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What is Steve Jobs IQ?

"Steve Jobs likely had an IQ roughly 160 or above. In Walter Isaacson's biography, near the end of 4th grade, Jobs was tested. Jobs said: 'I scored at the high school sophomore level. ' This means he was a 4th grader performing at the 10th grade level.

psychologytoday.com - Was Steve Jobs Smart? Heck Yes! | Psychology Today
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There's been some discussion about whether or not Steve Jobs was "conventionally" smart. It all started with Walter Isaacson's statement in the New York Times:

"So was Mr. Jobs smart? Not conventionally. Instead, he was a genius."

Christopher Shea at the Wall Street Journal and Sean Carroll at Discover have brought up some interesting points about this which are definitely worth a read, but for now, the question remains: Was Steve Jobs conventionally smart?

I think what people mean when they mention conventional smarts is basically general intelligence or an IQ score. All an IQ score represents is a rough rank order of where a person falls in a general intelligence sense among the population. As I wrote in my last post, "Steve Jobs Leveraged His Intelligence to More Effectively Create": "Steve Jobs likely had an IQ roughly 160 or above. In Walter Isaacson's biography, near the end of 4th grade, Jobs was tested. Jobs said: 'I scored at the high school sophomore level.' This means he was a 4th grader performing at the 10th grade level. The average 4th grader is 9 or 10 years old and the average 10th grader is 15 or 16 years old. Using the standard mental age/chronological age x 100 = IQ formula, we can create rough boundaries. Lower bound: 15/10 x 100 = 150 IQ. Upper bound: 16/9 x 100 = 178 IQ. Average of the bounds is 164 IQ. Of course, if Jobs was a young 4th grader then his IQ would be even higher. Steve Jobs clearly had exceptional intelligence, regardless of what his exact IQ score was. This makes sense, considering that Bill Gates, the other wunderkind, said 'Software is an IQ business.'" In 2010, the world population was roughly 6,840,507,000. An IQ of 160 places Steve Jobs in the 99.99th percentile or above as a rough lower bound. Let's do some simple math: .9999 x 6,840,507,000 = 6,839,822,949.3. This means that Steve Jobs was conventionally smarter than about 6,839,822,949 people on earth.

Steve Jobs was not "the 99 percent" intellectually or financially.

So was Steve Jobs smart? In the famous words of Napoleon Dynamite, "Heck Yes!"

© 2011 by Jonathan Wai.

Note: A perceptive reader pointed out that ratio IQ scores (what I calculated above) are not the same thing as deviation IQ scores. Hence, according to this table, a ratio IQ of 160 should actually translate into a deviation IQ of about 150. An IQ of 150 is at about the 99.9th percentile rather than the 99.99th percentile. .999 x 6,840,507,000 = 6,833,666,493. So perhaps Steve Jobs was only conventionally smarter than 6,833,666,493 people on earth.

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Why is it difficult for musicians to have relationships?

Musicians are often opinionated people. They have strong feelings about the music they create and the way it should be performed. This can sometimes lead to conflict with other musicians, as well as with fans and critics. And the same sentiment can creep into relationships - which may not end well.

songme.com - Dating a Musician is Difficult - According to Musicians - SongMe

Dating a musician is surrounded by a strange mythos - teetering between fascination and disgust. Enthralled by the rockstar lifestyle - we all crave more stories about sex, drugs, and other vices - but at arm's length.

Certainly not something we would want to experience first-hand.

What about dating an everyday musician?

You know, the career musician - the talent you see at a local club, or the amazing band on a cruise ship? What about buskers? Do the same concerns and rules apply when dating 99.9% of musicians who aren't living the Motley Crue lifestyle?

There are more than enough articles and social posts out there suggesting it's nearly impossible for musicians to be in a relationship, rationalized by the rockstar stories.

We think it's time to hear from real musicians though.

So we reached out to a network of musicians to get their take - and they certainly had a take. There's quite a bit of content packed in here, so we've added a way to jump around - because we know you came here for one thing...

Table of Contents

Now, we did assume that dating a musician comes with inherent challenges, and it seems like that was a good call. So, this was our big question:

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