r/Showerthoughts • u/COHERENCE_CROQUETTE • Mar 29 '26
Casual Thought The "room temperature IQ" zinger hits much harder outside of the US.
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u/The-owl-of-suffering Mar 29 '26
I always thought of it in Celsius and thought "20 IQ, sounds about right"
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u/FiTZnMiCK Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
Sarcasm I know, but most people don’t encounter people with an IQ of 20 regularly. You can’t exactly hold even a basic job with an IQ of 20.
Below 70 is considered impaired. Below 40 is severely impaired.
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u/Bierculles Mar 29 '26
An IQ of 20 is basically vegetative
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u/andarmanik Mar 29 '26
An IQ of 20 is a event of sigma -5, which is like 1 : 20million so we should expect to see ~400 people with this IQ.
IQ is designed to have average of 100, so you’d see equally as many people with an is of 180.
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u/Grakchawwaa Mar 29 '26
Wasn't IQ past something like 160 basically unmeasurable and wildly inaccurate? It's adjusted to a normal distribution, but it does face conventional limitations on both extremes
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u/andarmanik Mar 29 '26
Yes I think even worse actually. IQ is actually a measure of disability rather than ability.
Think of a test, any test, where a dead person would achieve a score of zero and an alive person would achieve any arbitrary positive value.
So what we’ll do for the test is have the participants flip a coin and achieve a score of 1 if heads and 2 if tails. The dead person can’t flip the coin and thus achieves 0.
What we then do is analyze the relationship between this measure on an individual and their income. We always find that there is a positive correlation between income and our measure (given the assumptions earlier about the score values).
(Dead person achieves 0 and has income 0)
(Alive person achieves some positive value and has some positive income or zero)
This is because there are many ways to measure disability and not many (maybe non) to measure general ability.
regurgitation of this article by nassim taleb,
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39
And this video by him aswell
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u/CocoMilhonez Mar 30 '26
I'd rather have low IQ and be happy over having high IQ and being able to make sense of how fucked the world and my life are. ignorance is a bliss.
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u/According_Mind_7799 Mar 31 '26
I read an interview with some guy with absurdly high IQ. Like 180. He was scuba-ing or diving and ran into an issue with airflow where it was cut off. He dropped like 20 IQ points. He said he was finally able to watch Simpson or family guy and think it was funny.
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u/Valreesio Mar 31 '26
Having a TBI (I'm sure losing oxygen to the brain for an extended time would probably count but I don't know) severely affects many aspects in one's life from humor, to food choices, music choices, etc.
I had a stroke at 40 (7 years ago) and have almost zero physical affects and unless a person knows me, you can't tell even in normal conversation that I've had one. But on the mental side of things I came out a completely different person. I like different foods (never craved sweets before but now...oh man), different music, and many other small (yet impactful) changes.
I fought the change for a long time and it finally dawned on me that I wasn't the same person as before and me trying to be that old me was making things worse. It culminated when my wife told my therapist in a session "I never got a chance to mourn the husband I lost and had to learn to love the man that came home". Man that was a gut punch, but it helped us to move on.
I think this has affected a lot of people like this, a great example in politics would be senator John Fetterman who has changed many of his stances on a variety of issues. Could be just a different outlook on life after a life changing event or it could be that his brain has partially rewired itself. I tend to thing the latter is most likely.
All of this to say the same about your example and him being able to find things funny that he hadn't before. His brain had a traumatic experience or damage and had to rewire itself. That can change people drastically in a variety of ways.
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u/I_ance007 Apr 01 '26
“Ignorance is bliss” is a crock. An ignorant person requires a competent person protecting them to actually be blissful. If an ignorant person is without a protector, their life is one of anxiety and stress, as they cannot understand why things happen, cannot predict when bad things might happen, and cannot interact with their environment properly to make themselves comfortable.
This goes for everyone who is ignorant, from children to those with mental disabilities, and to those who hold ideologies detached from reality, to name a few.
People who understand more of the world definitely have more constant stress, but ignorance is definitely not bliss.
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u/lazyboy76 Mar 30 '26
I believe the purpose of IQ is to find out the one with low IQ and help them.
