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Vaniver comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong
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This was one of the things I checked when I looked into the IQ results from the survey here and here. One of the things I thought was particularly interesting was that there was a positive correlation between self-reported IQ and iqtest.dk (which is still self-reported, and could have been lied on, but hopefully this is only deliberate lies, rather than fuzzy memory effects) among posters and a negative correlation among lurkers. This comment might also be interesting.
I endorse Epiphany's three potential explanations, and would quantify the last one: I strongly suspect the average IQ of LWers is at least one standard deviation above the norm. I would be skeptical of the claim that it's two standard deviations above the norm, given the data we have.
Wow, that's quite interesting - that's some serious Dunning-Kruger. Scatterplot could be of interest.
Thing to keep in mind is that even given a prior that errors can go either way equally, when you have obtained a result far from the mean, you must expect that errors (including systematic errors) were predominantly in that direction.
Other issue is that in a 1000 people, about 1 will have an IQ of >=146 or so , while something around 10 will have fairly severe narcissism (and this is not just your garden variety of overestimating oneself, but the level where it interferes with normal functioning).
Self reported IQ of 146 is thus not really a good sign overall. Interestingly some people do not understand that and go on how the others "punish" them for making poorly supported statements of exceptionality, while it is merely a matter of correct probabilistic reasoning.
The actual data is even worse than what comparisons of prevalence would suggest - 25% of people put themselves in the top 1% in some circumstances.
Yes, average of 115 would be possible.
The actual data is linked in the post near the end. If you drop three of the lurkers- who self-reported 180, 162, and 156 but scored 102, 108, and 107- then the correlation is positive (but small). (Both samples look like trapezoids, which is kind of interesting, but might be explained by people using different standard deviations.)