

I recently listened to Adam Carolla’s podcast, which I enjoy for its snappy discourse, diversity of opinion and quality guests. Carolla’s guests on this episode were Nick Santora – a successful TV producer – and Walter O’Brien, a self labeled genius, who claims to be “1 in 1.4 billion” because he says his IQ score ranks him 5th in the world. Of course, most people in the world have not taken an IQ test, so there’s a little bit of flawed reasoning there…

Listening to the interview, I became suspicious of O’Brien. No doubt he is an intelligent guy, but he was way to eager to mention it, boasting various claims that he can “Tell how well a person would score on an IQ test just by talking to them”, and later dipping his toes into the Eugenics pool, a failed attempt by the British aristocracy to rationalize post-colonial exceptionalism which was apparently imparted to O’Brien in his native Ireland at a young age, as he boldly stated:

“I don’t believe all people are created equal.”

Interesting. So this O’Brien guy is chomping at the bit to brag about himself and mentions he drove to Carolla’s studio in a Lamborghini. Dropping your car make is a red flag in and of itself. Carolla is a known car guy, so he asks O’Brien a question about the engine specs on the particular Lambo. I get excited to hear some Rain Man style nerding out on engine components, but O’Brien goes silent, mumbles, and offers up that he knows the car has 12 cylinders. I do not remember thinking O’Brien must be some sort of genius for counting the spark plugs.

Of course I should not expect him to be privy to mechanical trivia, as this guy is out doing the work of geniuses.

As a teenager O’Brien was a verified computer programming prodigy. He was so good he was able to hack into NASA’s database and get the blueprints for their spaceships. At this point, the US government descended on his humble Irish abode with an army of black cars, assuming he was a Soviet spy.

Its unclear what happened next. My guess is O’Brien was threatened with endangering national security or some other trumped up beef, and was offered immunity if he chose to work for the US government. He was in possession of an Extradition Waiver at the time, which is basically a good faith effort that one plans to cooperate with authorities. Why he was in possession of this remains unclear

The result, as O’Brien tells it, was he was given several IQ tests, found to be of genius level (unlike your children), and left Ireland at 13 after being granted an Extraordinary Ability Visa, famously granted to Einstein, and former Playboy Centerfold Shera Bechard, among others.

A quick personal anecdote. I attended the latter half of my first grade education at Ticasuk Brown Elementary in North Pole Alaska after it was recommended I leave Immaculate Conception Elementary because of some heavy verbal sparring with a morose blue jean clad nun named Sister Michelle. Upon entering Ticasuk I excelled at math, although most likely not to a significant deviation. At some point a guy with a black suit and briefcase took me into an exceptionally small room which must have been a utility closet and had me put together a bunch of patterns and look at some ink blots. I was extremely nervous because I had literally never seen a guy in a suit before, and he did not introduce himself. I remember failing the tests on purpose, because I thought succeeding meant I would be forced to go with the guy.

Maybe I was right. In any case nobody raided my parent’s house and cloned me into an NSA man. O’Brien for his own measure took his numerical evaluation to heart:

“My name is Walter O’Brien, and I am a genius. Einstein had an IQ of 165. Mine is 197”

His self confidence is intriguing. Speaking to him on the phone he seemed oddly centric. In Carolla’s interview he alluded to his lacking emotion and expressed a hyper disdain for anything or anyone that does not immediately interest him. These are classic symptoms of Asperger’s, and also smart guys who are dicks.

I was curious of O’Brien’s IQ score claim so I looked it up. There are no certified public records of anyone’s IQ score anywhere.

I took one online and got a 165. Then I took it again as a control and answered all the questions wrong purposefully. I got a 152.

The Guinness Book of World Records stopped listing the highest IQ category in 1990 after they determined IQ tests were too unreliable to designate a single record holder. A woman named Marilyn vos Savant held the Record for highest IQ from 1986-89, at 228. The Book listed her based on her own reported scores, which were never verified, presumably because she came from a family of noted academics.

Even had the Book verified her scores, there is a dank rabbit hole to be descended when attempting to make sense of any given number.

All numerically scored IQ tests are based on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test, and that is what vos Savant and most likely O’Brien took. The test was never meant to be administered to anyone past early childhood, and any adult taking it is essentially playing playground basketball against a bunch of third graders and bragging about how many points they scored. In fact it was created not to assess genius, but to figure out which kids were retarded. The score is based on deviation from the intelligence levels of five year old children. Once you get past the category of “Very Gifted or Highly Advanced” your only realistic achievement is being smarter than a fifth grader.

