A high IQ. Why does it matter? Is it Overrated ??

[Dilettante]

Strangely, but perhaps fittingly, when I first took an IQ test I did not know what it was. I was being interviewed for a job. They weren’t impressed with my interview but the guy said, “try this anyways,” and handed me a packet. I started filling it out, thinking it was really strange, like… really strange! “What the heck is this?” I was thinking.

Still confused, they scored it, and the guy was so impressed by the score that he was willing to hire me as an assistant at his law firm - with no experience in law. Funny enough, I had interviewed earlier that day for a security camera installation company, and the boss of that company had called me while the test was being scored to see if I wanted the job. I told him yes because at that time the law firm didn’t seem so keen on hiring me.

The guy running the firm was confused. I was taking a job with less pay and manual labor, instead of working in a cushy office. But my word was my word! I was confused because he was so cold until my IQ score got him hot, so why the sudden change?

Anyways, I didn’t have much of a point to the story other than some people think it really matters, but to me I wanted a different experience than being on a computer all day. Installing cameras taught me a lot about power drills, ethernet cables, and ladders. But I didn’t work the job into the summer because I didn’t fancy being in a 16” crawlspace while it’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

For what it’s worth, I did take a reputable test online and got the exact same score, so I think it’s at least somewhat consistent.

My perspective on IQ is that it’s meant to correlate with g and g is the most robust psychometric out there. But how should we interpret it?

For me, it’s like an amplifier. It amplifies the base character of a person. Bigger brain, bigger antenna, bigger ego. Corrupt people with a high IQ are absolutely awful (think Stalin). But pure people with a high IQ have been amazing for humanity (think Norman Borlaug). The trick is reigning in the ego.

What’s tough about IQ is that it’s always shifting. Over time, over populations. It’s a relative measure within any subpopulation!

I don’t think it’s as simple as saying “IQ doesn’t matter” or that “IQ absolutely matters.” It’s measuring something, for sure, and that is correlated to some things we might care about. But are you asking about IQ having to do with being a nice person? Or are you asking about IQ having to do with having a bigger mental lever to pull when solving problems?

One final thought. I sincerely do not mean this disparagingly. People with lower intelligence seem to me to be more innocent. I like being around them, and I value that they can appreciate simple things. “Midwits” (rude term, but descriptive) seem to lose perspective about simplicity. I think that highly intelligent people, once they get all the mental violence out of them, realize that simplicity really is best. It’s more beautiful.

I stare at the ripples in the pond and smile knowing that I will never figure it out.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
After two years, I dropped out of Mensa.

I was in Mensa for a while as well. I dropped out because the other members were all so UNintelligent.

Not a joke. They really were. Not wise in the tiniest way, very unaware, not at all spiritual, very little emotional intelligence, just quick at solving meaningless little puzzles.

I learned more about what intelligence really is from them than from anywhere else — just because it was so absent in these supposedly high-IQ people.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
I learned more about what intelligence really is from them than from anywhere else — just because it was so absent in these supposedly high-IQ people.

Me too! I didn't fit in with that crowd at all. 'High on their own intelligence' is how I looked at them. I came to understand that quite often the smartest people can be the most ignorant people at the same time. Such an odd thing!

I think the reason I did so well in this test was because it was about working things out, not remembering them. By strange contrast, my school exams were a flop. It didn't matter how much revision I did -- if a subject didn't interest me, I didn't retain the information. I suppose pressure also played a role.

But that test was a big boost to my confidence. It meant way more to me than a number. A little later, I took on a couple of A-Levels, enrolling in evening classes at Weston College of FE. It proved a hell of a struggle, but I got there in the end.

[Mike]

I had a neighbor named Victor when I was growing up, and the rumor around the neighborhood was that his IQ was world class. He was my best friend's dad. Eccentric guy, and looking back it's very easy for me to say that he was very likely on the autism spectrum. But he had some mysterious job with the government and was recognized by everyone as being this genius type character.

He was also notoriously socially awkward. I was looking at old pics with my dad recently and I saw a pic of Victor at a get together my parents arranged. These were casual events, but there was Victor in his slacks and a bowtie, looking very out of place. It made me laugh!

I'll never forget approaching a red light and stopping in my lane, which had a long row of cars ahead of me, and then watching as Victor approached in the adjacent lane and stopped dead in his tracks to wave at me and my family while a large queue of cars behind him screeched to a halt and honked their horns angrily. He just kept smiling and waving, completely oblivious to the scene surrounding him. Always makes me laugh when I think about it. I can list dozens of similar events like this. He was a great guy, I liked him very much, but he was hapless socially and lacked basic common sense in certain areas.

