The Trouble With Geniuses, Part 1

Christopher Langan, known as the smartest man in the world with his IQ of 195, appeared on the hit game-show, 1 vs. 100. A chunk of the chapter is dedicated to describing Christopher's innate desire for knowledge. He read books, studied math, taught himself multiple languages, played guitar, sketched pictures all independently from school. He could ace a test by checking his notes before class. He was brilliant. But on the game-show, he kept his cool throughout the game show until he reached $250,000. Langan took the money, and that's the end of the story.

What Gladwell is trying to say here is that though high IQ's are admirable, there comes a point when they have a very small impact on society. Meaning, 120 and 200 translate very similarily to the real world.

In the 20's, a psychology professor named Lewis Terman recorded the IQ's of 250,000 students across the US and found that about 1,470 of them had IQ's ranging from 140 to 200. He hypothesized that these few would be the next 'elite' of the United States. Well, he turned out to be wrong. Only a small selection did something with their lives, CEO's and politicians. But the rest remained very standard, and led ordinary lives.

Measuring intelligence branches beyond one's IQ. The Raven, a test that measures abstract reasoning

They get much harder.

Another test called the Divergence test would be as simple as the one given in Outliers:

Write down as many diferecnt uses that you can think of for the following objects:

A brick

A blanket

This test would be based on creativity and improvising, something that an IQ test could never measure. This chapter states that a true genius is not measured on one intelligence, but more his overall potential as an outlier.