Noesis
The Journal of
the Mega Society
Number 134
August 1997
Acting EditorChris Cole
P O Box 10119
Newport Beach, CA 92658-0119
IN THIS ISSUE
EDITORIAL
RESULTS OF
MEGA SOCIETY ELECTION by Jeff Ward
CHESS PROBLEMS by Jeff Ward
MY TUPPENCE
WORTH ABOUT TEN BALLS by Robert Low
A NOTE ON CONFLICT by Robert Low
A SHORT (AND BLOODY) HISTORY OF THE HIGH I.Q. SOCIETIES
by Darryl
Miyaguchi
The
results of the election are in, and they
are clear in some respects and unclear in others
(see Jeff Ward’s report for the numerical results). It is clear that
the membership desires
to ratify the concept that
the Mega Society is open to anyone with one-in-a-million test scores, and that Ron Hoeflin’s tests are capable of
distinguishing intelligence at this level. Thus, we can conclude that the Society’s historical focus on using these tests is ratified. In particular, Paul Maxim cannot be admitted
on the basis of the test scores he has currently submitted.
We also have a volunteer for Editor, and since there was only one, there is no need for an
election. Thanks to Kevin Langdon for
volunteering, and the next issue
(September, #135) will be edited by him.
What is unclear is what the bylaws of the
Society will be. The voting on this was
almost evenly divided across the proposals, with a lot of abstentions. Therefore, I think we need a period of time for discussion of
the various proposals, followed
by another vote. Since I’ve already
argued for my simplified Bylaws, I’ll keep
quiet until I
hear from the people who voted for either the original Bylaws or for the
Langdon modifications.
While the membership voted overwhelmingly that the Mega and Titan tests are appropriate vehicles, they did not vote on the exact
raw scores to be used. I’m told that the old
Mega Society voted to accept a score of 43 on the Mega Test and 175 on the
LAIT. Since a raw score of 43
corresponds to the one-in-a-million
level on Ron
Hoeflin’s latest norming of the Mega Test, this seems appropriate. However, Kevin Langdon has called this
norming into question. As I understand it, Ron is using an adjustment factor near
the top end of the test to adjust for “ceiling bumping.” Kevin questions whether this factor is
justified. I think it would make sense to see that issue debated in these pages
also, again in preparation for a subsequent
vote of the membership. Perhaps a committee of members could be formed to evaluate the
raw data and
make a recommendation.
We need some criterion
for admitting people to the Society. For
the time being, I suggest
that we continue to use these scores for
admission. Perhaps if Kevin becomes
convinced that
the “ceiling bumping” adjustment is legitimate,
then 175 on the LAIT will correspond to the one-in-a-million level. Also,
since the Titan Test was normed in the same way as the Mega Test, I suggest that we use the one-in-a-million level on its latest norming, which would
be a raw score of 43. All of this is
temporary, until a vote.
Chris Langan has sent around a newsletter
claiming to be Noesis, The Journal of the
Mega Society. Speaking for Jeff,
Kevin and myself,
and indeed all the other members of the Mega Society, let me make clear that while Chris can send around
any newsletter he desires,
he cannot claim to be publishing the Journal of the Mega Society. His newsletter has no association with the
Society whatsoever, other than that
Chris himself is a member. Also,
needless to say, all claims that
he has admitted Paul Maxim to the Society, that he has called off the election, etc. are
illegitimate. In particular,
subscription fees to Noesis should not be sent to Chris.
Subscription fees for Noesis are $2.00 per
issue, and should be sent to the address given above, made out to “Noesis.” This $2.00 covers the cost of production and
distribution. However, in an attempt to encourage subscribers to submit quality material, I will extend a modified form of the
previous policy giving
credit for published material,
to wit: if the
Editor decides to publish a submission, the submitter will receive a free copy of that issue. Thus, if your subscription runs out at issue 135 (which you can tell by
examining your mailing label), and something you submitted is published in issue 135, your expiration date
is automatically extended
to issue 136.
So, please, gather
together some interesting ideas, write them down, and send
them to our new
Editor:
Kevin Langdon
P. O. Box 795
Berkeley, CA
94701
(510) 524-0345
My tuppence worth about ten
balls
I’ll
get my
disclaimer in first: in the following
I will criticise what I understand
to be Chris Langan’s position on the ten balls problem that has been discussed somewhat in the pages
of Noesis. I’m pretty sure Chris will feel this
misrepresents his position, so
I’ll also get an
apology in right
here: Chris, I’m sorry if I’ve misunderstood you. But I’ve no objection to
having the error
of my ways pointed out in public if you still have the energy for it.
So, to state the problem (yet again). A closed box contains ten balls, each of which
is either white or non-white. In keeping
with my culturally offensive background,
I shall refer to
the non-white balls as coloured...oh, why quibble, I’ll call them black. Right
then, the box contains
ten balls, each of which is either white or black. Four times you sample a ball
at random from
the box and return it. Each time, the ball sampled is white. What is the
probability that
all the balls in the box are white?
Answer: it depends on the
distribution. We suppose the box is (in principle) taken from a collection in which the probability of
choosing a box containing n white balls in p(n).
This
may mean that the box is in fact taken from a large collection,
or that the
balls are put into the box randomly
according to some
distribution: it doesn’t matter--but without some assumption equivalent to this the problem is not well-posed It is simple then to work out the probability of four
successive observations of a white ball given n
white balls in the box, and Bayes’ theorem allows us to work out the probability that the box did in fact contain ten white balls given such a collection of
observations. The answer
depends on the values
of p(n), and in the special case where all the p(n) are equal, we obtain the result of
about 0.67. Different
prior distributions give
different
results.
