What do you think GM Hikaru IQ is?

I always find it amusing when you downvote citations with nice, large diagrams directly refuting your point... as if you somehow still disagree. What that really shows is what a waste of my time this debate is, you could probably keep arguing and pretending to have a point indefinitely.

Again, you have to drive off the embankment into a ditch because you can't hang. Just make your statements without the malice you are projecting on others.

Read those two previous sentences...then look up the definition of "average", then realize that your statement about Hikaru does not logically follow. Objectively wrong.

Again, as I just explained, confidence is a belief, it is not knowledge. A nuance that cannot be gotten through to you apparently. Belief can be formed by weighing probabilities, knowledge can't be.

Lol you speak with such confidence but there is really so little substance to what you say.

Keep trying, you'll get it eventually.

The other thing you should have derived from that Wikipedia article is that the term Genius hasn't been used with reference to a specific IQ range in any scale since the original Stanford Binet scale, which has long since been abandoned... i.e. there is no broad consensus on what constitutes "genius". Which is exactly what I told you in the beginning. So when people assign to 'genius' to an IQ range they do so very loosely, and at best they may refer back to this old stanford binet scale where 140 was near-genius... then they infer 145 or so must be actual genius. But it depends on how they divide up their scores, not every scale divides the scores up by 10... some use Standard Deviation i.e. 15... this is all a very loose way of speaking, because in reality... there is no precise definition. Which, again, has been my point the entire time.

"In 1939, Wechsler wrote "we are rather hesitant about calling a person a genius on the basis of a single intelligence test score.""

I'll post this again here for you if it helps:

"Near: at or to a short distance away; nearby."

There are how many demarcations on how many scales on the Wikipedia article? And how many of them fall at 145?

You are objectively wrong. You can't "infer" your way out. Just accept it...because you cannot win on this point. You think the demarcations should be on the standard deviation points, and I would agree...but I would not try to say something false based on my preferences.

You came into to this thread being condescending to another poster, and you've ended up being corrected by some posters (who seem better informed than you are) on your original points and several more since. You could carry onward, but it seems like you'd prefer to be hoist by your own petard for an extended period of time.

A lot of interesting points raised in this discussion so far (mixed in with the jabs and insults ).

Though, I believe it's worth noting that top GMs have not always been top GMs.

At one point, they were IMs, FMs, and so on, down the rating ladder - because they were once weaker players, who still had much to learn before reaching their current levels.

Does this suggest that Hikaru's IQ was much lower, when he was merely a 2200-rated player, for example? And that his IQ increased dramatically since then, leading to a near 600-point rise in Elo?

Or is it more reasonable to conclude that his IQ did not drastically change, but rather, other factors contributed to his rise (such as accumulated experienced, continued high-level instruction, and a relentless obsession with the game that surpassed that of his peers)?

I agree with those who suggest that it's likely a combination of many factors, with cognitive abilities certainly being one of them. But I shake my head at the notion that IQ is the sole or even the dominant factor.

If anything, I'd argue that "obsession" (or whatever term we wish to apply to it) weighs far heavier on the scale, when it comes to player potential ...

Of course maximized experience and studying has a larger effect on ones rating, I dont think anyone is arguing against that. A more interesting argument is whether a certain above average level of iq is a requirement for being one of the best chess players in the world - a game where problem solving and learning complex concepts is important. I'd say evidence (very lacking evidence as this hasnt been properly studied) supports that an above average iq is a requirement.

What could be a counter argument is that ones cognitive abilities can be oddly specific lacking in certain areas, in which case the general iq score might not be that high. For that reason and many others iq can be viewed as a lacking method for measuring intelligence (which is a difficult thing to conceptualize in itself).

No... I have not suggested classification boundaries ought to broadly fall on the borders of standard deviations, you are yet again misunderstanding the conversation... What I'm saying is the only official IQ classification reference to genius is in the original stanford-binet scale where 140+ was "near genius or genius"... this is a mixed category. And so to assign genius to an IQ people have resorted to interpreting this scale, and splitting this category in an ad-hoc fashion. They're confronted with two categories in the 140+ range: - near genius, and genius. The nearest boundary to 140 is 145, marking 3 SD. And so some people have loosely resorted to referring to 140-144 as near genius, and 145+ as genius. This is an ad-hoc interpretation of this mixed category, it is not an uprooting of the classification system... it is a sub-optimal approach, but again no other scales have a category for genius, and this one doesn't go above 140, so there's no standard way of doing this. You brought up all these other scales but they're not even really relevant to our conversation. Furthermore, while it's true that many classification systems are 10 point scales, most of the tests are also using 15 SD... and so the boundary of 145 is readily available for people to freely map this ad-hoc interpretation of the Stanford Binet classification to their own test scale, which is what they usually do.

Again, you keep suggesting there exists some objective IQ classification criteria which defines genius, there simply is no such thing, I could not possibly be objectively wrong about what IQ score denotes genius - at worst we'd simply be debating my interpretation of this mixed category against yours... the difference is I understand the nuances of the topic while you deny the meaning of the word "near".

I find it amusing watching you loudly proclaim your "objective correctness" when such criteria don't even exist, while simultaneously you're barely following the conversation and are demonstrating so little understanding of the topic.

Bit heavy in here ,let's chill and have fun .

You keep saying stuff like this, but don't realize that there's very little "nuance" in what you are saying. Anyone can follow your arguments, they are very straightforward and have not changed since the 80s and 90s.

It stands to reason that if I don't place much value on IQ scores/tests, then I don't really care about classifications that only serve to create extraneous structure to something that is a house of cards already. Narratives to the contrary are just that...narratives.

Well, I do think that some users believe that IQ is everything, or close to it. That's why we have threads like this one. It's more common to see players ask about the IQs of top GMs - and far less common to see players ask about those players' upbringings, the kind of coaching they received, or their studying/training regimens. A lot of players ask about IQ because they seem to believe that (or are wondering if) IQ matters most.

Though I agree that the "Do top players need a baseline point of intelligence to reach their level?" is a more interesting point to talk about. Thinking about it, I wonder if it could bring up a "What comes first, the chicken or the egg?" sort of discussion ... as top players perhaps do have stronger capacities in certain areas of cognition that relate to chess, compared to others ... But was this a prerequisite before they became strong players? Or did all the years of extensive studying and practicing have a beneficial impact on their cognitive development, in specific areas?

The answer is quite interesting. Several categories of question were studied and it was found that when factor analysis (a statistical technique that finds underlying factors that are able to explain variation in multiple observed ways) is done, a large fraction of the variance in results on different classes of questions could be explained by one factor "the g-factor". This is a meaningful empirical result that shows that ability on different classes of question is far from independent.

IQ tests were designed with a mixture of questions of different classes designed to estimate this g-factor, thought of as "general intelligence". IQ is defined as the monotone transformation of the raw results of such a test in such a way that the mean in 100, the standard deviation is 15 and the distribution is normal.

So if IQ tests were designed to estimate the "g-factor," does that mean a really high IQ would show that someone landed right on the g spot?

Please stop making essays

I'll say his IQ might be 132 IQ

I think you have high IQ

Making that big paragraph of Hikaru's IQ is smart.

Let Hikaru's IQ be K. Now, someone with an IQ of K can perform at an IQ of K+1, since IQ tests aren't perfect, and brain performance tends to vary throughout the day. Using this logic, someone with an IQ of K+1 can perform at an IQ of K+2. Repeat this process
Hikaru has infinite IQ

I’m pretty sure his IQ is just slightly more than average but he is SOOOO much more better than us in memory since I saw him do a cognitive memory test