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I envy you your experience in Sweden. That differs from mine here in the States. References on IQ tests here are generally subjective, geared to reflect the general populace, or at least the dominant populace (the ones that make the rules).
The only tests I have found to be realistic here are the Mensa tests.
Quoting: wabishkaeyabe 25213671 I think you may be right, mainly for the reason I've seen so many Americans claim they got EXTREMELY high IQ scores. I think they must have some kind of badly designed tests in the colleges etc, because geniuses and supergeniuses aren't supposed to be all that common in real life.
Take myself as an example:
I'm actually a borderline genius
in certain respects, as has been revealed by professional IQ testing
(Such tests take two full days to perform by the way).They divide the IQ into several "sub-intelligences", I don't remember then all, but my score for verbal intelligence was 130 something, and my spatial IQ was slightly less, whereas my mathematical-logical ability was 160 something. The overall score was only 135 though.
160 is genius, 130 is merely pretty smart.
My ability to master a second language (English) satisfactorily should prove I'm pretty smart in that regard, so that number is probably about right.
And I have done quite a few ground-breaking mathematical analysis as a hobby, proving completely new things no-one else researched before me, which shows the 160 for logic is probably pretty correct too.
But I STILL only have 135 in overall IQ!
But here at GLP, I'm apparently constantly in the presence of my intellectual superiors, as it seems half the people visiting this place have 160 or more. Or so their high-school testing said.
Strangely enough, they still use rather
bad grammar, and seem to have pretty low reading comprehension and ability to grasp "the essence" of things. I find it hard to believe such people are capable of the kinds of feats a true genius are, such as finding and exploring whole uncharted fields in math.
It seems more likely to me the US college tests vastly inflate the scores (by 40 points or so)!