So yeah it's very possible to have a high IQ and still stumble clumsily thru your life. It's not any kind of guarantee that you'll be successful. A very high IQ may just be overrated, but it doesn't change the fact that if you lack at least a baseline level of IQ you have almost no chance at all, regardless of how emotionally, socially, spatially, physically etc intelligent you imagine yourself to be.

We should all do IQ tests online and post our scores lol. Now that would be an interesting thread!

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

If you can find one, Mike, post it! I'm curious at the thought, but also a little scared.

I don't think any of us who have taken one before will come out nearly so well. Too many braincells have gone bye-bye in the meantime! Not from years of blasting our bodies with drugs and alcohol (I've done none of the former, but a little of the latter), but from natural ageing, that gradual whittling away of bygone powers. Unfortunately, that's just a fact of life. But I'd certainly give it a crack.

[Mike]

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
If you can find one, Mike, post it! I'm curious at the thought, but also a little scared.

I don't think any of us who have taken one before will come out nearly so well. Too many braincells have gone bye-bye in the meantime! Not from years of blasting our bodies with drugs and alcohol (I've done none of the former, but a little of the latter), but from natural ageing, that gradual whittling away of bygone powers. Unfortunately, that's just a fact of life. But I'd certainly give it a crack.

Oh dude, I'm deathly scared LOL.

I'll be the guy who does a complete 180 after my atrocious score is revealed, suddenly making vigorous arguments for all the various forms of intelligence, all while insisting I'm not a subnormal due to my high "humor intelligence" or something

As far as the brain cells thing you mentioned, I agree entirely. As I understand it, IQ can never be improved upon but it does get worse with age. It took me about 5 mins today to remember the word "sycophantic". So I think my light is dwindling a little.

[Dilettante]

Posted by Mike (here)
He was also notoriously socially awkward. I was looking at old pics with my dad recently and I saw a pic of Victor at a get together my parents arranged. These were casual events, but there was Victor in his slacks and a bowtie, looking very out of place. It made me laugh!

This is what I'm like. I think I have one foot in normalcy and one foot on the spectrum

There are many of things that sensitive, intuitive, and introverted people notice that "normies" don't. For instance, ants on the sidewalk - I try not to step on them. Not many people look around at all the different birds and plants and animals around them. One day, I realized that many people couldn't say much about trees other than some have needles and others have leaves, that was very strange to realize. Simply put, the general lack of attention or curiosity most people have about the world. It can be frustrating, but then I resort to "que sera, sera" and laugh it off.

Life is absurd.

Posted by Mike (here)
We should all do IQ tests online and post our scores lol.

I'd be more interested in the results of users Personality Assessment System Primitive and Basic profiles (John Gittinger's work). But that's my obsession.

With an IQ and PAS Basic profile, you can know a lot about a person. Weirdly, after describing both of those to an AI (and only those), it approximated the relationship I had with my mom and dad fairly well. This is a sensitive area though, maybe it's best to leave it unknown!

[Dilettante]

If you want a no-frills, free, and decently accurate IQ test:
https://test.mensa.no/Home/Test/en-US

[Sue (Ayt)]

I suspect people who test at the top extreme (over 140 or so) may feel a bit lonely, as it is likely most others cannot easily relate to their way of perceiving things.

[onawah]

I scored just high enough on IQ tests back in 9th grade to be put in the class with all the genuine eggheads.
(At that school, students were divided up in the academic classes into low to high-performing and there were about 10 groups in each grade, if I recall.)
I felt mostly out of place though there were a few others more like me in that class, with us generally putting the genuine eggheads' noses out of joint with our less than acceptable (from their POVs) POVs.
The eggheads tended to group together in seats on one side of the classroom, and they all appeared somewhat stiff, ill at ease, humorless, impatient, paranoid, and lacking in good grooming and social skills.
But I am more of an Intuitive than an Intellectual and I think I scored high on tests a lot simply because I made good guesses.
I never had a good memory for numbers or talent for math in general, and that was usually my downfall when it came to grade averages, and why I could never genuinely pass for a genius or qualify for a full scholarship.
Just as testimony to that and to how our IQ degrades with age, I can't really remember exactly what my IQ test score was.
I wonder how psychics score as a whole on those tests.
After my NDE at the age of 24, when I suffered a fairly serious concussion, I became quite a bit more psychic, though in other ways I was less able to focus.
So if I had tested then, I would probably have scored lower than before.
But that could have simply been because I was no longer engaged in the normal workday world, due to my physical disability which kept me unemployed for quite some time.
In a way I am grateful for that, because it allowed me to focus on the things that really interested me rather than on subjects that I would have needed in order to receive a "higher education".

