IQ, Mensa etc.

reply to post by TrueBrit


No, I totally get what you're saying but I think you're failing to grasp the reason why she is that way. My eldest is a genius. He gets so caught up in his own head sometimes that he's so internally engrossed that he forgets to eat and may not shower. I'm supposed to be a genius and I've been so distracted by something brewing in my head that I've tried stuffing a cereal box onto a refrigerator shelf and put the milk in the pantry. No kidding--really did that. The irony is that I'm supposed to have what is called "high spatial ability". Normally, if I'm not internally distracted, I can tell just by looking if something is going to fit or not. Just yesterday I went to Costco and visually plotted out just how much space and how everything I was buying could fit into my small freezer box. I came home and when others tried to put it away, they declared that I'd bought too much frozen food. I went in, adjusted everything to maximize space and fit it all in a very orderly fashion. At the same time, I am the same person who tried stuffing a cereal box repeatedly onto a shelf in the fridge when there was no way that it would have ever fit there. It all is dependent on how far in our own brains we get. If we're brainstorming, the external world may become irrelevant. That doesn't make us idiots or numbskulls. We're doing some high level processing. Expecting us to function like everybody else is like expecting a computer to be able to run additional programs while its in the process of compiling something large. If your friend wasn't a genius, then she probably would not have these other features because her brain would be more geared towards those things. She's just compiling.

I think this is one of the hardest things for people to grasp. An actual genius' brain may operate in fundamentally different ways. What may be important to the average person may lose all importance to a genius because it's irrelevant or their brain may be working on overdrive on something entirely different and unseen. Look at Einstein. He was a freaking mess as far as appearances go and was a very messy guy. Totally reminds me of my son who would say that people put far too much time, thought, and effort into their appearance, lol. Just because something is viewed as important to you doesn't mean that it's really all that important in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes there are bigger thoughts afoot.
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reply to post by TrueBrit


I believe that some individuals are highly, highly intelligent yet eccentric and lack some bits of common sense sometimes.

However, there are also highly highly intelligent persons who not only lack common sense, but seem to be on an even higher plane of existence than your typical human being.

So, in short, it's more the individual than anything - i.e. it's a universal generalization would be wholly inaccurate.

reply to post by WhiteAlice


Might I point out that having a high IQ does not make one a "genius".

A genius is something entirely different from having a high IQ.

One can have a high IQ and yet be mediocre and unremarkable. Mensa is a good example of that. Yet, a person with an IQ of 161 (the ceiling of the Mensa Cattell III B test) cannot just magically become Einstein or Mozart or Oppenheimer of Goethe or Picasso. Genius is a separate thing from IQ, though they may be interwoven sometimes.

The majority of high IQ beings produce nothing of any novelty or benefit to mankind. So, for example, the recent article about a blond British teen having "a higher IQ than Einstein" is irrelevant - Einstein has had a massive impact on humanity; this blond British teen who "wants to become an actor" will most likely be no Einstein or Mozart or whatnot.

It is much like Taylor Wilson. He is a definition of "genius", yet another 18 year old who has a really high IQ will not have produced his a nuclear reactor at 14 or be at university in his mid-teens or be receiving grants from the US government in top-calibre projects.

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens

I agree. There are individuals in this world that can do some pretty amazing but perhaps useless things. I have a nearly eidetic memory but that's just useful to me because I very rarely lose stuff. Associating genius only with material or discernible production is a little unfair though. What you're talking about are still both geniuses. One is a genius and the other is a creative genius. They are two different things. I was supposed to be a great taxonomist. My ability to remember things, snap pictures in my mind, and referencing all added up for a prof to view me as a phenom in botanical identification. Told me about how I would travel around the world, trying to find new species of plants, and get be in demand. I could find something new and have my name immortalized forever if I chose. I had a kid instead. When I ran into him a couple years later, he was so thrilled to see me and wanted to hear what I had become. However, after I told him that I had had a child and chose to be a mother instead, he literally turned around and ignored my existence after that. The expectation that everyone who is a genius or creative genius is only one because they have produced something beneficial for society is precisely the crap that is stuffed in the educational system. It's the expectation demanded from these people when how they choose to spend their life is really their choice. Who are you or the rest of society to dictate and judge the quality of another's intellect on the sole basis of whether they have produced something beneficial to society? Isn't that awfully selfish? Besides, maybe those non-producing high iq people that you don't consider to be actual geniuses are doing things that you cannot even fathom. What you may think is relevant may be irrelevant to them or vice versa. It's been my experience that every former gifted to genius that I know has their own pet projects and very serious interests that may never make the news and probably won't. How we chose to live our lives is our business.

