Since Susan reposted Scientific's original post on LRM's intelligence, I'm reposting my reply to Scientific.
In short: I disagree strongly with Scientific's suggestion that LRM is "brilliant" and has high intelligence/high IQ.
Below is Scientific's original post, and my original response and my own view: that LRM is of average intelligence, at most.
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I disagree with much of this. LRM's intelligence appears to me to be no more than average, if that.
Some responses.
1. First, I know of no sound scientific or social science evidence suggesting that intelligence is "honed" by "dangerous lifestyles". Moreover, it seems his life in recent years-- however he was making money-- mostly involved creating a fantasy world online, of lies and disinformation about himself (he may very well be the Internet's Greatest Troll Ever).
2. What evidence do we have that LRM knew a "fair amount" of French and Russian? He lived it Montreal; it's not unusual for someone of even below average intelligence to pick up some passable French in a city where French is the first language. As for Russian, we have no evidence that he could speak any of it. And like much of his false stories, lies, and other disinformation posted online, he plagiarized countless works on his website and many blogs; the "Russian" portions on his site are more likely simply cut-and-pastes from Google Translate. That seems more consistent with his tendency to create false stories about himself, including his "ties" to Russian mafia.
3. This is a personal opinion. I find much of his "imagined" world quite prosaic and most often (like his many blog posts) simply plagiarized or borrowed from movies, pop culture, and other objects of his obsessions: serial killers and violence. His song "True Faith" he uses in so many vids is ripped from American Psycho, and his mirror line (about him being a reflection of society) famously comes from Charles Manson. He lived in a fantasy world, no doubt. But I don't think you need to be highly intelligent to plagiarize and copy the many false stories LRM tells about himself.
LRM seems more often to me, to be a doofus who continually overestimates his own intelligence and persistently underestimates those pursuing him. That's typical of narcissists. And we can see it with the video and how quickly he was caught.
LRM is an attention seeker who quite obviously wanted to be caught; so he left blatant clues in the video (Casablanca) poster; but his execution of the crime was clumsy, with plenty of missteps and angles overlooked on his part. The suitcase clumsily left by his curb (where it was not picked up by the garbage collectors); being seen on video surveillance at the apartment at at the Canada Post; communicating on his phone in Europe. LRM expected police to link the kill video to him; but it was traditional police work that did him in, and quickly. This is not the result of a brilliant or intelligent mind.
As for the rest -- all of his online posts should be treated with skepticism, as he has a penchant for pathological lying and story telling. Moreover, "Looks" and "Travel" are not a statistically significant association with intelligence.
And I don't think it takes a genius to figure out how to negotiate the Internet, create YouTube pages, and troll blogs, 4chan, and even to download, install, and set up Tor in order to surf the Deep Web. A person with average intelligence and sufficient time (and commitment) could figure it out; especially given the amount of time that LRM obviously spent online. This was his world.
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Due to a sampling bias, early research on psychopathy incorrectly found that psychopaths were typically above average intelligence. Subsequent research has shown no such association. Psychopaths come from a range of intelligence and IQ. People should not make the mistake of assuming LRM must be brilliant because he's a narcissistic psychopath who often lies about his own intelligence and IQ.
My assessment is that LRM is of fairly average intelligence, with a high degree of narcissism that leads him to overestimate his own intelligence and capabilities (and underestimate others). That is typical of a psychopath.
It is true that, at times, LRM writes more intelligently than others; but whenever that seems to be the case, someone reveals that his more "intelligent" writing has been copied or plagiarized from somewhere else.
Boodi Moovan was on here the other day talking about her group had gone through his website and sourced pretty much all his more "original" and more intelligent writing to other people and sources. That is, he plagiarized everything.
My theory, as previously stated, is that he's ultimately an attention seeker, which is necessary to feed his psychopathic egoism. So, as with his animal torture videos, he really did want the kill video to eventually be linked back to him, so he could have the fame (like other notorious serial killers); hence the YouTube sockpuppets posting about "1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick" before it was even made.
LRM expected the video to eventually be linked back to him; he just figured he would be long gone by then. He wasn't expecting the police to link him to the murder so quickly, via the torso & suitcase outside his apartment and surveillance videos from his apartment.
His clumsiness and missteps led to his capture much sooner than he expected. Proving, again, his average capacity.