However,
Chris wants to argue that
in some sense 0.67 is still the answer when we know nothing about
the initial distribution. As far as I can see, his argument is that knowing nothing about the
initial distribution entitles to make the assumption that all numbers of balls are equally
likely: except that
since white balls have been observed, we know that they can’t all be black, so we assume that all numbers of white balls are
equally likely except for zero. Then using
Bayes’ theorem gives the required result. I think there are two problems with this: the first is that there is an element of having one’s cake and eating it. Using the observation of white
balls to restrict the distribution and then claiming that nothing is known apart from
the fact that they aren’t all black is not consistent. The second is that I don’t follow the step from ‘we know
nothing’ to ‘we can assume
equal probabilities’.
But
there is a way of approaching the problem
which attempts to
do what Chris claims to do. The set of all possible distributions can be modelled as the collection
of points in eleven-dimensional space whose co-ordinates are all positive and
whose co-ordinates sum to 1: the point (p0
... p10) represents the distribution where the probability of there being n white balls in a box chosen randomly from the distribution is
pn. For each such distribution, one can calculate the probability
of the box containing
ten white balls given
that four
samples are white; then one
can integrate over the surface to find the expected value
of this probability. Roughly speaking, what Chris has done is to work out the probability of ten
white balls for the distribution at the centre of gravity of the surface of
distributions, rather than work
out the probability for each distribution and then average them. The problem is that the function taking you from initial
distribution to probability of ten white balls is not linear, and so a different result will be
obtained.
Now,
I’m pretty sure that Chris claims the following. If you repeat many
times the prescription ‘fill a box with white and black balls according to a randomly chosen initial distribution,
sample it four times, and retain those boxes which gave a white ball on each
sample’, then in the limit,
the proportion of those boxes you have retained which actually contain ten white balls will be
approximately 0.67.
The
problem is that because of the
nonlinearity, this averaging process
gives a different
result. (I don’t know what it is: my brain is too small to do the integral---for all I know, the answer could actually be 0.67, but if it
is it’s a huge coincidence.)
There’s
another, deeper, problem,
namely the choice
of measure on the surface that
describes all possible
distributions. Uniform measure induced by the choice of co-ordinates above will put the ‘average’ distribution at equal
probabilities. Other choices
of measure will give
different ‘best
guesses’. It depends on how you split the universe up into exclusive events.
And
finally, I know of nobody who says that
the law of large
numbers doesn’t
apply to balls in a box. If I have a box of balls, and repeatedly sample one ball from it, and the
proportion of times I get
white is about 0.4 after thousands of samples, I’d be pretty confident that there were 4 white balls in
there. But I don’t know what that
has to do with the problem
in hand...
Robert Low
email: r.low@coventry.ac.uk
A Note on Conflict
Something
that’s bothered
me for some time is why it is that conflict between groups seems to be
particularly vicious
when the two groups are culturally similar.
One possible answer is just that it catches the attention
more when a couple
of groups who seem similar
start fighting, but I don’t think
that that is the answer.
My
own suspicion is that
this response to slight difference may be rooted in a fundamental psychological
need of humans, namely that
of distinguishing ‘me’
from ‘not-me’. If you’re the sort of critter who makes a
living by making the environment
adapt, rather than
by adapting to it,
then there is a clear
evolutionary incentive for such
a trait. This need is pre-rational, and drives a considerable amount of our early development.
It strikes me that there may just be some carry over into cultural
identity. If so,
it is particularly plausible
that cases
where there is more potential for a mistake should be regarded
with greater
hostility than cases where the distinction is obvious. Thus, if for some reason boundaries are being
drawn up between
groups, the more culturally similar
the groups are, the less
tolerant of slight difference will each group be, and the more savagely will they treat outsiders.
There
are various parallels
to this. One of
the most obvious
is the reaction in the south of the US not so long ago to Negroes. A visibly
black Negro, while treated with contempt
and with scant regard
to his rights, would be treated far better than a relatively fair-skinned one who had attempted to pass for white. Again, in religion: a fundamentalist Protestant sect, while taking it for granted that Roman Catholics are the
spawn of Satan, will reserve its
serious criticism
for a group who splits away because of minor doctrinal differences.
This
may sound defeatist. It isn’t intended to be. Acceptance that some aspects of our behaviour
may be influenced by genetics does not obviate the notion of moral responsibility. The brute fact that I may have a genetically determined propensity towards a certain type of behaviour does not
refute the fact that
I also have a choice
about whether
to follow my
instincts or my conscious
morality.
Robert Low
email: r.low@coventry.ac.uk
A Short (and Bloody) History of the High I.Q. Societies
Maintained by
Darryl Miyaguchi
Last
updated: September 4, 1997
See
bottom of page for Change
History
6/28/97: The history is now as complete as I intend to make it. Future
revisions will be logged. Most
of this material
is from the pages of In-Genius
or Oath (i.e., Mr.
Hoeflin
has been a good source of information—any
mistakes in
translation
should be
attributed to me);
a little has come from Marilyn vos
Savant’s
book, Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest. Kevin Langdon has also contributed
his
comments. Some
of the information
presented here
may be considered
inflammatory,
especially since I can’t divine with certainty
the underlying
purposes of people’s actions; if I
have committed
any inaccuracies, please
contact me for corrections.
Some might wonder what relevance
this soap-opera-ish tale has to the stated
goals
of the high-IQ
societies. I would argue that
in order to understand
what
these societies are about, one
should understand their history, including the very human
motivations that
drove their foundings.
This
history is in roughly chronological order.
The Chinese Mandarin Class (1 out of 100; 1 out of 10,000; 1 out of
1,000,000)
According
to an article published in the Bulletin of the International Test
Commission,
and retold by Christopher Harding of Australia (founder of
several
high-IQ
societies), intelligence tests
were invented by the Chinese
in
the 7th Century A.D. The Mandarins who ran China for centuries were chosen by examinations that tested for memorization and understanding of the Confucian
classics and, in so
doing, screened for intelligence. Then Mandarin class was said to have three
levels: the public service (top 1 percent of all candidates), the Mandarins (top
1 percent of the public service), and inspectors (top 1 percent of the
Mandarins!).