[Mike]

Posted by Dilettante (here)
With an IQ and PAS Basic profile, you can know a lot about a person. Weirdly, after describing both of those to an AI (and only those), it approximated the relationship I had with my mom and dad fairly well. This is a sensitive area though, maybe it's best to leave it unknown!

That's fascinating. I won't poke or prod, but can you explain how you described this stuff to an A.I.?

I suspect the A.I. could do something similar with far less information actually, like your preferences in music and video. I think the A.I. could abstract out quite a lot about someone's personality and relationships with just that info, and I'm sure it's already doing just that.

[Dilettante]

Posted by Mike (here)
That's fascinating. I won't poke or prod, but can you explain how you described this stuff to an A.I.?

I suspect the A.I. could do something similar with far less information actually, like your preferences in music and video. I think the A.I. could abstract out quite a lot about someone's personality and relationships with just that info, and I'm sure it's already doing just that.

You are correct. For instance, you can simply ask it - after having an interesting enough conversation - to give a single number guess at an IQ of who it's been talking to. ChatGPT seems to nail it for me every time. You can also have it estimate stuff like Big Five (OCEAN) personality traits (although I prefer MBTI or really the PAS) based on conversations, which it does reasonably well. Not as well as IQ, because personality traits usually require observation of behavior, and even then it's harder to map it backwards than simply run a questionnaire.

As for the PAS stuff, I have the AI read the technical description of the model, and then I feed it my IQ (optional) and the PAS primitive or basic profile. It can tell you a lot about yourself, you just have to ask the right questions. Start with asking it about an overview of the personality profile of this person. Then you could ask things like how do other people see this person? How do they perform in work or school? What subjects are they drawn towards? What relationship do they have with their parents?

If you are getting into more detailed questions, I suggest you familiarize the AI with Gittinger's notes on the specific primitive profile or basic profile you are. The more information it can work with, the better.

It's pretty spooky though. You have to get over thinking that you are a special snowflake.

Yes, we all have unique experiences in the world and that is essential to being an individual. But you are also a "type" and it's scary how accurate typing can be when done objectively.

Gittinger's language is outdated and sometimes crude, but if you can translate his idiosyncratic script (economy of words), it's really creepy how spot on he was. The stuff that pissed me off the most turned out to be the most accurate about myself, and it took a while to come to terms with those parts of myself.

It's funny because I had a friend run his PAS and I helped him with the results. He got really mad at some of the findings, but it was pointing out the exact sensitive areas that he would talk to me about on the phone week after week! When "flaws" are properly integrated (Jungian individualization), I feel much more at peace with who I am. Less stress, more aligned with my nature. This corresponds to "decompensation" as Gittinger would put it. It's the process of removing the stress of maintaining an unnatural personality for the sake of appearing "normal."

Not all of Jung's work is great, but I think he's a definite improvement over Freud. More balanced than Freud, although Freud's insights on the unconscious were impressive (perhaps Edward Bernays should be given more credit for making him a household name!). Jung did some really important work on personality and the individuation process as it relates to the Philosopher's Stone (Alchemical Magnum Opus). Jung in his garden, I love this video.

Gittinger's system is like a cold, formal personality assessment over Jung's warm, soft personality types. Diagnosis versus archetypes.

I've had the most luck with the PAS, then MBTI, and really I don't like OCEAN all that much. What's funny about Big Five is that it has more dimensions, but I don't find them as useful. I actually have to create sub-dimensions for it to be accurate. The PAS is very accurate with three dimensions (8 primitive profiles) and the added complexity of compensation (64 basic profiles). I'm rambling.

