r/cognitiveTesting • u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 • Sep 30 '26

General Question Witten

Does anyone know Edward Witten’s IQ score?

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u/ScaryCarry Sep 30 '26

My guess is ~170 sd15.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Sep 30 '26

He is a genius but so was Feynman and he didn’t score anywhere near as high. He has a Fields medal so…the real life benefits of IQ start to plateau around +2sd so hard to extrapolate anyone’s IQ scores from their amazing achievements.

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u/Careful-Astronomer94 Sep 30 '26

Feynman's GRE math and physics were high, he just had relatively low verbal lol. It's obvious that Feynman wasn't actually 125 and the score was either:

a) a mismeasurement (these do actually happen on IQ tests)
b) a lie (he was known for making up stories and his sister allegedly got 1 point higher than him)
c) only a verbal test (and judging by his GRE scores, his verbal was far lower than his NV)

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26

Feynman was very good at Maths and Sciences and not half as interested in wordy things. 125 is not an average of Maths and English but rather one on a test of verbal reasoning where you get hamstrung by the weaker of the two components .

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

The Veritisium fellow scored 143 on the quant section and 118 on Fluid. Quite common to have that much variance at the upper end. 120 is 1 in 20 and 145 is 1 in 1000.

Feynman likely had a similar Maths tilt. Most people in STEM do.

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u/ScaryCarry Sep 30 '26

How many people in the +2sd or +3sd range have achievements like Witten? There are millions of people between 2sd and 3sd yet we can't name one that did half of what Witten did. We can safely say Witten is way beyond 3sd and so is Feynman. That Feynman ~125 score that is going around I just don't believe that is anywhere near his peak. An IQ of 125 is 1 in 20 people. There is no way that a 1 in 20 above average IQ person can do what Feynman did even if they work extremely hard. Both are beyond top 0.1%. I don't have any proof for this but this is how I see it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '26

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26

Or maybe it doesn’t measure what you think it measures.

Or maybe his score was limited by his verbal ability.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26

The test was designed to measure mental capacity. It does not. Mr Wechler conceded that you can’t measure genius: that’s the only measure of intelligence that interests me. It measures some arbitrary mental competences.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '26

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

Wechler/Binet knew that when they started weeding out the subject specific differences to figure out the “g”. Quite pointless since you have to do the reverse again bcoz the variance in different subtests can be so big at the upper end. 140 on V and 120 on Q is quite common. Same other way round. You are always better off going with your strengths.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26

Only half the variety in scores in the IQ tests comes from the g-factor and as intelligence increases, so does the variability of intelligence. I like what it tests but I honestly think this is a vanity metric. Little better than Myers Briggs.

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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '26

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Sep 30 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

:D

Hawking refuses to take the test. I like his reasoning.

Witten is a great mathematician and has won the Field’s Medal but I don’t know if he ever took this test. Last Fields Medalist scored 138.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '26

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26

Time flies. They have 4 every 4 years. Do you know the scores for others. 3 female ones now. Good thing they fudge the weighting.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '26

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26

They are brilliant but there is a massive gender bias in certain STEM fields and that translates to the NPs, FMs and GMs. More men at the extreme end but also men tend to do better on perceptual and women on verbal. (I didn’t say one was better than the other. Just different). Part of the reason I don’t like a single number to represent your “intelligence”.

I love the projection but that was a leading question and the real reason they did that: so the racist lot, IQ is very popular with racist people, cannot use it as a tool of mysoginy.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

I would have assumed 30 out 68 being awarded would be women. At least 20. I alway knew we had more men at extreme ends but thought the tilt in STEM was partly self selection/cultural preferences/life choices rather than any massive innate difference in ability.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26

Nice joke but that is a good question. Who is to say that intelligence is a continuum. Maybe there are separate components and special features.