High IQ Club
with unknown name (unknown admissions requirement)
Christopher
Harding writes that
he has come across evidence from two
different sources that a high IQ club existed in London, England
in the
1890’s.
This predates the Binet, though
not the Cattell. Harding suspects
this
club is associated with Sir Francis Galton.
The High IQ
Club (1 out of 100)
Begun in 1938 by Dr. Lance L.
Ware, a scientist and lawyer, at Oxford
University;
this club appears to be the forerunner
of Mensa. Their
requirement
was the 99th percentile on the Cattell Verbal Test. It was
somewhat
informal and produced no literature and became inactive after 1939
(during
World War II).
Mensa (1 out of 50)
Founded
at Oxford University in 1946 by Roland Berrill, a
barrister, and
Dr.
Lancelot Ware, who later also became a barrister. The original aims
were,
as they are
today, to create a society that
is non-political and free
from
all racial or religious distinctions. Mensa welcomes people from every
walk
of life whose I.Q. is in the top 2% of the population. Mensa’s primary
emphasis
is social. Some
see this as one
of the major attractions
of the society and a key recruiting tool.
There
are others who are disappointed with what Mensa has and has not
become.
At a 1996 convention celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mensa’s
founding,
Dr. Ware (now 81 years old)
voiced hope “that Mensa will have a
role
in society when it gets through
the ages of infancy and adolescence
...
but at least it
has satisfied its
members.” Dr. Ware seemed
disheartened
by the Mensan’s seeming inability to focus
beyond
self-gratifying
pursuits and apply their collective brain-power to problems
facing
the world today. “I do get
disappointed that
so many members
spend
so much time solving puzzles,”
Ware said. “It’s a form of mental masturbation.
Nothing comes of it.”
The Berkeley
High IQ Society
(Admissions requirement unknown)
Admission
to this society, founded 3 months after Mensa was founded in the
U.K., was based on College
Admission tests
to the University
of California
at
Berkeley, which was similar to the American College
Admission exams later taken
by American students across the USA
in the late 1940’s. Defunct.
Tenta (1 out of 10)
Founded
in 1959 at the 90th percentile, Tenta has been defunct for many
years.
MM Society (1 out of 2,500 nominal,
1 out of 1,000 actual)
The
MM Society (also known as “Double M”) was founded in 1966 as a Mensa’s
Mensa,
with the intent of accepting at the top 50th of the top 50th
(one-in-2500) percentile. However,
MM’s actual qualifying scores were at
almost
exactly the one-in-1000
level. It does
have the distinction of being
the
first of the “higher
IQ” societies. After its
founder died, it was
taken over by Robert Kaufmann,
who treated it as a joke, for which he got
interviewed
by Tom Snyder on national TV once. Hoeflin lists this as an
inactive or defunct society as of
the early 1980’s. The society is said to
have
published an interesting
journal.
Intertel (1 out of 100)
Intertel,
which was originally known as the International Legion of
Intelligence
(members are still known as “Ilians”), was founded in 1966 by
Ralph
Haines and now has about 1700 members in over thirty countries. Its
theme is “participation and
excellence” both within the organization and in
public
life.
The Hundred (1 out of 100)
Founded
in Melbourne, Australia by John Walsh in 1970 and
became defunct in
1977.
They had a
99-percentile admissions requirement on the Cattell higher
form
III (verbal scale) form b (supervised test) only. None other was
considered as far as Chris Harding,
who is the source of this information,
knows.
The International Heurist Association (Admission based on high-IQ and proven creative ability)
Founded
by D. H. Ratcliffe of Western
Australia in 1970 and survived until
1973.
It never had more than 19 members, and finally disbanded for lack of
interest. Most members were above the 98th
percentile in IQ and none were
below
the 95th percentile. All had proved creative ability—the basis for
their
selection was certification of an original idea by Professor I. J.
Good.
Chris Harding, who was a member, recalls this as an unusually
productive
group, writing that
at least three
members had major theories
published
around the time of the society’s existence. This society became
the
inspiration for Chris Harding’s own International Society for Philosophical
Enquiry.
The Near Mensa (1 out of 20)
Founded
in 1970 by a woman whose name Chris Harding doesn’t recall; became
defunct
by 1972. With an advertising slogan that
was apparently, “Failed Mensa? Join
the Near Mensa,” it’s unsurprising that
they went
under.
The International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (1 out of 1,000)
In
1974, Australian Christopher Harding founded a society called MENS
(Latin
for the Mind) at the 99.97th percentile to “one-up” the MM society,
which
at the time had the highest
requirement at 99.96 [nominal].
Mens later dropped its
requirement to 99.9 and called itself “The Thousand,” which in turn later adopted the name “International
Society for Philosophical Enquiry” (1976).
The
group presents
itself as the high-achievement
society that
invites and
expects creative contributions of its members. The society accepts
scores
at
the 99.9th percentile on standardized tests and designated
unsupervised
tests for admission. People join as Associates, on the basis
of their
potential;
thereafter, they
can attain the level
of Member, Fellow, Senior
Fellow,
Senior Research Fellow and Diplomate by accumulating specified
numbers of various ‘achievement,’ including such things as earning academic
degrees,
publishing, corresponding with other members, etc. The highest
title,
Philosopher, is awarded via election. Associate members, who
represent
about two-thirds of all ISPE affiliates, are not allowed to vote
in
ISPE elections.
The
ISPE is directed by a Board of Trustees consisting of three to seven
senior
members. A former member of the society criticizes the members of
the
Board who “make decisions
for the society and are answerable to no
one.” This person also objects
“that contested
elections are a rarity, with
the
decisions of the
leadership routinely rubber-stamped, that
no dissent
is
permitted in Telicom [the society’s journal], and that the ISPE [Board
of
Trustees] continues to expel people without affording them the
opportunity to present a defense and without
recourse to a vote of the
membership.”