Jung and Gittinger, strange bedfellows.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Sue (Ayt) (here)
I suspect people who test at the top extreme (over 140 or so) may feel a bit lonely, as it is likely most others cannot easily relate to their way of perceiving things.

~~~

A passing thought. We'll never know all the numbers, of course, but I'd bet that the median score of Avalon members' IQs would be in the 140 range, topping out at 180+. We may not be a typical population here!

[Casey Claar]

I suspect at the highest, I would test at the low end of normal. I'll take the test up there and see (if it doesn't take too much time). lol

[Casey Claar]

Just over the hump.

I didn't really try very hard, and outright guessed on the last four puzzles. I am generally good at seeing patterns but those got really hard for me. I am just now waking so didn't have it in me to push.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Casey Claar (here)

Just over the hump.

I didn't really try very hard, and outright guessed on the last four puzzles. I am generally good at seeing patterns but those got really hard for me. I am just now waking so didn't have it in me to push.

That's just a joke. Don't take the result seriously!!

Your EQ and SQ (Emotional and Spiritual intelligence quotients, which are far more important) are way way off the scale.

[Casey Claar]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by Casey Claar (here)

Just over the hump.

I didn't really try very hard, and outright guessed on the last four puzzles. I am generally good at seeing patterns but those got really hard for me. I am just now waking so didn't have it in me to push.

That's just a joke. Don't take the result seriously!!

Your EQ and SQ (Emotional and Spiritual intelligence quotients, which are far more important) are way way off the scale.

Oooooooh I have never had any trouble not minding fitting in with more local constructs/constraints (lol). I have generally tried my very best to be as average (and not stand out) as possible. A blend into the background sort of person. I would say I have done very well here! I am pleased! I do have great trouble keeping my mouth shut, though. It can be a dead give-a-way every time. Thank you for your very generous comment

[Sue (Ayt)]

My son's kindergarten teacher was asked to choose the kids she thought should be tested for the school's gifted program, so I was sent home a permission slip for him to take the test.
At a conference, I was curious as to how she identified which ones to choose.
She told me,
"It's easy. I simply ask all the kids who they think is really smart, and the kids always seem to know."

The gifted program was pretty much a joke, though. But I do think my kids enjoyed it, as they were able to be among others who were able to share some of their pretty wild ideas.

I remember going off on a flight of fancy one night, when I was a little girl at a girls' pajama party. We were telling stories in the dark, and I shared the idea that our solar system was almost like an atom, with dots whizzing around a center nucleus (sun), and that just maybe, our whole solar system was simply a little atom in something bigger. Like we might just be a hair in some giant's arm!
(Ha - I know, but we were only like 7 years old or so.)

But nobody grasped it at all, and all the others started taunting and laughing, and dancing around me wiggling and saying, "yeah, look at me. I'm a wiggling hair." They seemed to think that was the dumbest thing they ever heard, as they obviously were not giant hairs.

So, I learned to try my hardest to keep my wild ideas to myself, as I tried to appear average and blend in. Unfortunately, I still was taunted quite a bit, and called "the brain" in a rather derogatory way as a kid. I hated that!

I also remember our very unfair rating system for elementary grade report cards. We were graded H, M, or L (high, medium, low) for each subject compared to the class, AND we also rec'd an H, M, or L compared to our own ability. (go figure)
So I would get all H's in the first column, but sometimes M's or even L's in the second. (compared to my own ability) And as the classmates compared their report cards, it would annoy me greatly as many would simply count all the H's and would brag about how they beat me. They did not grasp the concept of "working up to our own ability", but it was infuriating to me to get those, cause I though WTH??? I gave you what was required, but it was still not good enough?

That was certainly a bad grading system, and I sure hope they don't use it anymore. Some kids would even get some L's compared to the class, but H's as far as their own ability, which to me would have been a slap in the face. But they didn't seem bothered, and were proud of their H's.

(that Giant Hair story reminded me of "Deep Thoughts' by Jack Handey. Anyone remember that from SNL?)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EigfHLZHQkE

I wonder if an absurd sense of humor has its own IQ equation? I find that many others just do not share my sense of humor, which admittedly can be quite absurd.

[Tigger]

Daniel Goldman wrote an excellent book on Emotional Intelligence. A useful summary of the book can be found here:

https://resilienteducator.com/classr...ory-explained/

Mike’s story in post #24 highlights the importance of having some degree of social awareness to be successful in society. After all, humans are very social animals. A high IQ can be useful; I just wouldn’t rely upon it as the only indicator of a successful and fulfilling life.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Tigger (here)
Daniel Goldman wrote an excellent book on Emotional Intelligence. A useful summary of the book can be found here:

https://resilienteducator.com/classr...ory-explained/

Mike’s story in post #24 highlights the importance of having some degree of social awareness to be successful in society. After all, humans are very social animals. A high IQ can be useful; I just wouldn’t rely upon it as the only indicator of a successful and fulfilling life.

Supertramp's wonderful Logical Song:

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh, it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily
Oh, joyfully, oh, playfully watching me

But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh, responsible, practical
Then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical