Ask a Genius Anything

Thank you for the compliments. As for why I am on mylot, it's funny you should mention that since I only just joined and I'm already thinking of quitting. The reason I joined was to try it out and see if it was possible to earn any significant amount of money. I noticed that you can get paid by mylot for having a blog. I have concluded that it's not a good way to make money. I shall have to find some other way to finance my plan to take over the world. (Just kidding.) Another reason I joined mylot is that I thought it would be a good way to have a discussion with ordinary people from all over the world and get their reaction to this whole thing about IQ tests and being a "genius". I prefer not to have discussions like this with people who actually know me because it's an awkward topic to bring up and I expect people would take offense if I went around calling myself a genius. Although I scored in the "genius" category on IQ tests when I was a child, I was not told this. It is a new thing to me to have this label and I don't know what to make of it. I'm still the same person I was before, so it feels more like a vindication than a transformation. What I'm looking for is some feedback from people who don't know me and hence will presumably not be too concerned about offending me. Also, some people I am close to feel very competitive about this sort of thing and seem extremely uncomfortable with the idea that someone they know has a higher IQ than they do. I want to get away from all that and just talk to people about this. It seems like it should matter and not just to me. The IQ experts who invent these tests are saying that my IQ is on the same level as Albert Einstein or higher. The most recent IQ test I took said my IQ was too high for the test to measure it accurately. I think that when one comes upon this sort of information, it is time to rethink your life and make sure that what you're doing still makes sense.

I'd like to know what any of you who are reading this would do if you took an IQ test and the results said you were smarter than Albert Einstein. Would you even believe it was true? Would you start working on theoretical physics like Einstein did? Would you run around telling everyone you were a genius until they all became convinced you were insufferably arrogant? I don't suppose it's really the same. You see, for many people it would come as a complete surprise to get a genius level IQ score. The idea of contemplating the mysteries of the universe like Einstein did might seem appropriate, but would you know where to begin? The thing is, I'm not a physicist, but I have come up with a few theories of my own in theoretical physics since I was about twelve years old. I later discovered that the main theory I came up with back then had already been published by someone else before I was born. Some of my more recent thoughts on physics might be of more interest. Not that physics is my focus, far from it. I only mention that because it's what Einstein worked on. The thing is, I am isolated from most of my fellow human beings. It is difficult to even hold intelligent conversations with people on some topics as Bravenewworld just mentioned. It's not just on mylot, but almost anywhere. There is only so much I can do on my own. How much does it really matter if I solve some great mystery of the universe if it remains just some notes and drawings on a scrap of paper in a stack of other papers in a backroom in my house? How much does it matter if I know how to stop a war and save hundreds of thousands of lives if nobody cares what I think about it? How much does it matter if I know how to design businesses that could earn fantastic amounts of money if the whole thing is too complicated for anyone else to understand? I'll leave aside the more exotic matters such as how to double the productivity of the entire economy of the world, or how we can get off this planet and build a spacefaring civilization, or how to reverse global warming, or what's coming in the future, or why there wouldn't really be any paradoxes in time travel, or how to travel faster than the speed of light. Really, should I even be working on that sort of thing? If you guys, my fellow humans, don't care, then I've perhaps wasted a lot of my time. I will still keep thinking about such matters just because it's fun and interesting to me, but maybe I should stop expecting to see anything come of these ideas.

RYBD, Interesting you should say a lot of intelligent people don't stay on MyLot for long. Certainly I'm no genius, but I find it almost impossible to find thoughtful, sober discussions, particularly on topics relating to politics or the world situation. The amount of xenophobia, bigotry, jingoism, and general mean-spiritedness is alarming. The smartest people seem to be the conspiracy theorists, but I can't quite match their paranoia. MyLot does seem a 'moronic inferno'. I'm hoping MyLot is not representative of the US population, and there are a lot of smarter Americans that just happen to have better things to do than MyLot. There must be, right?

Ok, I'm probably guilty of being too glib and facetious What is your opinion of the future of the EU? Will a constitution be adopted, and sovereignty relinquished by constituent countries? Conspiracy theorists would have us believe this concerted move toward totalitarianism. Care to comment?

Well, it could just be me. I do have a sense of humour, but I tend to be more concerned with serious topics than jokes. People do ask me sometimes if I'm "always so serious." I'm not always, but the fact that the question comes up tells me something about myself. Now that you mention it, all the other genius type people I know tend to be serious as well. They do joke around sometimes, but I can't think of any of them who are known for being funny or joking around a lot. On the other hand, I don't know all that many geniuses. I have sought them out, of course, but they are rare. Thanks for your compliment on my response.

