Oddbean

as for Bill Gates and Einstein yes i know Gates's real name is "William Gates The Third" so he obviously comes from money but still even Steve Jobs said about Gates that "he started a software company before software companies were a thing" and that he "deserves his success" - i watched the interview myself where Jobs said that. as for Einstein even if he plagiarized his shit from others ( which is likely ) he would still need very high IQ to do it. you wouldn't be able to plagiarize the theory of relativity for example as it would simply be gibberish to you. there were a few subjects in college where i felt like it was starting to get over my head for example i barely passed Differential Equations - and there were a few kids at my University that were better at that stuff than me - i only was best at subject that i actually liked for example electronics ( because i was a hobbyist speaker builder ). but in advanced math like Multi-Variable calculus i was only in the top 5 or so, but not the best. a cute Chinese girl in my class i had a crush on was actually better than me at Multi-Variable calculus. as for high school i was basically number 2 in a class of about 1,000 people but my high school was just a crap local school in Brooklyn - most smart kids were sent to special schools for gifted kids - i went out with a girl for example who went to Stuyvesant in Manhattan even though she lived in Brooklyn - so she had to take the subway every day but she attended a school with actually smart kids. i feel like overall 140 IQ / top 1% is accurate for me based on the totality of all the evidence from actual IQ tests to SAT to how i did compared to other students in all the schools i attended in both Ukraine and USA and so on ... but i have definitely known kids who had higher IQs than me - both Jews, Chinks and Pajeets - none that were white - but that's probably just because i was in Brooklyn which is all Jews and Immigrants - Upper Class Whites do not live in Brooklyn. i am sure many whites have higher IQs than me. everything is relative. for example i used to bench press 400 lbs which is a lot, but some people can bench press 700 lbs. and so on ... i'm often the best in the room or the building but that's simply because people who are better than me are in a different building ... for example most top bodybuilders train in just 3 gyms - Gold's Venice, Bev Francis Powerhouse ( where i trained ) and Oxygen gym in Kuwait. if you train anywhere else you might think you are the most jacked dude around but that's simply because the top pros don't train where you do. and so on ...