As far as I can tell, as an outsider, this assessment appears
to
be supported by
the events of the ISPE’s history.
ISPE
used to use a 70-item vocabulary test called the
Vocab A and a
136-item vocabulary test called the
Vocab B. The original Harding
Skyscraper
test had a 10-item
vocabulary test that
[Hoeflin believes] was
later
called the Vocab C. When the ISPE required a 99.9 percentile score on
both
an I.Q. test and one
of these vocabulary tests,
it concluded that
a
person
who could pass
both tests
would be about one-in-2000
in AQ (“Ability
Quotient”).
The vocabulary test requirement was dropped in 1989 since most
IQ
tests already
test verbal ability; moreover, it was deemed unfair to
non-English
speakers to discriminate on the basis of an English-language
vocabulary
test. Another factor in the change
was that there
was no way to
control
cheating on the
vocabulary tests.
The
ISPE Vocabulary test ‘B’ can be found in its entirety with answers and
percentile
rankings in the book, The Ultimate iQ Book, by Marcel Feenstra,
Philip
J. Carter, and Christopher P. Harding, 1993 (ISBN 0-7063-7148-8). I
have
been informed that the ISPE Vocabulary test
‘A’ can be found
(presumably
in its entirety
with answers and percentile rankings) in a book
by
the same
authors, The Ultimate iQ Challenge.
This was published in maybe
1994
or 1995.
The
ISPE used to accept
Hoeflin’s Mega Test scores for admission, but
dropped
its acceptance
of that test in
1992 The society also doesn’t
accept
Kevin Langdon’s LAIT. Christopher Harding’s own W-87 is accepted,
though, despite being unsupervised,
heavily dependent on vocabulary, and
subject
to cheating
since it prohibits reference
aids. The W-87 does,
however,
have the advantage of being normed under the supervision of an
“accredited
psychologist,” according to an ISPE representative. The
disadvantage
is that an adequate report on its norming has never been
published.
When the Triple Nine Society Psychometrics Committee asked
Harding
for data on the
norming of his tests
he said that he
had discarded
it.
It is also unclear to me
whether or not
the accredited psychologist presiding over the W-87 norming was actually Chris
Harding himself.
Kevin
Langdon’s response to the ISPE’s official rationale is this: “What
many
people, even in the highest-level societies, do not realize
is that
psychometrics
is a science, though a relatively inexact one. The relevant
question
with regard to
scientific work
is whether its methodology is correct, not whether it is performed by a member of the
priesthood.”
401 Society (1 out of 10,000)
A
“secret” society
founded by Chris Harding in 1975 for the 3 or 4 people
who
had managed to reach or exceed
the one-in-10,000
level on his
Skyscraper test. The society is now defunct.
Four Sigma Society (1 out of 30,000)
The
Four Sigma Society was founded by [then] ISPE member Kevin Langdon in
1977.
The society was active for about six years (1977 - 1983). Kevin
edited
four issues of
the society’s journal Sigma Four, with an average
interval
of two months. George Koch edited eight issues from 1980 to 1983,
with
an average interval
of six months. The society accepted only
one test,
the
Langdon Adult Intelligence Test (LAIT), on which an I.Q. score of at least 164 was required (later,
other Langdon tests
were also accepted).
When
the LAIT was published in Omni, in the April 1979 issue, it was taken
by
over 25,000 people, resulting in many new
recruits for Four Sigma.
Unfortunately,
the large volume of responses to his test (which is no
longer scored), coupled with
Kevin’s propensity
for tardiness, also
produced
numerous complaints of late or non-existent score reports. Omni
eventually
sued Kevin for one
million dollars (which they
never collected).
Kevin
did eventually score the backlogged test answer sheets.
During
the late 80’s, the society was briefly revived, but it is now defunct again.
Triple Nine Society (1 out of 1,000)
The
Triple Nine Society was founded in 1979 as a more democratic
alternative
to the ISPE by Richard Canty, Ronald Hoeflin, Ronald Penner,
Edgar
Van Vleck, and Kevin Langdon, who was the driving force. At that time
a
small group of
early members of the ISPE, largely under the direction of
C.R.
Whiting (ISPE’s first elected president), had suddenly introduced an
autocratic
setup that
would perpetuate their control of the society, which
up
to that point
had been set up more democratically.
Whiting evidently
resented
Kevin for “upstaging” the ISPE’s king-of-the-hill status with its
99.9th
percentile minimum requirement by founding the Four Sigma Society in
1978
with its one-in-thirty-thousand minimum
requirement. Whiting’s response to the establishment of the Triple Nine Society
was immediate:
all
five members stopped
receiving the
ISPE journal, Telicom, and they
were
informed six months later that they had been expelled from the
society by a
secret “Ethics Committee,” whose members’
identities are still unknown
nearly
twenty years later. Hoeflin writes that
his own infraction was
apparently
that he agreed to serve as ombudsman for
the new Triple
Nine
Society,
which the ISPE’s leader construed as an attempt to “destroy” the
ISPE.
Expulsion procedures have been a consistent
source of criticism directed at the society by former members (see also entry
for Cleo Society).
Joe
O’Rourke, at the time editor of the ISPE journal, Telicom, refused to
be
a party to the actions of Whiting and company, but didn’t want to
embroil
himself further.
He wrote a scathing denunciation of the ISPE
leadership
and resigned from the editorship and the society—but he was
not
one of the
founders of TNS, as I have written earlier.
Ronald
Hoeflin served as Editor for 63 of the first 100 issues of the
Triple
Nine Society’s journal, Vidya. From around September 1985 to January
1989,
he managed to eke out a living from that
job. At the time when
Hoeflin
became Editor, the society was having a hard time finding anyone
willing
to do the job. Hoeflin presented
the society with a proposal under
which
he would be paid
a flat amount per issue of Vidya produced.
