• Source: Christopher Langan

Christopher Michael Langan (born March 25, 1952) is an American horse rancher and autodidact who scored very highly on certain IQ tests, and was formerly listed in the Guinnes Book of Records highest IQ section under the name of Eric Hart.: 16 




Biography


Langan was born in 1952 in San Francisco, California. His mother, Mary Langan-Hansen (née Chappelle, 1932–2014), was the daughter of a wealthy shipping executive but was cut off from her family. Langan's biological father left before he was born, and is said to have died in Mexico. Langan's mother married three more times, and had a son by each husband. Her second husband was murdered, and her third killed himself. Langan grew up with the fourth husband Jack Langan, who has been described as a "failed journalist" who used a bullwhip as a disciplinary measure and went on drinking sprees, disappearing from the house, locking the kitchen cabinets so the four boys could not get to the food in them. The family was very poor; Langan recalls that they all had only one set of clothes each. The family moved around, living for a while in a teepee on an Indian reservation, then later in Virginia City, Nevada. When the children were in grade school, the family moved to Bozeman, Montana, where Langan spent most of his childhood.: 91–92 
Langan attended high school, but spent his last years engaged mostly in independent study. He did so after his teachers denied his request for more challenging material. According to Langan, he began teaching himself "advanced math, physics, philosophy, Latin, and Greek". He earned a perfect score on the SAT (pre-1995 scale) despite taking a nap during the test.: 70–73 
Langan was offered two full scholarships, one to Reed College in Oregon and the other to the University of Chicago. He chose the former, which he later called "a big mistake". He had a "real case of culture shock" in the unfamiliar urban setting. He explains that he lost his scholarship after his mother did not send in the necessary financial information. Langan returned to Bozeman and worked as a forest service firefighter for 18 months before enrolling at Montana State University–Bozeman.: 93  Faced with financial and transportation problems, and believing that he could teach his professors more than they could teach him, he dropped out. He took a string of labor-intensive jobs for some time, and by his mid-40s had been a construction worker, cowboy, forest service ranger, farmhand, and, for over twenty years, a bouncer on Long Island. He also worked for the technology company Virtual Logistix.
In comparing the lack of academic and life success of Langan to the successes of Robert Oppenheimer, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, in his 2008 book Outliers, points to the background and social skills of the two men. Oppenheimer was raised in a wealthy cosmopolitan environment, and Gladwell argues that such an environment gave help along the way and allowed Oppenheimer to gain a social savvy that Langan lacked, and prevented him from progressing academically. He had had little or no guidance from his parents or his teachers, and never developed the social skills needed to cope with and overcome his challenges.: 108–115 
In 1999, Langan and others formed a non-profit corporation named the Mega Foundation for those with IQs of 164 or above.
In 2008, he appeared on the game show 1 vs. 100 and won $250,000. He used the proceeds to purchase a horse farm in Missouri, where he now lives with his wife Gina (née LoSasso), a clinical neuropsychologist.: 141, 147 




IQ testing


In 1986 Langan took an IQ test, the Mega Test, under the pseudonym of Eric Hart, his score admitting him to membership of the exclusive Hoeflin Research Group, later to become the Mega Society. He continued to use that pseudonym for some time in his membership of the Mega Society, and was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as one of just three people to have scored so highly on the test.: 16  It later transpired that Langan, among others, had taken the Mega Test more than once by using a pseudonym. His first test score, under the name of Langan, was 42 out of 48 and his second attempt, as Hart, was 47. The Mega Test was designed only to be taken once. Membership of the Mega Society was meant to be for those with scores of 43 and upwards. A score of 42 on the Mega Test was originally designed to yield a predicted IQ value of 173-174, although data analysed from test takers led to a renorming of this and a 163-174 range. Further renorming work has suggested the range may be 159-169.
Mensa, the high IQ society, never accepted Mega Test scores for acceptance into the society. IQ testing at the tail of the normal distribution has been criticised as being dubious as there are insufficient normative cases upon which to base a statistically justified rank-ordering. Very high or very low IQ scores are less reliable than IQ scores nearer to the population median. The Mega Test, among other IQ tests, has been criticised for blurring specific domain knowledge with generalised intelligence, although "most psychologists can agree that they measure something valuable."
The Mega Test's attempt to measure high IQ at the tail of the normal distribution has been academically evaluated. Although it is an innovative attempt to create a test that would evaluate very high IQ, the nature of the test - self administered without time limit - which was chosen for pragmatic reasons, would not necessarily measure general intelligence, but could measure resourcefulness or some other factor. The frequent renorming of the test by its author was non standard but also innovative. Nevertheless it contained well known statistical flaws, such as sample self selection. The analysis could not therefore validate the conclusions. Attempts to eke out discrimination at the hundredth or thousandth percentile were clearly overwhelmed by the test's standard error, given that there were only 48 questions. The questions, too, were criticised for being structured with insufficient sensitivity to the detection of knowledge, because of the question format used. The test was thus described as not so much number crunching as "nothing short of number pulverisation".
In 1990 the Guinness book of records dropped the listing of highest IQ, deeming high IQ scores to be too unreliable to document.




Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe


Langan has developed a hypothesis he terms the "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" (CTMU) which he maintains "explains the connection between mind and reality, therefore the presence of cognition and universe in the same phrase". He refers to this thesis as "a true 'theory of everything', a cross between John Archibald Wheeler's 'Participatory Universe' and Stephen Hawking's 'Imaginary Time' theory of cosmology," additionally contending that with the CTMU he "can prove the existence of god, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics."
Langan's thesis is a form of ontological idealism, and a particular form of idealism known as panpsychism. It is a synthesis of three ideas:

reality is made of information in the form of language: a syntactic grammar that exists in and of itself;
reality is transtemporal: things from one time can influence things in other times; and
reality, being a self simulation, contains a substrate of this information, a panconsciousness that emerges from within - that is, from the creator or simulator itself.: 2 
Langan does not have any academic credentials and has self published his works.




Personal views


Langan has spoken about his personal and political views in a series of interviews, and has published his views on various matters in the book FAQs About Reality (2021). Asked what he would do if he were in charge, Langan stated his first priority would be to set up an "anti-dysgenics" project, and would prevent people from "breeding as incontinently as they like.": 18:45  He argues that this would be to practice "genetic hygiene to prevent genomic degradation and reverse evolution" owing to technological advances suspending the process of natural selection.: §80 
Langan's support of conspiracy theories, including the 9/11 Truther movement, as well as his opposition to interracial relationships, have contributed to his gaining a following among members of the alt-right and others on the far right. Langan has claimed that the George W. Bush administration staged the 9/11 attacks in order to distract the public from learning about the CTMU. Journalists have described some of Langan's Internet posts as containing "thinly veiled" antisemitism and making antisemitic "dog whistles".
In 2020, Langan endorsed Donald Trump for President of the United States.




References






Bibliography






External links


Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe website
The CTMU Guide for Dummies: Explained in Simple Sentences

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Efek Matius
• Cillian Murphy
• Isa
• Kota New York
• Sejarah Gereja Katolik
• Academy Award untuk Film Terbaik
• Manhunt International
• Penghargaan Akademi ke-93
• Academy Award untuk Tata Rias dan Tata Rambut Terbaik
• Film Terbaik (BAFTA)
• Christopher Langan
• Gina Lynne LoSasso
• Outliers (book)
• Newcomb's paradox
• Christopher Nolan
• Princeton, Missouri
• Langan (surname)
• Reed College
• Creativity and mental health
• Monism