TL;DR at bottom.

Chris Langan has an IQ of around 190, which would put him well above "1 in a million" statistically. While it is probably fair to say that "smartest man in the world" is an exaggeration, he is definitely "up there" from a pure grey matter perspective. He dropped out of HS despite scoring a perfect 1600 on the SAT. He went to college for a while but decided "I was far smarter than my professors and got bored." He decided that self-learning was the way to go and taught himself math, physics and philosophy and even has his own theory of the universe he calls the CTMU (Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe). He reads Immanuel Kant and quantum physics textbooks like they are romance novels.

Funny thing is that 20 years ago I used to be on one of his mailing list groups and got into a few arguments with him over his philosophical theory. He was always an a-hole who talked down to everyone. He is very bright, I don't deny that, but he's a weirdo.

Chris Langan has never been an academic and has always held menial jobs. For years he was a bar bouncer and an amateur bodybuilder. Since then, he has decided to make money by going on game shows (he won a couple hundred grand on one of them a few years ago).

Anyway, he made a FB post discussing Koko the gorilla's death. He said experts estimate Koko's IQ to have been between 75 and 95. He went on to say the following:

quote:
According to the 30 point rule of psychometrics (as proposed by pioneering psychometrician Leta Hollingworth) Koko's pioneering thought would have been all but incomprehensible to nearly half of the population of Somalia (IQ 68). Yet the nations of Europe and North America are being flooded with millions of Somali refugees who are not (initially) kept in cages despite what appears to be the world's highest rate of violent crime.

Obviously, this raises the question: Why is western civilization not admitting gorillas? They, too, are from Africa and probably have a group mean IQ at least equal to that of Somalia. In addition, they have [sic] peaceful and environmentally friendly creatures, commit far less violent crime than Somalis, and with minor modifications to Western education systems, can easily be taught language.

Why are these gentle creatures, who have been threatened with genocide for decades, not being taken in by Western nations as refugees despite the indisputable fact that they are teetering on the edge of extinction in their homelands?

Can this be considered humane or compassionate? What in the world is going on here?

(Some of you might be wondering if this is a joke. The truth is I am not quite sure...).

(For reference, the "30 point rule" states that people with 30 IQ points on other people cannot effectively communicate with them. An average person of 100 IQ has a hard time talking to a "handicapped" person of IQ 70. Likewise a man of 130 IQ will have a hard time with a 100 IQ man. I don't really believe it, though, because it is an obvious logical fallacy).

TL;DR - Smart dude says Europe and America should admit gorillas and not people from Somalia because gorillas are at least as smart and also endangered (and thus need our help). Facebook banned him for the post.