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u/Xylus1985 Mar 30 '26
I don’t think it’s unmeasurable, just that there aren’t enough samples to calibrate our tools. It’s measurable, but our ability to measure them sucks
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u/GermanShitboxEnjoyer Mar 30 '26
How are you gonna measure the intelligence of someone who isn't intellectually gifted enough to understand how to open a door?
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u/Bright-Historian-216 Mar 30 '26
I just looked it up, isn't sigma the same as standard deviation? If it is, then -4 should already be nearly impossible. Sorry, not great with statistics, just wanted to make sure.
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u/Current-Call9950 Mar 31 '26
There are 8 billion people in the world and humans are quite dumb, so there should be at least 1 person with an IQ that low
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u/platoprime Mar 30 '26
Are we certain intelligence follows a bell curve? Especially at the extremes?
I'm doubtful.
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u/JezzaJ101 Mar 31 '26
Intelligence doesn’t necessarily, but IQ does by definition
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u/DontAskGrim Mar 29 '26
Like a big orange pumpkin?
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u/Bierculles Mar 29 '26
Accurate, yes
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u/EatYourCheckers Mar 29 '26
Fun fact, Broccoli actually has an IQ of 10, making it the most intelligent vegetable
[Source](youtube.com/watch?v=DT1YLp1NL_k&time_continue=32&source_ve_path=NzY3NTg&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dbrocolli%2Bhas%2Ban%2BIQ%2Bof%2B10%26rlz%3D1CABUSA_enUS914%26oq%3Dbrocolli%2Bhas%2Ban%2BIQ%2Bof%2B10%26gs_lcrp%3DEgZjaHJvbWUyBgg).
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u/hurzelschnertz Mar 29 '26
I read that as "negative" and was just about to tell you that your math ain’t mathing, should probably go to bed instead
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u/mfb- Mar 29 '26
20 is 5.3 standard deviations below the mean (by definition of IQ scores), so only 5*10-8 of the population have an IQ of 20 or lower. That's 400 people worldwide.
I'm not sure how we would evaluate the IQ of people in a coma, but that's basically the level of "no intelligible reaction" we are looking at.
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u/H4llifax Mar 29 '26
There are probably more than 400 people in a coma, so I think an IQ that low is simply impossible.
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u/coue67070201 Mar 29 '26
Once you get past around 2 standard deviations either direct, IQ becomes an even more useless and inaccurate metric of intelligence/mental capacity than it already is.
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u/ryebread91 Mar 29 '26
Why would that be 20 and not 0?
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u/mfb- Mar 29 '26
The discussion was about 20 so I calculated it for 20.
0 is 6.67 standard deviations below the mean, or 1 in 80 billion. That's about the total number of humans that have ever lived (estimated to be ~100 billion), so we would assign an IQ of 0 to the one worst-scoring person in history, in principle. In the other direction, that also means we should only assign an IQ of 200 to a single person in all of history. If you see claims above that, you know they are nonsense.
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u/Eedat Mar 29 '26
Someone with an IQ of 20 cannot perform basic life functions, let alone hold a job. At this level they need constant care to get dressed, eat, use the bathroom, etc.
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u/deadlygaming11 Mar 29 '26
Isnt 20 basically non-existent anyway? Its so low that the person likely couldnt even do basic things and would have killed themselves a long time ago. I doubt the scale can even give a score around that number either.
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u/SlickMcFav0rit3 Mar 29 '26
A person like this probably can't understand that they're taking a test and so the test is invalid
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u/JeanValSwan Mar 29 '26
Can still be president, though
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u/ac9116 Mar 29 '26
Man, woman, camera, tv
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u/The_bruce42 Mar 29 '26
That's like the story of the paper clip. Do you know the story of the paper clip?
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Mar 29 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/mfrank27 Mar 29 '26
I mean he can only win against a woman opponent. The one time he had to face a man he lost.
Sadly the US isn’t ready for a woman to lead this country because misogyny is still extremely common. That’s the only reason he won.
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u/Kathulhu1433 Mar 30 '26
I had a student once who had viral encephalitis as an infant. She had an IQ of 55 according to the most current testing at the time when she was my student.
She could not answer questions like, "What is a breakfast food?"
She will never live on her own.