At
TNS election period
1987, Hoeflin supplied advance
copies of writings by
those
with views opposed
to his own (submitted for the election issue of
Vidya)
to their political enemies, who were thus able to reply in the same
issue. He published this election
issue after he
was ordered by
the TNS
Executive
Committee to
withdraw it until it had been substantially revised.
For
this action, the Committee
decided to replace Hoeflin as Editor.
The
election resulted in two Executive Committees,
each claiming
legitimacy.
When TNS’ funds were turned over to the Financial Officer
(Barry
Zalove) belonging to the new
faction, they continued to pay Ron to
produce
Vidya. Later, that
committee fired
Ron as Editor. Ron dropped out
of
the society altogether.
By
the time of Hoeflin’s removal, he says he could no longer
earn a living
this
way anyway, since constant squabbles and infighting had reduced
membership
from a peak of 750 to a bare
400. Continued contention in TNS
has
led to continued membership decline. Current membership is
about 160.
Ironically,
the Triple Nine Society no longer
accepts Kevin’s own tests
for
admission
because of Paul Maxim’s campaign (see entry under the Mega Society). Kevin
tried to exert his influence
upon the current admissions officer to keep listing his LAIT as an acceptable test, but to
no avail.
The High-IQ
Society (1 out of 10)
Announced
in the early 1980’s with a 90th percentile requirement like Tenta; used a mailing list supplied by
Kevin Langdon of people who had tried his LAIT, but this group did not get off the ground.
The 606 Society (6 out of 1,000,000)
The
606 Society, founded by Christopher Harding, was originally named the
501
Society, which was founded in 1980. This latter society had a 99.999 (1
in
100,000) requirement. Later the requirement was raised to the 99.9994
percentile
(6 per million)
and the society was renamed 606. Still later,
all
members of the 606 Society were inducted into the Mega Society (1 per
million
requirement) when the latter
was formed in 1982. The names of Chris
Harding’s
various societies (606, 501, 401) are derived from the various
admissions
requirement: the minimum rarity level
for 401 is one
in ten to
the
fourth, for 606 is six in ten to the sixth, etc.
Evidently,
the name “606 Society” caused some
heartburn. “Formula 606”
refers
to an early, pre-penicillin cure for syphilis based on a compound of
arsenic,
as indicated in the classic 1940 movie, “Dr. Erlich’s Magic
Bullet,”
which is a bio-drama about the inventor of this cure starring
Edward
G. Robinson. Thus the 606 Society seems to suggest that
the members
are
people who were cured of syphilis using
Formula 606!
The Mega Society (1 out of 1,000,000)
The
Mega Society was founded in 1982 by Ronald Hoeflin. The society was
initially
set up as an experiment to see if a society with a
one-in-a-million requirement could be achieved. Neither Christopher Harding
nor
Kevin Langdon thought
such a high entrance requirement
psychometrically
feasible; nevertheless Harding agreed to supplement the Mega
Society with
members
of his 606 Society (a 6-per-million
group), and Langdon allowed
Hoeflin
to use his list
of the highest
LAIT scorers, to help Hoeflin get
his
society off the ground. Hoeflin occupied the position of Administrator.
Unsurprisingly,
the Mega Society’s formation did not happen without
conflict. As Hoeflin tells it, Kevin
Langdon resented Hoeflin’s “upstaging”
of
his Four Sigma Society, and started a campaign to undermine the
society’s
status as a one-in-a-million society. Kevin
wonders why Ron would
take this position after
accepting Kevin’s help in founding the society in
the
first place! What Kevin did question was Ron’s norming of the Mega and
Titan
Tests, which
placed the ceiling at 190+. He has written that there is
evidence
that the
ceilings of Ron Hoeflin’s tests
are no higher
than 180,
such that the society’s requirement
on these tests
(43 right) is less
than
the
one-in-a-million
level. Ron has
rebutted Kevin’s claims, but neither
has ceded his position.
In
the society’s journal, Megarian (issue
#6, Oct 1982), Johannes Veldhuis,
Mega’s
Recruitment Officer, proposed that
three test scores combined
according
to a certain formula,
be required for admission in the future
and
that, as only five of Mega’s 18 members at
the time met this new
criterion, the remainder of the
membership be relegated to “honorary”
status. The rationale for this
proposal was the need to substantiate the
claim
of the Mega Society’s one-in-a-million
admission criterion
for
listings
in the Guinness Book of World Records and the Book of Lists. In
Megarian
#11, Hoeflin proposed a set of rules under which the Mega Test
would
be the only
exception to the three-test rule and Hoeflin would have
exclusive
executive power
in the society. A vote was taken
of the Mega
membership,
and Marilyn vos Savant announced the results in Megarian #15.
The
members overwhelmingly supported
an undifferentiated membership list.
In
Megarian #21 (June 1984), acceptance of a set of bylaws establishing
democratic
procedures, written by Dave Garvey, was announced. In the same
issue, Hoeflin proposed that the Mega Test become the
sole basis for
admission
to the society except in borderline cases, where supplemental
tests could be used. He also proposed that “The founder of the Mega
Society
shall be granted sole discretion in all future
admission decisions...”
Hoeflin
sent a referendum ballot to members of the society in October 1985
which
called for setting aside the bylaws, demoting most of the members of
the
society to the “Savant Society” with a lower percentile cutoff, and
creating
open-ended terms of office for officers. He threatened to resign
if
his proposals were not adopted
and did so when
they were
rejected by the
membership.
