Ouch!

Not sure how to take this:

I know you don't actually care, but you were almost certainly right the first time.

If half the population has a below-median intelligence (true by definition);

If intelligence has a lower bound (0 IQ/ brain death/ etc) but no necessary upper bound, or even just an upper bound that is further above the median than 0 is below it and that trails off gradually (i.e. there are geniuses and a few super-geniuses);

and if intelligence has an otherwise roughly-normal distribution (a bell curve, which is a perfectly ordinary fact of probability and carries none of the baggage of The Bell Curve);

In short, if the distribution of intelligence is a left-censored bell curve (a bell curve truncated at 0 on one side but exhibiting normal trailing-off properties on the other);

then mean intelligence is higher than median intelligence.

From this it follows that *more* than half the population has below-average (meaning, as your correspondent insists,below-mean) intelligence.

Really.

(From a really, really, really smart reader at NRO's Corner)