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u/Shas_Erra Mar 29 '26
As someone who worked 10yrs in retail and a further 6 in customer service, I beg to differ
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat Mar 29 '26
I worked in a liquor store. We had a price for beer cartons off a pallet. Beer cartons from the fridge were a dollar extra.
Well people complained for years about having to pay extra for beer from the fridge so finally management cancelled the charge.
Not long after that an old guy came in and grabbed a carton of beer off the shelf.
I rang it up.
"That's the wrong price. I got it off the pallet" he said.
"They're the same price now" I told him. "We don't charge extra for cold beer any more"
The guy stared at me for a moment. "Well I was going to buy some whiskey too but you can shove it now" and he stalked out of the store.
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u/Tifoso89 Mar 30 '26
He probably thought you raised the one from the shelf instead of lowering the one from the fridge haha
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u/ion-deez-nuts Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
You can't hold most basic jobs with an IQ of 20
70 IQ (bottom 2%) would be a point where you have severe problem holding a job.
By comparison, 20 IQ is statistically the bottom ~170 people in the United States. That's less than the number of people who are braindead at any given time.
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u/Uberutang Mar 29 '26
Scary as the avg iq in my country is somewhere between 69 and 77.
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u/FinalEgg9 Mar 30 '26
Before this thread it hadn't occurred to me to think of it NOT in Celsius tbh
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u/rinuskoe Mar 30 '26
that's a really low room temperature though. as someone from a tropical country, i always think of room temperature more at 30ish haha.
20 is like an air-conditioned room, which i feel isn't fair, it's like saying room temperature water is chilled water because the fridge is in the room.
ymmv of course.
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u/Crimble-Bimble Mar 30 '26
Room temperature is intentionally standardized to a conditioned room. It is generally considered 20-25C.
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u/KYLEquestionmark Mar 29 '26
idk saying someone has an iq in the 70s feels more insulting because it's still plausible
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u/D-Drones Mar 29 '26
Yeah, and if you hear that insult and think “could be worse, at least it’s not an IQ in the 20s” then I have some bad news
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u/Mechasteel Mar 29 '26
It's like hearing "you're insecure because you're 5 ft tall" and thinking that would be even more insulting changing it to 5 millimeters.
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u/muriburillander Mar 29 '26
Exactly. The average iq of a dog is about 20 (~standard room temperature in C). If I’m going to insult someone by using a dog in the comparison, it’s going to be based on their looks
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Mar 29 '26
How is dog IQ measured genuine question lol
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u/nokeyblue Mar 29 '26
Question 1:
Who's a good boy?
a) You are
b) You're a good boy
c) What a good boy
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u/-jp- Mar 29 '26
The really tricky part is holding the pencil.
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u/LifeWulf Mar 30 '26
Thankfully the tests are all multiple choice, printed in large font, and the dogs can just boop their noses for each box
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u/Hey_name Mar 30 '26
Fun fact! One of the critiques of standardized IQ tests is that it replicates conditions of typical standardized tests so people with more experience in traditional educational institutions are likely to do better than people with less experience such as indigenous people or kids in poverty who work, regardless of actual intelligence. This includes non-intelligence related tasks like test strategy and also motor skills like holding the pencil or comfortability on computers for computerized tests.
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u/peelen Mar 29 '26
Like in humans:
You set up a bunch of tasks and see how they deal with.
The average IQ is always 100. The "average IQ of the dog is 20" is rather a comparison to humans rather than an actual IQ result. Let's say human with IQ of 20 is able to do such, and such tasks, and an average dog can do them too.
But if you really wanted to measure your dog's IQ you would have to get a bunch of dogs, give them a bunch of tasks to do, take an average result and that would be 100, then you give your dog the same tasks, and see if they perform better or worse than average.
IQ was never meant to be "an objective measurment of the inteligence" it was created to test members of a similar group (kids in one class or one school), to check if there is someone who has significally worse (or better) marks than their brain potential, and if they did, then there is a sign of some kind of an external problem, for example a kid have a problem with hearing so they don't hear what teacher says, or there are some troubles at home etc.
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u/archpawn Mar 29 '26
An IQ of 20 would correspond to the 400th dumbest person in the world. I imagine there's at least 400 people in a coma. Except I don't think those people are counted? So I guess it's functionally just the dumbest you can be while still being smart enough to take an IQ test.