The European project now has a momentum of its own that is apart from any of the original motives for the movement. Despite all the debate about the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE), it is legally still a treaty between sovereign states. Its passage or failure is not fundamentally more significant than the passage of the treaties that form the EU's de facto constitution now or the treaties that will come after it. Notice that you can't permanently vote down any move towards greater union. In Denmark in 1992, the voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty. So they were subjected to more propaganda in favour of it and in 1993 it was voted on again and ratified. Had it passed in 1992, does anyone imagine that there would have been another vote on the subject in 1993 so that the opponents could have another chance? Likewise with the TCE. The French and the Dutch voted no. Does it end there? Not hardly. Now there are summits and debates and we have the Reform Treaty which is intended to accomplish essentially the same thing. Must the French and the Dutch vote against the Reform Treaty as well to make their rejection of the TCE stick? Of course. If they reject the Reform Treaty, there will be some new treaty and another and another vote on the same thing or something similar until it passes just once. Then it is no longer up for any more votes. "We'll just keep holding votes until they get it right," is the idea. After something passes, the next vote will be on giving the EU still more power, not reconsidering how much was already given. Or taken, as the case may be. I expect that the process will continue largely as it has thus far. There will be no big vote to give up national sovereignty or if such a vote is taken, the result will be "no". Nonetheless, national sovereignty will be whittled away de facto as it has been already regardless of what anyone votes for or against in whatever referenda are held. This is the typical if not universal pattern of such unions. It has always been so from the ancient Delian League to the modern day United States of America. The organization begins as a league of sovereign states and power is slowly consolidated until national sovereignty is replaced by the imperial power of the central authorities. With the example of the United States so clearly in front of us, it is hard for me to understand how this is not obvious to everyone, but what can stop it? Or should it even be stopped? Alternatives to an increasingly authoritarian European superstate may involve yet another world war that turns Europe into a battlefield again or virtual colonization of Europe by other authoritarian superstates as happened to Eastern Europe in the Cold War. Some would say it happend to Western Europe as well. I can see other possibilities that might be more appealing, but these are not generally discussed. Something more along the lines of the Swiss model, the Catalonian traditions, or even the Holy Roman Empire with its myriad of tiny sovereign states and a central government that was essentially powerless or, if we wished to be radical, we could emulate our common European heritage from medieval Poland, "the land of 200,000 sovereigns," any one of whom could veto any legislation. Rather than saying that EU law takes precedence over national law as the TCE says, we could instead say that each individual has precedence and can veto EU law. Only laws so obviously beneficial that nobody vetoes them would be acceptable. I'm only halfway joking. My point is that there are other alternatives. Europe is somewhat following the model of the United States or even the Soviet Union in creating a union of separate national states which sooner or later will concentrate power in the center. This is partly because the European project was concieved in the days when the United States and the Soviet Union practically ruled the world. One major purpose of the EU is to ensure that Europeans are in the ranks of the great powers and not pawns of some larger country, like the United States. It is said that the United States is the world's sole remaining superpower. That was true for a time, but not for very long. The EU is, by design, the other superpower. There is no reason there could not be more than two superpowers, but there are in fact only two at the present time. People who list either Russia or China as superpowers must be ignoring the relevant economic and military statistics. They are what used to be called Great Powers, but they are not in the first rank. Even Japan is more powerful than either of them. The best part of the TCE and the EU thus far, is the part that says that member states have the right to quit the union. Sounds good, but can that be counted upon? The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had a wonderful constitution and it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. The United States of America was created by secession of some of Britain's North American colonies and yet, less than a century later, they are using armed force to prevent similar secession by some of the very same colonies. It is encouraging that Greenland did successfully quit the Union, but that was in 1985 when the EU had no real military of its own. I know it sounds ridiculous today to think in these terms, but the federal government of the United States was a pipsqueak in its early days compared to the power of the State of New York or the State of Virginia. The fact that Germany or Britain can easily quit the EU if they choose does not mean that will always be so. As the EU admits more and more states, Brussels becomes more powerful vis a vis the member states in exactly the same way that the federal government of the US did. What if we reach a time when "Europe" includes Russia, Turkey and perhaps all of North Africa? (Why not call it "Europe", it was ruled by the Romans once and the French claimed Algeria was part of "Metropolitan France" in the 1950s.) If that happens, will Britain still be able to just quit? What if "Britain" by that time is only England and Wales with Northern Ireland and Scotland as separate EU member states? You mentioned the conspiracy theorists who say that the EU is a deliberate plot hatched for the purpose of enslaving all of Europe in a totalitarian nightmare. I doubt it is quite so deliberate, but who knows. In any event, it doesn't matter much if it's done on purpose or not. That is the direction it will go if the European project succeeds. All large governments become tyrannical sooner or later. All of them.

For children, the main test is the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale test. There is also the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). For adults, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is used and the test associated with that is called the WAIS-R. There are also others such as Mega27, Raven's Progressive Matrices, Cattell Culture Fair III, Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test and others. You can even find IQ tests than you can take over the internet. Just search for "IQ Test" with a search engine. The Scholastic Aptitude Test or other similar standardized tests are sometimes treated as intelligence tests and you can calculate IQ from SAT scores. Just look and see what percentile your test score is and see what IQ score is in that same percentile.

Nobody else responded. I would have thought this would be a more interesting topic.