeks, then after selling that company for tens of millions do it again with the next company ad infinitum" level. A "normal" workaholic would have relaxed a little after the first multi-millionaire payout, and probably would have ended up happier and saner but wouldn't have ended up a multi-billionaire.

He's also been very lucky, but that's partly down to personality too: he's won a bunch of high-variance gambles that most people wouldn't have risked making in the first place.

his work habits are what are at the literally 1-in-a-million "sleep on the office couch while working hundred hour weeks, then after selling that company for tens of millions do it again with the next company ad infinitum" level.

I think that's a good deal closer to 1/10,000. Consider the work ethic of the average Navy SEAL for example, and then consider that there's a bunch of people with SEAL tier willpower that don't become SEALs.

It's still lower than a good chunk of the people here. It's not like a 1400 then was harder to get than a 1600 now

Fair enough. I'll concede that he's probably top 1% intelligence which puts him in the top 80 million smartest people in the world.

But Terrance Tao he is not.

Interesting side question. Are there any tycoons from history who are legit 175 IQ type outliers?

Jeff Bezos was at DE Shaw before he founded Amazon, and was successful there. DE Shaw are like Jane Street in that they recruit primarily for raw IQ and can afford to be extremely selective on it. 146 IQ (top 0.1%) doesn't cut it. 155 IQ (top 0.01%) probably does. Top 0.01% is also around the level where other smart people start using the word "genius" to describe you.

175 IQ is 1 in 3 million, and even the people who care about ultra-high IQs think that the distinction between very smart and very, very smart ceases to matter around the 1 in 1 million point. Re. the various comments on high SAT scores, the Prometheus Society considers 1560 on the old SAT to be 1 in 30,000 which corresponds to a 160 IQ on the current standard scale. There are no longer any publically available IQ tests which are accurate at that level.

SBF was above-average IQ for Jane Street, which also qualifies him as a legit genius.

If we treat "implausible polymathic success in a wide range of IQ-loaded fields" as a sign of genius-level IQ, then Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon are probably the smartest world leaders in history.

I really doubt either DE Shaw or Jane Street average 99.99th percentile intelligence for juniors. Their testing (any testing) isn’t that granular.

Interesting side question. Are there any tycoons from history who are legit 175 IQ type outliers?

Bill gates is the obvious one. I’d probably point to John mcafee as the mentally ill version of the same thing, maybe some of the enron people, possibly Thomas Edison. Deeper in history you get into ‘who is a tycoon, really’, but the wealthiest men in history are I think Mansa musa and Francisco Pizarro, neither of whom seem likely to be geniuses. John Rockefeller strikes me as probably the smartest of the original robber barons, but probably not to genius level.

Only a handful who have extremely impressive academic performance, like Gates. Even for those who do, it's questionable - Zuck wasn't a highly impressive Harvard student even though he got a perfect 1600 on the SAT, which many more impressive students don't have. It's hard to say whether Rockefeller, Carnegie, or even modern tycoons like Larry Ellison are comparable.

Unsure if a “tychoon”, but the Renaissance Technology founder Jim Simmons. He isn’t Terrance Tap either, however.

Bill Gates is probably the go-to answer, but I also say Steve Ballmer. Unsure if either is at the 175 genius level, though.

harder to judge the older generations. Rockefeller had to be smart, but a lot of his success is hard work and ruthlessness. I guess pioneering new things that the government hates does take creativity.

I also get the impression he has an unusual facility of being able to obsessively fixate on a specific topic or task for hours or days at a time, without getting distracted, breaking his concentration or seeing any significant fall-off in productivity.

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