[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This is a third one for the new series on answering inquiries from website www.rickbrosner.org . You can ask comments at www.rick rosner.org/contact.
Rick Rosner: Also, if you have like Dear Abby type questions, I’ll try to answer those too. I read advice columns a lot and I usually end up agreeing with the advice. So that tells me that maybe I won’t be much shittier than a newspaper advice column. It shows that I’m old and I’m still reading the newspaper.
Jacobsen: Charles Young, 123scy@gmail.com. “Hi – wondering if you’ve ever taken the Langdon adult intelligence test. I recently came across a copy of an old magazine in a relative’s basement and saw the test. I answered the questions and then found out that the author no longer scores this. Frustrated, considering the amount of time I spent on him, if you have would you be willing to compare my answers to yours or perhaps you know of someone else who has scored high. Thanks for any help you can provide, Charles Young.”
Rosner: Yes, that was the first ultra high IQ test I ever took and I did well. It took me out of my funk because I never scored above 151 and I got 170 on it and I’m like “Ah, maybe I’m not as stupid as I thought I was.” I took it way back in 1980, barely out of my teens, maybe still in my teens maybe still a virgin. It’s been 43 years, so you know there’s could have been lots of reasons but I know the specific reason Kevin quit grading it was there was a lunatic. When we belong to the Mega Society there have been many lunatics who think the Mega Society is a club for people who’ve scored above the one in a million levels on an IQ test. And then there have been at least three four people probably more, who have argued that they deserve to be in the Mega Society even though they can’t demonstrate that they’ve scored at the one in a million level on any test.
So this one guy, I was editor of the Mega Society journal for a few years, so he sent his complaints to me and he said “When I was a kid I took this test and this test and this test,” and he sent me some scores and A) the Mega Society doesn’t accept childhood IQ scores because it’s easier to get a super high score on a childhood test, so they’re not valid for adults. But this guy just would not quit bugging me and so I tried to do some research to see what his scores might correspond to and these tests were so old from probably the 1940s and so obscure I went to college libraries and tried to look up anything about these tests and there was very little and I could not come up with a scoring guide.
So I wrote back and I said I’ve researched this and I can’t find out anything. He just yelps sending “I got this score, I got this many right on this test” I don’t know if that he even had any proof and he just got really pissed. He said it was my job as editor to verify. I’m like “Dude, I tried even though it’s certainly not my job.” Eventually this asshole contacted the U.S Postal Service and charged me with mail fraud because I was charging two dollars an issue for the Mega Society Journal which I sent to people, this was before the internet was big, through the mail. So he said I was committing mail fraud because I was charging people and he was just a huge asshole. He was bugging anybody in the Mega Society whose address he could find. So he was bugging Kevin Langdon and Langdon was saying “It’s not my job. It’s your job if you want to join the Mega Society to take one of the tests that we accept and get a good enough score instead of sending us scores from 50 years ago.”
I’m sure he was very nice to the man. I was reasonably nice to the man for the first 10 letters he sent. But this guy reported Kevin Langdon to the California Medical Association or Association of Psychiatric Professionals Licensing Board for practicing Psychiatry without a license because Kevin Langdon had an IQ test which is a psychometric instrument and this old fucking asshole, he has to be dead now, said that Kevin Langdon was practicing psychiatry without a license because he was letting people take his homemade IQ test. Kevin Langdon’s like “I don’t need this garbage. Very few people are taking the test and I don’t make much money on it.” It was maybe 20 bucks to have it scored for his time scoring it. “I don’t need to charged with practicing medicine without a license.” So he shut down. So, there you go.
I took the test 43 years ago. I don’t know where I would find my answer sheet now if I even still have it and trying to come up with the answers would take at least 60 hours but it would be basically retaking the test. So, I don’t think I can help you. Sorry.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
License and Copyright
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.rickrosner.org.
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Rick Rosner 