In
1986, Hoeflin tried his hand again at founding a one-in-a-million
society
with the establishment of the Titan Society, for those who had
scored
43 or higher on
the Mega Test—the admission criterion
was now
quite clear. It was subsequently also called the
Hoeflin Research Group and
the
Noetic Society, but when the sixth norming of the Mega Test put the
one-in-a-million level at just under 43, it
finally became known as the
One-in-a-Million Society [Note:
Hoeflin reverses the order
of the Noetic
Society
and the One-in-a-Million
Society in a later recollection of the
events
of that
decade]. In 1991, at the suggestion of either Jeff Ward or
Chris
Cole, the One-in-a-Million
society/Noetic Society was amalgamated with the Mega Society.
Ellen
Graham, in her article for the Wall Street Journal, April 9, 1992,
wrote:
“When the Mega Society recently decided
to merge with another IQ
group,
some members
were told they
might have to requalify for the new
society.”
This idea was suggested against the better
judgment of Hoeflin. An uproar ensued.
Christopher Harding said that
the proposal “shows some
animals to be more equal than others,” and he decried the “orgy of bloodletting.” The retest was rescinded.
The
newly merged society kept
“Mega” as its
name, but dropped The Megarian
in
favor of Noesis, which had been the name of the journal of the One-in-a-Million Society.
The
latest brouhaha
at the Mega Society emerged recently over admission
requirements.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, May 14, 1997 issue,
when
Paul Maxim of New York City
tried to join
the Mega Society, he
produced
scores he had achieved on standard
intelligence tests.
He was
refused
admission on the basis of these scores. The tests Mr. Maxim took
are
not claimed by their authors to discriminate anywhere near the
one-in-a-million level. Moreover, the society is interested in selecting
those
earning high
scores on adult tests,
while Mr. Maxim’s test scores
were
obtained in childhood. And, the society says, the Mega membership
voted
to accept 43 on the Mega and 173 on the LAIT as the society’s sole
admission
criteria.
Acceptance of any other test, or changing
either of the
qualifying
scores currently accepted, would take
another vote of the membership.
Mr.
Maxim, however, refused to take
one of the Mega
Society’s unsupervised
tests. Mr. Maxim looked at the
Mega Society’s tests,
and says he found them
“psychometrically
invalid” because they
are not standardized, not timed,
and
not sanctioned by the American Psychological Association. He contacted
the
Medical Board of California, where Mr. Langdon lives, and complained
that an unlicensed “cult of
intelligence” was operating in the state, and
specifically
that Kevin’s
mail-order I.Q.-testing business constitutes
practicing
psychology without a license.
Kevin agreed to
suspend his
mail-order testing operation while he
evaluated his legal options. He says
that the requirement for a psychology
license to
“constuct, administer, and
interpret”
intelligence tests
is legally questionable.
The
LAIT and the Mega Test are, in fact, standardized, on quite respectable
samples.
Both Langdon and Hoeflin note that
a number of the standard tests
are
untimed, such
as the Terman Concept Mastery and (often) the Raven
Advanced Progressive Matrices. Psychological research
is not, in general,
submitted
to the APA to be “sanctioned.” The only
sanction that
counts is
the
opinion of
competent authorities in the field. According to Kevin, Dr. Cattell and Dr.
Jensen regard
his work as a
valuable contribution to the study of human intelligence.
Hoeflin
further argues that adopting California’s ruling nationwide would
effectively
and unconstitutionally ban freedom
of assembly and speech as it
applies
to the formation and maintenance
of the high IQ
groups.
Prometheus Society (1 out of 30,000)
Originally
called the Xenophon Society, The Prometheus Society was founded
by
Ronald Hoeflin in 1982, the same
year as his founding of the Mega
Society.
The group was conceived of as a pool of people with very high
I.Q.s
that Hoeflin could consult to take various forms of his tests for the
purpose of psychometric research.
The society also provided
an alternative
to
Kevin Langdon’s Four Sigma Society; Hoeflin launched Prometheus after it
became
clear that Four Sigma was really
dormant.
Exa Society (1 out of 1,000,000,000,000,000)
The
Exa Society is a name suggested
by Richard May in the August 1983 issue
of
Vidya, the journal of the Triple Nine Society, as a society that would
accept
only one entity per 10-to-the-15th power, meant as a parody of the
“Mega”
Society’s name. In
the same
article, Richard May suggested
the
“Plus Sigma Society,” meant as a parody of the Four Sigma Society,
whose
admission
level being
flexible, would be defined as always one
sigma or
standard deviation higher than the next highest high-IQ society’s admission
standard.
The Cinque (5 smartest people in the world)
The
Cinque is a name proposed by Ronald Hoeflin in a letter to Johannes
Veldhuis
[former Mega Society membership officer] in the mid-1980’s, to
consist
of the 5 smartest people in the world, and whenever a smarter
person
came along, one
of the members of The Cinque would be bumped into an
“emeritus”
status.
Johannes informed
Hoeflin that
“The Cinque” had been the
name
of some
murderous secret
society, so
Hoeflin dropped the idea.
The Aleph-(3) Society (transfinite admissions requirement)
The
Aleph-(3) Society is a name suggested
by Richard May in the October
1986
issue of Vidya
for the world’s first high-IQ
society with a
transfinite
admissions requirement. May wrote that
“the entity commonly
referred
to as ‘god’ is only
at the aleph-(1) level,
according to the scale
of
the precise quantification of divinity.”
“The
Aleph” is May’s ultimate achievement in the realm of naming
ultra-high-IQ societies. Hoeflin [the
source of this material]
assumes that
this
name refers to “the set of all sets,” which Cantor showed to be a
logical
impossibility. In his October 1986 article, May says that some have
described
this society as “analogous
to a sort of cosmic Klein bottle,
having
neither ‘inside’
nor ‘outside’, which would be too parochial
a
burden,”
and May concludes that
this society does not accept “unnormed,
unrecognized,
and non-‘g’-saturated tests,
such as the
somewhat obscure
Klein-Bottle
Test [an allusion
to Ed Cyr’s “Mobius Test”], which is
allegedly
so easily
confused with other tests,
as proof of qualification,
or
as a ‘backup’ for a spurious
Ripley’s [Believe
It Or Not] listing. Such
is
the austere rigor
of the Aleph.”
