Our Anthropological Idiocracy. The Case of Lauren Southern and the Fundamental Problem of Estimating IQs

By Sebastian Edinger

I will say just a few words about Lauren Southern in these opening remarks – this is not a grift, and it could not be further from being one. I am going to present some very important psychological data in this article, that has not yet been fully understood or widely discussed in terms of its significance, and the fact that this has not happened is causing profound and destructive societal problems, akin to the impact of a “social nuclear bomb." The key difference between this and an actual bomb is that the detonation arises not from what is done, but from what is refused to be confronted.

What my remarks take as a starting point is a small screenshot, which is unfortunately highly representative of a significant and pervasive problem:

To make it clear from the outset: I have only superficially familiarized myself with who 'Destiny' is (but even that brief exposure was enough to reveal the nonsensical nature of Southern's assertion). I have never followed Lauren Southern’s work in depth, primarily because what I have seen has failed to impress me. Fundamentally, I draw a sharp distinction between influencers (primarily podcasters who are not particularly well-read and lack a scientific background, and who generally do not consume content that is significantly more complex than what they produce themselves) and intellectuals (serious intellectuals who are both at home in the realm of scholarship and can communicate with the public in an intelligent, elaborate, and educated manner), with the latter operating within a strict, multi-tiered hierarchy. For me, the difference is as stark as that between a koala and a chimpanzee: both are sentient beings, but cognitively worlds apart. However, within the realm of human diversity and complexity, there are also transitional figures. In my view, whatifalthist qualifies as both an intellectual and an influencer.

Another thing I must mention in advance: Lauren Southern does not provide an estimate of Destiny's IQ. However, given her extensive network and deep involvement in the right-wing scene over many years, as well as her likely personal acquaintance with numerous individuals within that milieu, one can infer from her statement that she must place Destiny's IQ at least in the 140+ range. It is rather peculiar that she compliments someone for being highly intelligent who appears to be driven by sexual desires to the same extent that a dog is obsessed with food (a grieving dog would likely become more averse to food than Destiny's libido would suffer from any emotional pain).

Is this merely a trivial matter of gossip talk? No, not at all. Gilles E. Gignac and Marcin Zajenkowski published a study titled People tend to overestimate their romantic partner's intelligence even more than their own, where they present the following findings:

"We found that people overestimated their own IQ (women and men ≈ 30 IQ points) and their partner's IQ (women = 38 IQ points; men = 36 IQ points). Furthermore, both women and men predicted their partner's IQ with some degree of accuracy (women: r = 0.30; men: r = 0.19). However, the numerical difference in the correlations was not found to be significant statistically."

You can miss the mark (by 5 to 8 points), you can be really off (9 - 15 points), you can be off in a seriously questionable manner (let’s say, 16 - 25 points), but 36 points? You then qualify as an utterly delusional fantasist, even according to La La Land standards (assuming such a thing as “standards” can exist in this case).

What does this mean? We are not dealing with erroneous estimations; we are not dealing with people who are slightly off the mark; what we are dealing here with is the outright creation of fairytales creatures. To illustrate this: A woman describes to her friend, while gushing about his attractiveness, a prime-time Arnold Schwarzenegger, when in reality it's an overweight, bald dwarf in a wheelchair. (Of course, this also works the other way around with men, as the numbers clearly demonstrate.) Or consider this: Someone builds a paper airplane and mistakes it for a real plane. (In a world where such delusions are not systematically curbed, it is almost consistent and nearly rational for the builder to attempt to patent the paper airplane and sell it to Boeing; considering all the Boeing mishaps attributed to the DEI-driven disdain for talent and meritocracy, the chances of succeeding with this are not so slim). Or someone believes they can ride a bicycle faster than a hypersonic missile flies. A 36- to 38-point misjudgment is so severe that it defies linguistic description. This is the predicament of at least 75% of people when it comes to judging others' intelligence or estimating their IQ. Brace for impact, the crash will be horrific. To take the analogy even further: Don't expect Chesley Sullenberger to be in the cockpit; this plane is destined to crash into the water.

