Trump is a mastermind. It just hit me how last night was calculated.

When I was a teen, my dad bought an IQ test from the book store for $1.99. I took it, as did my two brothers and the band members I was playing with. I've taken other tests over the years and my score has never deviated significantly from that. My IQ is about 132 give or take and went on to earn a PhD. Of the rest who took it, the drummer in my band was just over 100... about 30 points lower than me. The singer in my band scored around 145. The two absolutely could not get along (and I later read that people need to be within 30 IQ points to effectively communicate). I got along with the drummer, but only barely. I didn't maintain a friendship with him after the band dissolved.

The singer on the other hand fascinated me because of his quick wit. He was a bit of a dick to people he didn't like, and his ability to verbally tear someone down was incredible. At the same time, if he liked a person, he could make that person like him with seemingly no effort. Fortunately, he grew out of the dickish behavior and remains a good friend. The crazy thing is he's never been extremely book smart and tended to be a bit of a tough guy, so he got into one too many fights and had to drop out of high school. He only ever earned a GED. Despite that, he's made more money working than I probably ever will (driving trucks, selling cars, working off-shore in oil and so on). Additionally, he's done his own reading and learning over the years and has became more and more educated. We have very interesting discussions where I provide most of the factual information and he provides additional analysis. The point is, I may be more formally educated, but he's done better than me where it matters. I might also mention that he only ever got drunk about 3 times (my fault) and has never done drugs. He just has no need for them. Definitely makes me think about Trump a bit.

My point about this is that IQ is no joke. The differences in ability are very, very meaningful. While an IQ test doesn't test all important facets of personality by any stretch, you can tell Trump has great people skills. Combine that with his IQ and you better believe he an extremely capable guy... probably more capable than most people can even imagine. It's easy to look down and see in exactly what ways someone is less intelligent, but if you're observing someone who is much more intelligent than you, you're lucky if you can even recognize that fact much less understand just how much stupider you actually are. I'm guessing Reddit's average IQ is a good bit higher than average (100), but still probably more than 30 points below Trump. What does that tell you?

/r/The_Donald Thread Parent