Geniuses of
Distinction Society (G.O.D.S.) (1 out of 250 to 1 out of 100,000)
GODS
was founded sometime in the 80’s by Anton Montalban-Anderssen, and has
claimed
minimum requirements ranging from the 99.6 to 99.999 percentile. The society is listed in the Encyclopedia of
Associations but accepts no new
members, according to Anton, and apparently has never published a journal.
Cincinnatus Society (1 out of 1,000)
Cincinnatus
was founded by Grady Ward in 1987 at the 99.9 percentile during
a
bitter dispute in the Triple Nine Society. Grady Ward declared himself
Dictator,
which some
found preferable to the chaos in TNS. Apparently
defunct
since about 1989. It seems Grady faked his own death (there was a
death
notice in the “Mensa Bulletin”), but has become well-known in
Internet
free speech
advocacy circles for his opposition to the Church of
Scientology.
Minerva Society (1 out of 1,000)
Founded
in 1987 by Kevin Langdon, Fred Britton, Jalon Leach, and Richard
Weatherwax
at the 99.9 percentile. Minerva was founded in response to the
same dispute in TNS that led to the founding of
Cincinnatus. In 1992, Minerva sought to be amalgamated with the Triple Nine
Society, but the talks collapsed. Minerva accepted a variety of tests, including Kevin Langdon’s
“Polymath Intellectual Ability Scale,” published in Games magazine in 1987.
Camelopard, The Giraffe Society (1 out of 50)
Camelopard
was founded in 1988 by Lendon Best as a society for San Diego
Mensans
who were tired
of paying
Mensa’s high
dues. Camelopard offered much
lower
dues. The society’s growth rate has slowed, but it has acquired
enough
new members to
avoid declining
and maybe to grow a little. Most
of
the
members now do not live in the San
Diego area. There is a story here behind the giraffe
(which was set up in opposition to a big owl), but I don’t know what it is.
The Omega Society (1 out of 3,000,000)
Included Chris Harding as a member,
who says he was not the founder. Kevin
Langdon,
who was also a member, says he received
a membership card and a thin
newsletter from Chris. Existed from about 1987 to 1989, and is now apparently
defunct.
The Top One
Percent Society (1 out of 100)
TOPS
was founded by Ronald Hoeflin soon after he was fired as Editor of
Vidya
(journal of the Triple Nine Society). Since editing a high-IQ journal
proved to be the most enjoyable job Hoeflin ever
had, except for the low
pay, he decided to start a new society in 1989 that he hoped would be large
enough
to yield a decent income. The Top One Percent Society’s admission
criterion was chosen to provide a large enough pool of
people to make a job
as
editor of the journal feasible,
yet still keep
the intellectual quality
of
the discussions at a relatively high
level. To avoid
the types of
disputes seen in the other groups, Hoeflin made himself sole officer as well as
the editor of the journal.
The International Savant Society (No specific requirement)
This
society was announced in an issue
of the Mensa Bulletin sometime in
the
late 1980’s, had a nice-looking introductory leaflet, had no specific
IQ
requirement, and was mostly looking for high achievers. Status is unknown.
The Cleo Society
The
Cleo Society was founded in 1990 by ISPE Director of Admissions Clint
Williams
as a parody of
the High-IQ
groups. He named it after a cat belonging to [then] ISPE president Betty
Hansen. He used
the ISPE membership roster to advertise for his society, which violated a rule
of the ISPE’s charter against commercial use of the roster.
According
to an ISPE representative, the Board of Trustees which voted to
expel
Mr. Williams didn’t realize that
Cleo was meant
as a mock society.
This
assertion seems disingenuous
to me—it seems
obvious to me that at
least Mrs. Hansen should have realized this. In any
case the Board expelled
Mr.
Williams without a hearing and no notice prior to the vote, and later
made
an announcement in Telicom, the ISPE’s journal. ISPE’s Legal Officer
and
Vice-President John Kormes took
an active role in these proceedings.
Later,
when Mr. Kormes was himself expelled by the same procedure, he filed
suit and claimed wrongful
expulsion. The judge in the case ruled against him, saying that although Mr. Kormes was
entitled to a hearing under the ISPE’s charter, since Mr. Kormes had approved of and participated in
Mr.
Williams’s
expulsion he had no cause to complain about his own expulsion,
which
followed the same procedure. Since Mr.
Kormes’s lawsuit cost quite
a
bit
of money, the charter was amended in 1994 to bar from membership any person who
brought a lawsuit against the ISPE.
A
criticism made of ISPE was that
their expulsion procedure appeared to be
arbitrary and rather autocratic. In
fact, at the time, there was no
explicit procedure written into the
charter to define the expulsion of a
member—an
unfortunate circumstance that
has been the source of
long-standing animosity between the ISPE officers and
former members. I
understand that procedures have been
defined for removing officers,
Trustees,
and the President from their positions; however, I’m not sure if
expulsion
procedures from the Society have been defined.
According
to the ISPE representative, after it came to light that
the Cleo
Society
was in fact a parody,
Mr. Williams was reinstated into ISPE.
According
to others, it was well known what the Cleo Society was about—
Mr.
Williams was reinstated after professing contrition.
The International High
Five Society (1 out of 20)
The
High Five is
open to anyone testing
above the 95th
percentile on a
standardized
test of intelligence. Founded in 1991. This group is defunct.
The One-in-a-Thousand
Society (1 out of 1,000)
Founded
in July, 1992 by Ronald Hoeflin. Hoeflin wrote in issue 1 of Oath
that his “main purpose in founding the society
[was] to put out more than
two
issues of a
journal per
month [at that
time, In-Genius,
the journal of
the
Top One Percent
Society was on a twice-per-month
schedule]
without putting an additional financial burden on those TOPS members who cannot
afford it. The purpose
of OATHS, like that of TOPS, is the exchange of
ideas on a wide range of topics by intelligent people.” Hoeflin is
sole officer of this society, in an arrangement similar to TOPS.