What does that mean in purely factual terms?

In 1997, Linda Gottfredson published a (in my opinion, extremely important) study in the journal Intelligence titled Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life. In this study, she references the findings on adult literacy from the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The NALS identifies five levels of reading competency, which, as indicated by the positive manifold, correlate strongly with IQ scores. To quote the main findings at length:

"Generally about 4% reach the highest level. Level 5 (376-500) signals an 80% probability, for example, of being able to summarize two ways that lawyers challenge prospective jurors (based on a pas­sage discussing such practices) and to use a calculator to determine the total cost of carpet to cover a room (see Figure 2). Roughly another 20% of White adults reach Level 4 (326-375), where individuals can perform such tasks as restating an argument made in a lengthy article and calculating the money needed to raise a child based on information stated in a news article. A total of about one third of White adults reach Level 3 (276-325), but no higher, which includes capabilities for writing a brief letter explaining an error in a credit card bill and using a flight schedule to plan travel arrangements. Level 2 proficiency (226-275) includes locating an intersection on a street map, entering background information on an application for a social security card, and deter­mining the price difference between two show tickets. This level is reached but not exceeded by about 25% of Whites. Finally, one out of seven White adults functions routinely no higher than Level 1 (less than 225), which is limited to 80% proficiency in skills like locating an expiration date on a driver’s license and totaling a bank deposit."

The fact that only 4% of whites reach Level 5 corresponds to the average IQ found in white countries when they were still predominantly homogeneous: around 5% (4.75%) fall into the IQ range of 125+, 10% into the range of 120+, roughly 2.3% into the range of 130+, and about 1% into the range of 135+). Overall, we find that about 24%, or roughly one-quarter of all whites, can read at a very high (Level 5) or good (Level 4) level. It's important to note that even within Level 5, there would be significant internal differentiation if correspondingly detailed and specialized studies were conducted. In any case, 75% possess at best solid skills, and I would argue that 75% of all people are essentially useless when it comes to estimating other people's IQ. About 15–20% would be off by no more than one standard deviation (which already qualifies as “weak judgment”), and sometimes less, while around 5% have the baseline intelligence necessary to reliably estimate their own IQ, the IQ of those less intelligent (thanks to the overview granted by a heightened position), and also the baseline IQ needed to differentiate even higher IQ-levels in a fundamentally solid manner.

Expressed in IQ numbers:

Attributing an IQ of 136 to someone with a factual IQ of 100 transforms a statistically normal person into a one-percenter (IQ threshold = 135). Someone with a typical midwit IQ of 115, who doesn't really belong in a university, is catapulted over the 150 threshold. What level of rarity are we talking about here? One in 2,500 – that's the magical transformation your midwit is undergoing. Someone in the IQ range of 70–79 (“Borderline”) can be catapulted into the range of 110–119 (“High Average”); one gets granted an effortless transition from an imbecile’s IQ of 78 to a nice 114; and from an average IQ of 85, which is typical in certain countries with certain typical problems, one can easily ascend for no valid reason at all into the 120–129 range of “Superiority.” Is anyone surprised that most people believe all cultures and ethnicities are equal?

Do I need to provide further examples to illustrate the wild frenzy of disturbing madness we are dealing with here?

Let’s take a look at Gottfredson’s study again:

“By this measure, one needs an IQ of about 120 (the 91st percent­ ile of the general population) to be competitive for the highest level jobs in Figure 1  (research analyst and advertising manager). The IQ levels required for compet­itiveness drop with job level: for example, IQ 112 (81st percentile of the general adult population) for accountant and teacher; IQ 100 (50th percentile) for cashier, meter reader, and teller; IQ 90 (25th percentile) for custodian  and material han­dler.”

You see how people get “beamed” upward several IQ levels by the uncanny synergy of projection and lack of understanding? Am I really being too harsh here?