The amount of ethnocentricity and creative bias going into standardized tests also deserves a separate article. I just assume the people involved in developing these tests are the most likely to score highly on them. Its a self confirming conclusion that those most apt at dissecting interpretive riddles are numerically valued as the smartest people on earth. My favorite example of this conformist mentality is this:

A Yupik Eskimo kid in Unalakleet Alaska is prepping for his SATs. A posed question shows a drawing of an orange. Underneath it are drawings of a pear, a watermellon, and a knife. He is asked which one does not belong. He says the pear. He is informed he is wrong, and the correct answer is the knife. He says you need the knife to cut the orange and the watermellon.

Genius.

O’Brien is now the head of Scorpion Computer Services. I asked him what this was:

“We teach computers to do things humans used to do.”

I found it necessary to call him and get to the bottom of this, because the company’s website is riddled with that annoyingly vague business jargon that dumb people find impressive and smart people find obnoxious

“Management’s world has dramatically changed in response to increasing global competitive pressures. Business leaders realize that the two biggest problems they face today are short-term survival and having the strategic ability to take advantage of the economic recovery while optimizing the business with limited budgets. Short-term survival increasingly focuses on reducing business process costs with more effective automation.”

Scorpion Computer Services is basically a think tank and consulting firm which helps entities streamline their overhead. In fact they have

“Saved over $43 billion in opportunity risks over a five year period.”

I can’t argue with those numbers. O’Brien’s government intelligence background is a major selling point in his consulting efforts. Forget Lamborghinis, this is where his cognitive genius separates him from the masses. That’s what I suspected at least, which is why I found it bizarre when he imparted this carefully deliberated wisdom during the Carolla interview when discussing foreign policy, which will run you $8k an hour if you’re programming drones:

“The last little rule I’d like to change is this… The U.N. Peace Treaty states that one country will not assassinate the leader of another country. I’d like to amend that to unless ten other countries agree. Then for a hundred grand of Blackwater you’d have solved every war in the last twenty years.”

Then he left it at that. O’Brien was not speaking of some hypothetical Dungeons and Dragons diplomatic role playing game played in high school cafeteria, but proudly asserting his genius think tank crystallizations on what he believes is a pragmatic answer to current geopolitical conflict.

I’m pretty sure that if this were a policy, every U.S. president and world leader would have been shot and killed upon inauguration, sending the planet into an anarchic state of war which would wipe out the human race. There are 196 countries in the world. What the fuck is this guy talking about?

I found it odd he mentioned Blackwater, now known as Academi, a paramilitary organization which employs psychotic rednecks and is routinely given no bid multi billion dollar contracts to carry out various U.S. war efforts. The number of affiliate mercenary soldiers in the Middle East rivals that of enlisted military. Basically its a covert way to understate the U.S. military presence in the Middle East for public opinion purposes while lining the pockets of masterful war pigs.

By the time I spoke to him, I had already become skeptical of O’Brien’s Scorpion business. One of my first questions was wether he has received any no bid contracts from the U.S. government. If you are unfamiliar, no bid contracts are a way for those in the government to transfer funds from the Treasury to their own bank accounts. He said yes.

I asked if he has received contracts from Halliburton.

Absolutely.

So this brings us to the TV show. Scorpion has been ordered by ABC, is being heavily promoted, and will be given a prime time slot. O’Brien is a consultant and executive producer on the show, along with Nick Santora, who created it based on O’Brien’s life. Part of the show’s promotional material touts O’Brien’s military affiliations, and infers that he somehow helped capture the Boston marathon bombers.

“Walter O’Brien who started a company essentially of a group of eccentric geniuses who are government funded problem solvers so that’s sort of the premise of the show. That company, Scorpion Computer Services, is also real. The real O’Brien says it’s the largest think tank of high IQ individuals that exists. We’ve saved lives and caught terrorists and stopped wars. And that’s about the highest and best use of my skills — to protect the country.”

Government funded. Interesting. I’ve never heard of an existing business being expressly named as the title of a TV show. If you were inclined you might think the entire series is an advertisement for O’Brien’s ambiguously shrouded business. You might even think the FCC would get involved, as there are express rules on identifying embedded advertising. It might be addressed if a show was named Wonder Bread.

You have to wonder a lot of things about this. Did O’Brien strike some kind of shady deal with the US government long ago and is now being rewarded with a strong armed payday and free advertising which satisfies his ego, and ABC’s shareholders.

Did he see something weird when he hacked into NASA and is leveraging his silence into a small fortune? Is he a Manchurian shill programming the minds of primetime television viewers with a favorable portrayal of the military industrial complex and the private contractors who we all pay dearly out of our own pockets?

Is this a war friendly commercial for the US military, or just a creative gimmick for a show?

I don’t know. I’m not a genius.

– March 3 2015