Interesting Vox Day article: How to Recognize VHIQ.
Vox discusses superficial outward indicators of very-high IQ:
For me, the first sign is always the eyes. Highly intelligent people tend to have a penetrating quality to their eyes, particularly when they aren’t interacting with anyone and aren’t aware they are being observed. It’s often described as “intense” or “lively” by others, and can provoke instinctive reactions such as widening eyes or a physical retreat. It’s also how the highly intelligent can quickly recognize one another. Consider the way that a fictional version of Vladimir Putin is described.
We are qualified to talk about ultra-high IQ being that we posses this quality. They don’t hand out 150-170 IQs at the door, you know.
An example is Martin Heidegger, who has a distinctive intense gaze. The saying “the lights are on and no one is home” suggests some quality of the eyes that is linked to intelligence, even if one cannot pin down precisely what this is. Studies suggest it has to do with the size of the pupils. Smarter people may have larger pupils. This is something that could be observed by paying close enough attention:
The larger the pupils, the higher the intelligence, as measured by tests of reasoning, attention and memory. In fact, across three studies, we found that the difference in baseline pupil size between people who scored the highest on the cognitive tests and those who scored the lowest was large enough to be detected by the unaided eye.
Having a high IQ is like having the map already revealed ahead of time as others are stumbling around. It’s like you can see everything and know what will happen next with high fidelity. This is how I was able to come up with the methods of shorting Bitcoin and the leveraged tech strategy, and running both concurrently. I can look at something and know what to do, either for myself or others. It’s like I will look at the problem and be like “do this, then this, and then this, and this” like executing the Konami code.
When assessing the intelligence of others, it’s clarity of thought and soundness of logic. Even though I do not agree with Vox about everything, I have been a reader for years because he exhibits these qualities, even when I think he is wrong. On the other ideological extreme is someone like Richard Hanania, who I also follow for this reason. If the only info you have to go on is IQ, it stands to reason the smarter person will be correct more often compared to someone less intelligent, or have a better ‘logical flow’. The smart person can still be wrong or led stray by biases or being fed wrong information, but it’s a useful heuristic nonetheless.
For this reason I try to follow the smartest people I can find. It’s sometimes assumed that smart people are trying to show off or make things needlessly complicated, but it’s the opposite. Smart people provide illumination and clarity, as there is so much bullshit out there. It’s like a burden is lifted or being shown the path, at no cost. It’s like “this is how it works”.