IQ itself is not a totality; it is embedded in a totality that is called personality. IQs do not get estimated by other IQs but by persons. (The criteria for general competence laid out by Gaius Baltar are pretty useful here: “General competence requires three necessary conditions: a) High general intelligence or IQ, b) the ability to be objective, even in situations where the result of your conclusions may not be to your liking, and c) the ability to reach conclusions without being influenced by others (i.e. independent thinking).” — The percentage of 1.5 he offers is a lot more realistic than the 8% he also considers possible.) Persons who should be highly aware of giftedness and prepared to diagnose it due to proper, specialized education in that regard are teachers. However, in my opinion, teachers’ estimates are pretty poor. Their estimates provide us with rather discouraging results (an error rate of approximately 50% when generously allowing for a deviation of up to one standard deviation!):

"In addition, we tested whether cue-utilization differed between: accurate (n = 78) and inaccurate (n = 80) teacher judgments of students’ performance (RQ3b), and between accurate (n = 79) and inaccurate (n = 76) teacher judgments of students’ monitoring judgments (RQ4b). We defined accurate judgments as teacher judgment accuracy scores (both teacher judgment accuracy of students’ performance [TJA] and of students’ monitoring judgments [TJASMJ]) as scores that deviate ≤ 1 standard deviation from the mean (+ or -) and inaccurate judgments as scores that deviate more than 1 standard deviation from the mean (+ or -)." (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11409-023-09349-8)

In the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence, a correlation of .56 is reported between teachers' estimates and measured IQ, which means that their estimates are only slightly better than those of parents (.5), but they are nonetheless described as "relatively good." But is .56 genuinely good when parents – laypeople basically by definition – achieve nearly the same figure? I lean more toward the evaluation offered by Sonja Falck in her excellent introduction The Psychology of Intelligence: "I would see it as a positive development if teachers, students, and parents had better education about intelligence." (Falck 2021: 100) Teachers can only provide valid assessments if they are equipped to identify gifted underachievers – precisely by being blind to longstanding professional biases. Studies cited by Silvia Greiten in her book Hochbegabte Underachiever (Gifted Underachievers) estimate the underachiever rate to be between 15% and 40% (Greiten 2013: 46). Needless to say, most of these individuals remain invisible during their school time. Unsurprisingly, as what I said above suggests, the by far worst judges are couples (.29), performing even below self-assessments (.32) and strangers’ evaluations (.43).

"After knowing their peers for only one week, individuals could already estimate the peers’ intelligence with low to medium accuracy (r = 0.25). Interestingly, accuracy rates were similar in size after four (r = 0.27) and eight months(r = 0.22) of acquaintance. Peer- but not self-ratings directly predicted academic success, that is, grades and staying in school. Borkenau and Liebler (1993) asked cohabiting pairs − most of them romantic couples − to estimate their own and each other’ s intelligence and found medium accuracy for both types of estimates (r other = 0.29, r self = 0.32). The researchers also fi lmed the individuals during the seemingly mundane tasks of entering a room and reading a weather forecast aloud. They later presented these videotapes with or without sound to strangers and asked them to rate the participants’ intelligence. Strikingly, stranger-ratings were even slightly more accurate (r = 0.43)." (Aljoscha C. Neubauer and Gabriela Hofer: Self- and Other-Estimates of Intelligence, in: Robert J. Sternberg, Ed.: The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence. Cambridge, 2020, p. 1188)

Let us now examine further data.

Michael Ferguson, in his excellent essay The Inappropriately Excluded, discusses findings that might surprise many. Two examples mentioned by Ferguson present facts that certainly lie outside the imaginative scope of the "average IQ understanding":

"For example, Gibson and Lightfound that 148 members of the Cambridge University faculty had a mean IQ of 126 with a standard deviation of 6.3. The highest score was 139. J.D. Matarazzo and S.G. Goldstein found that the mean IQ of 80 medical students was 125 with a standard deviation of about 6.7. There was one outlier at 149, but the next highest score was 138."

These findings do not align with the prevailing clumsy mindset of IQ exoticism which substitutes estimates based on institutional animism (Cambridge! The elite of the elite!) for empirical reality and the sober realism it dictates.