The IQuadrivium Society (1 out of 1,000)
Founded
in 1994 by Karyn S. Huntting. Open to individuals who score in the
99.9th
percentile on a standardized adult intelligence test. Karyn relates
the
history of her society quite
well at her IQuadrivium page. Trivia question: what is the etymology of the society’s name?
Energeia Society (Admissions requirement unknown)
Energeia
is a society for intelligent
Christians, principly made up of
Christians
from other high
IQ societies. Dr Richard Kirby and Ted Bell are
co-founders.
The Giga Society (1 out of 1,000,000,000)
No,
it’s not a joke, or maybe it is, I’m not too sure. Both the name of the
society
and its journal
(Nemesis) appear
to be poking fun
at the Mega
Society
(whose journal name is Noesis). Also, it’s hard for me
to believe a
society
with such a
strict requirement could
ever get off the
ground
(assuming the world population is 6
billion, only 6
people could
qualify).
But
if it is possible,
Paul Cooijmans of the Netherlands
can claim credit.
Paul
says the main goal of the Giga Society is “to honor the efforts of the
very
highest scorers,
who are of great
importance to
the development of
ultra-high-ceiling tests for mental abilities. A
secondary goal is to make
members
of other IQ societies realize they’re
not all that, although
they
may
think they are.” Paul founded this
unlikely society in 1996 and has
created
an admissions test called the “Test for Genius” (TFG, short and
long form). The short form is a
42-item test (it
used to have 45
items, but
Paul
has discarded 3 problems). The current norming of
the short form (3rd)
is
based on 38 answer
sheets, and places the one-in-a-billion
level at
about
35 correct out
of 42. So far,
the highest
score on this test has been
28
correct, so it may take a while before somebody
qualifies for the Giga
Society
based upon a TFG score. By the way, Paul estimates the ceiling of
his
test to be at an astronomical one-in-100
billion (which would identify
the
smartest person who ever lived). The only
member of the Giga got
in because he gave
himself a founder’s exemption.
The Glia Society (1 out of 1,000)
The
Glia Society was founded in 1997 by Paul Cooijmans. The main goal of
the
society is to provide
a forum for communication
between highly
intelligent individuals. The entrance
requirement is 3.125 standard
deviations
above the mean (150 IQ for tests that have 16 IQ points per
sigma)
on “wide range” tests which contain visual-spatial, verbal,
and
numeric
problems, while
it is around 160 IQ on “one-sided”
tests. So far,
the
Glia Society has three members including
the founder (as of July, 1997)
Praesum Mentis Genius
Continuum (1 out of 33, plus
creative achievement)
Similar in principle to the International Heuristic Association, the
admission
requirements to this society are twofold: a score on a
standardized
IQ test at or above
the 97th percentile, plus
“the applicant
must
have generated a significant
body of work in
their area of expertise,
skill
or talent that
is demonstrably unique
and revolutionary in nature.” I
don’t
know who the founder of this group is, nor the founding date. But they do have a website with a contact for those who are interested.
Change History:
9/4/97
Cleo Society section is worded more strongly
against the official
ISPE
version.
9/4/97
Removed criticism of Triple Nine’s journal publication schedule.
The
schedule seems
to be highly dependent upon the particular Editor at the time.
9/4/97
Moved paragraphs
on Ron’s Editorship of Vidya from the TOPS
section
to the TNS section. Modified these paragraphs based upon input from Kevin
Langdon.
9/4/97
Added information
to the Minerva Society.
9/4/97
Added information
to the Cincinnatus Society.
9/4/97
The Mega Society story now has input from Kevin Langdon, and is
contrasted
with Ron Hoeflin’s version.
9/4/97
Deleted Joe O’Rourke as a founding member of the Triple Nine
Society—again.
I believe it is
finally correct!
9/4/97
The ISPE section continues to become more unflattering.
9/4/97
The MM society’s actual admission requirement was at the 99.9th
percentile.
7/26/97Added
comments made by Co-founder of Mensa spoken on Mensa’s 50th
anniversery.
7/16/97Added
information
about Energeia.
7/16/97Make
a note of Triple Nine’s leisurely publication schedule, which
more
than one person
has complained of.
7/16/97Put
back in the speculative reason for ISPE’s non-acceptance of
Hoeflin’s
Mega Test as a footnote. Having had a chance to
correspond
with participants from both sides of the fence, I make
my
own judgment of what actually happened.
7/16/97Corrected the admission requirement
listed for the Exa Society. It
should be one-in-1,000,000,000,000,000,
substantially tighter than
a
one-in-1,000,000,000
requirement!
7/16/97Give less credit to Harding and
Langdon in the founding of the
Mega
Society.
7/16/97Added
origin of Chris
Harding’s various “numerical” groups (401,
501,
606 Societies). Also added a source of criticism directed at
the
name of the 606 Society.
7/16/97Added
Joe O’Rourke as a founding member of the Triple Nine
Society.
7/6/97
Added section on the Praesum Mentis Genius
Continuum.
6/30/97Broke
out a separate
section to talk about the Cleo Society.
6/29/97The
idea that former ISPE president Betty
Hansen could be granted
surreptitious editorial control of Vidya,
the journal of the Triple Nine Society, through Clint Williams seems far-fetched to me. I have removed this portion
from ISPE’s history.
6/29/97Removed
the speculation that
ISPE doesn’t accept the Mega Test or
the
LAIT out of animosity
towards the authors. The practice of
using only psychologist-approved tests, notwithstanding the
validity of the tests themselves, at least has the merit of
circumventing
problems such as the Mega Society has had
with Paul
Maxim.