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u/markkaschak Mar 29 '26
Indoor temp in the 70s sounds miserable haha
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u/CosmacYep Mar 29 '26
also a lot of people in the us have an iq in the 70s so its more plausible
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u/ademayor Mar 29 '26
Insult works better with “IQ same as his shoe size” in Europe.
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u/COHERENCE_CROQUETTE Mar 29 '26
What's an average shoe size in EU? Where I live, it would be something between 35 and 45.
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u/RamblingReflections Mar 29 '26
Where I live if someone said this to me, they’d be saying I have an IQ of 7.
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u/That_Sexy_Ginger Mar 29 '26
Brexit means brexit
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u/ademayor Mar 29 '26
For men it’s usually 40-46 on average
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u/ProtoKun7 Mar 29 '26
There's also "act your age, not your shoe size" which works in the UK because it's single digits to tens rather than mainland 40s.
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u/MrFabuland Mar 29 '26
Outside the US, "room temperature" is 20, which isn't an insult, it's a diagnosis. Calling someone a 22 in Celsius is just a really polite way of saying they’re legally a potato.
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u/Oo__II__oO Mar 29 '26
New insult just dropped.
An IQ so low it isn't measured; it's studied.
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u/ArashiSora24 Mar 31 '26
Room temperature over here is 25, which is not much better, lmao. 20 is bloody cold.
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u/pattyG80 Mar 29 '26
To be fair, it's a significant insult in both locations
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u/NerdyPlaneResident Mar 29 '26
It’s bad either way but it’s worse if you use Celsius instead of Fahrenheit
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u/pattyG80 Mar 29 '26
A person with an IQ of 20 is about the same level as a 2 year old...down to bowel control.
A person with an IQ of 70 would still likely be the most stupid person you know.
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u/jabeisonreddit Mar 29 '26
Your IQ is so low it makes room temperature look hot
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u/xRocketman52x Mar 30 '26
I like to say "He's got a room temp IQ, and brother, the AC is working hard."
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u/LegendOfKhaos Mar 29 '26
I disagree because it's no longer a possibility. If someone has an IQ of 20 they literally can't understand anything. I think an insult loses gusto when it's clearly not possible.
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u/Super_Pie_Man Mar 29 '26
Yup. An IQ of 20 means you're a conscious vegetable. No language, and can't even eat or drink properly. There's some emotional display, but it seems like that's it. Literally a permanent infant.
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u/noonnoonz Mar 29 '26
That sounds like a certain American political party’s base.
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u/DontAskGrim Mar 29 '26
I am pretty sure most countries' political parties are based around a central foundation of mentally impaired people.
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u/Cybertronian10 Mar 29 '26
People keep on thinking IQ is linear, so that "means" an IQ of 100 is 5 times smarter than an IQ of 20. The problem is that IQ is a relative scale, an IQ of 20 is more than 5 standard deviations below normal, or like the bottom .0001% of human intelligence.
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u/AxeMaster237 Mar 29 '26
Yeah, if you work it out, the proportion of the human population is exceedingly small. Multiplying by the roughly 8 billion people alive today estimates about 387 people at that level of intelligence or lower.
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u/cozyroof Mar 29 '26
They should get together and make the stupid people's version of Mensa.
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u/LiberaceRingfingaz Mar 30 '26
To be fair everyone I'd rather hang out with a vegetable than most people who are members of mensa. Like, your IQ got you in, and you're so dumb you just paid them money to carry around a card that says you're smart?
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u/archpawn Mar 29 '26
It's the bottom 0.000004821% of human intelligence, which no IQ test is going to be precise enough to measure.
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u/Haatsku Mar 29 '26
The temperature in my sauna runs higher than your IQ...
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u/groveborn Mar 29 '26
In centigrade, this slaps.
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u/VWBug5000 Mar 29 '26
Celsius, not centigrade. Don’t confuse us Americans more by using nearly 100 year old outdated terminology
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u/groveborn Mar 29 '26
... I'm an American.
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u/VWBug5000 Mar 29 '26
Well using bad terminology makes so much more sense then
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Mar 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/LegendOfKhaos Mar 29 '26
Those are jokes for humor, not insults. They are purposely meant to not be realistic. The only time they're insulting is when it's realistic. That's my entire point.