A few remarks on the data Ferguson gives on Cambridge: Based on these numbers, the rate of giftedness is an astonishing 26% (rounded). The top 1% comprises nearly 8% here (yes, 8%, not 80%). However, the difference between an IQ of 130 and one of 135 is still highly significant. Is Cambridge University on the faculty level a haven for individuals with IQs of 140, as laypeople might believe? Statistically, no. While about one in four meets the threshold for giftedness − an absurdly high rate compared to the general occurrence rate of roughly 2 out of 100 (2.28%) in classic White England −, approximately 1.5% score an IQ of 140, which translates to roughly 3 in 200 people at Cambridge. If we grant people an arbitrary bonus of 36 points, an IQ of 104 (around 40% of people) would then be equivalent to an IQ of 140 (3 in 200 at Cambridge, approximately 1 in 300 in the general population). If that doesn’t define magic, what does? Does this reflect poorly on Cambridge or on the general IQ mythology?

In conclusion, there are three primary sources of error to consider:

1. Sympathy, which skews assessments significantly.

2. Limerence, which creates fairytale beings in worlds devoid of physics or biology. This, incidentally, cannot persist indefinitely, and coming back down to earth in this case means landing very hard. (And people should really, really read and discuss Dorothy Tennov’s prolific book Love and Limerence a lot more. Please!) — At least, the data discussed in this article allows us to explain sapiophilia (or sapiosexuality), which is one of the most ludicrous concepts that have ever floated around. Well, those people are likely not lying, but they have been hormonally tricked or fucked into seeing an awful lot of sapio where there actually is awful little or almost none.

3. And most critically: a very widespread practical lack of familiarity with high intelligence.

When it comes to the specific problem of creating fairytale beings, especially regarding intelligence estimates, in romantic relationships: We cannot allow this to continue; something must be done. There is a reason why, in more eugenic times, marriage was not merely a private affair for flirting teenagers. The fact that these teenagers are now in their 30s or 40s does not change the situation when the selection process remains unregulated and unsupervised by emotionally less engaged individuals with more wisdom. (The maximum duration of the honeymoon phase typically lasts up to 24 months. Making it significantly past that point is for adults; not realizing within three weeks that, in a certain constellation, it is utterly impossible is for children. If this time passes without realization, it is only a matter of time before the object of idealization, in a crashing failure accompanied by counter-projection, becomes a one-percenter in the opposite sense: from a one-percenter at the upper end to a one-percenter at the lower end of the IQ scale.)

This is my way of expressing what Mary Harrington is focused on when she says: “Abolish Big Romance.” She is right; romance must be sufficient. Replace “big” with “enlightened” (don’t eliminate the quotation marks) and transform it into something positive: embrace and organize “enlightened” romance and marriages based on it. Divorce statistics tell us in a very alarming way what happens if the first 18–24 months aren’t used properly or are wasted nonsensically.

It’s about more than IQ estimates; it's about creating fairytale beings regarding a feature that is more stable than personality traits (“Test- retest reliability […] is around 0.9 for IQ tests, and typically on the order of 0.7 for things like personality trait measures”; Mitchell 2018: 52), that is astonishingly stable throughout life (with a correlation of .73 from age 11 to age 77; Deary et al. 2000) and that has a test-rest reliability of .85 (and of .86 in the case of twins – so much for that debate). Leaving this problem unchecked is a recipe for disaster.

References:

Deary, I. J., Whalley, L.. J., Lemmon, H., Crawford, J. R,, und Starr, J. M. (2000): The stability of Individual Differences in Mental Ability from Childhood to Old Age: Follow-up of the 1932 Scot­tish Mental Survey. In: Intelligence, 28 (1), S. 49-55.

Falck, Sonja: The Psychology of Intelligence. London; New York, 2021.

Greiten, Silvia: Hochbegabte Underachiever. Perspektiven und Fallstudien im schulischen Kontext. Berlin, 2013.

Mitchell, Kevin J.: Innate. How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are. Princeton, 2018.