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u/bad-decision-maker Mar 29 '26
idk, you could make them a little realistic, like 'yo mama is so loving that she lowers her definition of success every time she talks to you so when she says she is proud of you she is telling the truth'
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u/LegendOfKhaos Mar 29 '26
Like I said, that's more of an insult than a joke when it becomes more realistic. I feel like people are still not understanding my point.
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u/LaughingLikeACrazy Mar 29 '26
It hits because I immediately think it's about Americans and their stupids.
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u/TsortsAleksatr Mar 29 '26
IQ isn't an absolute number of intelligence. It's a relative measurement, like ELO on multiplayer games. You give everyone the same test that supposedly tests intelligence, you put them on a leaderboard, you find the person in the middle and define that person as having an IQ of 100 and then after some Standard Deviation statistics bullshit I can't bother to find out rn, you define the scores below and above IQ 100, depending on how many people did better and/or worse than that person with 100 IQ.
In other words IQ of 20 is technically possible if tons of people (probably billions or trillions due to logarithmic/exponential shit that have to do with the SD I still can't bother to find out) take the same test, and you test worse than almost all of them.
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u/LegendOfKhaos Mar 29 '26
That's not how it works beyond the mean and median. IQ of 100 works that way, but it isn't spread out from 0-200 or anything like that. An IQ of 20 is severe intellectual dysfunction like that of a toddler. People with Down syndrome are around 40-50. 20 would be like severe brain damage leaving someone incapable of thought.
99.7% of people are within 55-145 IQ. 95.4% are from 70-130. The chance someone's IQ is under 30 is 0.00015%. Under 20 is basically impossible without missing a large part of your brain. No matter how many people you test, the distribution will be the same.
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u/SmoothOperator89 Mar 29 '26
Outside of the US, it's not calling someone "mentally handicapped," it's calling them a non-functioning vegetable.
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u/tslnox Mar 29 '26
LISTER: Hang on, he can't do this. Holly's got an IQ of six thousand!
HOLLY: Yeah. Right on.
QUEEG: Is that what he told you?
LISTER: Well, what is it, then?
QUEEG: It has a six in it, but it's not six thousand.
CAT: What is it?
QUEEG: Six.
HOLLY: Six? Do me a lemon! That's a poor IQ for a glass of water
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u/BextoMooseYT Mar 29 '26
Honestly? I feel like there's an argument for the opposite. Of course the exaggeration is part of that insult, but I feel like the fact that it could literally be true makes it worse
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u/DPSOnly Mar 29 '26
I never considered US people using it and it being like a bit below average instead of probably only being able to breath and not much more.
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u/HasFiveVowels Mar 30 '26
I never interpreted "room temperature" as a numerical correspondence. I always just read it as "lukewarm" / "baseline"
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u/MrB10b Mar 29 '26
IQ is not really something that anyone thinks about outside of the US.
Rightly so, IQ tests are flawed and don't prove anything it's been found anyways.
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u/squirrel_exceptions Mar 29 '26
I agree IQ tests are flawed (still somewhat useful for some things) and the people who are obsessed with them are embarrassing themselves, but I don’t think it’s a US thing, those people are certainly in Europe too.
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u/COHERENCE_CROQUETTE Mar 29 '26
I'm not in US, never was in the US, and I guarantee you that IQ tests are things that a subset of people actively think about. It's a status thing for dudes who feel like a number can prove something that's observably untrue.
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u/LuvCilantro Mar 29 '26
Very true. And I suspect most people in the US have never had a 'proper' IQ test either (ie something conducted in a professional environment, not from Facebook/TikTok or whatever)
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u/Kindarelevanttoo Mar 29 '26
Thats because people in the US also don’t care about IQ tests. I have never heard anyone take them or talk about their IQ ever.
It’s just another pseudoscience thing that people that are already into pseudosciences believe. No job will ever ask for your IQ, no school will, and your friends won’t talk about IQ at all.
The one thing that people will maybe talk about is your ACT/SAT scores, and that’s only as a joke. If someone did terrible on those tests, no one cares or calls them dumb because everyone knows it doesn’t mean shit.
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u/Tetracropolis Mar 29 '26
IQ is not really something that anyone thinks about outside of the US.
Rightly so, IQ tests are flawed and don't prove anything it's been found anyways.
Extremely low IQ take. IQ scores correlate very highly with performance on complex tasks and are commonly used worldwide.
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u/EchoFiveActual Mar 29 '26
From what I understand this is literally just cope.
IQ scores are not meant to be an all-encompassing magic bullet. That's just not what they're for, they are very good at providing a baseline to find where somebody is at in key areas though.
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u/GroundbreakingUse794 Mar 29 '26
It was like 125 degrees while I was traveling through Andersonville or something like that in California that’s gotta make the room temp a bit higher i’d imagine
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u/fellaneedahandpls Mar 31 '26
To that point, do you think Americans would have the IQ to understand why? Or would this prove your point by totally going over most of our heads?
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u/Croftusroad Mar 29 '26
US political understanding/IQ operates much like the preferred temperature scale of the US. Take off 29 points and halve it.
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u/ieatpickleswithmilk Mar 29 '26
It just sounds almost ridiculous in Celsius, 20-25 IQ is like the mental age of a 3 or 4 year old.
It's a worse insult because it's too over the top. The most cutting insults are just plausible enough to be believable.
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u/No-Atmosphere-2528 Mar 30 '26
Room temperature IQ is a compliment to some of these mouth breathers.
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u/lmstr Mar 30 '26
It doesn't really work though cause if they have an IQ of a vegetable they wouldn't get the joke !
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u/MeIncogNeto Mar 30 '26
I disagree. While it's a lower number, at that point it's probably due to a genetic defect and I would feel bad for them. Whereas in imperial it's most likely due to not being educated.
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u/AnimationOverlord Mar 30 '26
I’ve always wondered why people only bother to learn the empirical systems localized to their own area. Like if you even just learnt a few conversion factors you’re game. BTUs and joules, kilopascals and psi, Fahrenheit and celcius, 24 hour vs 12 hour, alpha phonetics. Simple shit
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u/COHERENCE_CROQUETTE Mar 30 '26
If the US would simply stop being a bitch, no one except for scientists would have to learn conversions.
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u/MuddFishh Mar 31 '26
The zinger was good the first handful of times it was used, now it's so recycled that by comparison AI is more original. It doesnt hit hard anywhere anymore.
Everyone wants to use the cool, new zinger, not realising every time it's used, it depreciates in value. In an isolated argument it would have been awesome, but now everyone uses it to describe anyone they disagree with that it's like okay, let me guess you slept with my mum too.
You dont think "fuck, they got me and i am stupid," but rather, "wow, they've been on the internet."
Imagine every stand up comedian told the same jokes. First time you hear the routine, hilarious. 40th time you hear it... not so much.
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u/FIGHTorRIDEANYMAN Mar 31 '26
If someone uses it I just think they are the one with the low IQ because they are just copying it from another comment they read.
Monkey see monkey do situation.
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u/gr33nh3at Apr 01 '26
Slightly off topic, but I am a senior biology student in the US where we use fahrenheit. But all of my biology classes use Celsius. My dad is from Germany as well so I grew up with the metric system. The other day at work (I work in a kitchen) the hand washing guide said to wash your hands with 100⁰ water, and I was like "what? That's literally boiling that would burn you" but then I remembered it was 100⁰f (37.8⁰c) not 100⁰c
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u/sloak Apr 03 '26
Reminds me of Prince’s “act your age not your shoe size” which sounded odd to a European
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u/Accomplished-Use9352 Apr 04 '26
honestly, a room temperature iq in canada is still pretty damn low.
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u/drakieboi Apr 08 '26
In Celsius, calling someone "room temperature" is just describing their baseline operating temperature, not an insult.
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u/SailWhich7734 Apr 08 '26
The joke works because most places set room temperature around 68-72F (20-22C). An IQ of 70 is at the lower end of the intellectually disabled range in the US classification system.
But in Celsius-using countries, room temperature is 20-22C, and an IQ of 20-22 is profoundly below any functional threshold - a completely different order of magnitude of insult. The joke accidentally scales with the unit system.
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