It's shameful that more responsibility should get dumped on an individual just because of something they were born with. I got told as a kid that I couldn't anything with my life but become an engineer because I was supposed to be some mechanical genius due to that combo of loving to figure how thinks tick and spatial ability. I was punished by the school when I said "no, that's not what I want to do" and refused to do a career packet on a field that I had zero interest in and therefore, considered a waste of their and my time. I was told that it was my responsibility and that if I chose to do anything else, it would be a waste. That I would be a waste. I was given Saturday school for having an opinion about what I wanted to do with my life. Imagine that.

Did you know that DARPA is suffering from a severe brain drain? Ever wonder why?

reply to post by WhiteAlice


See, thats why I think intelligence and genius ought to be measured and codified differently. I think more attention ought to be payed to the different types of intellects that are out there, and each measured according to his or her particular use of thier intellect, which does NOT happen at the moment in any way that I can identify.

For example, a fellow who is so utterly in tune with his body that he can do an eight foot high corkscrewing jump over a moving car is probably as smart with his physical intelligence if you will, as a math professor who can perform numeric gymnastics that make sense of the imponderables of the universe is. Its just applied differently. To be honest, I think being able to perform a complicated assessment of power to weight, angle and momentum, and execute a bodily response to it all in tenths of a second is pretty bloody amazing, and yet there are those out there who do these things on a regular basis AND tie thier own shoes!

I believe intellect is a difficult, if not impossible thing to quantify. You can get "indications" of it, I believe, but there is always going to be a margin of error.

I think most would value intellect according to a person's ability to APPLY that intelligence to something meaningful, some kind of solution to real life problems, for example. Perhaps the better term is "cleverness", but I think I prefer this. I've tested way higher on IQ tests than I ever would have thought, but I certainly have no desire to sit around with others and just blatantly try to outsmart each other (that's kind of what we do here anyhow.... )

My friends all think I'm much more clever than I feel I am too, but my wife knows the truth...when she calls me the "dumbest smart guy I know"...

reply to post by Gazrok


lol Gazrok. Yeah, I have my moments, too. If you look at the research into this kind of stuff, you'll find that trying to adequately measure and codify it are constant subjects of debate and there are classifications. You have gifted (may be genius level iq but may be simply gifted), genius, creative genius, savant, autistic savant, and more that I probably haven't seen. I know for the gifted programs in schools, they default towards a measure of IQ plus some ambiguous "other" factors. Renzulli is often cited for these programs and that is basically identifying children that have above average ability, creativity, and task commitment. So basically, they have the iq and they have the potential to apply it--just like you said. The issue, I think, in trying to measure one's ability to apply something kind of falls on its face though. Let me try putting it this way, if the average IQ of the majority of society is around 100 and it is society who gauges whether or not someone of higher iq is using it appropriately, then could it not fall under a difference in consideration of relevance? It may be that that individual who society views as "not applying their intellect" is, in fact, applying it but just in ways that society, as a whole, may not fathom.

Let's use you as an example. You're a super moderator on this message board whose motto is "Deny Ignorance". How many people on your block or whatever would view what you do here as being irrelevant, pointless, and maybe even question your sanity? The fact that you invested enough time and basically "proved" your intellect to become a super moderator here doesn't mean that you're not a benefit to society. It's just society, in general, may gauge your activities and participation here as being a "waste" of time and intellect. I think that having a place where intelligent discourse is very, very important and crucial to society and its ability to function. Most people don't think twice about the conversations that they have. They may not see the relevance or the effects of a too narrow or broad minded discourse. So, your presence as a super moderator with a higher iq may be viewed as irrelevant when what you do may be very relevant.

Sorry for putting you in the limelight but you're a good example of what I'm trying to say. Hope you forgive me.

reply to post by WhiteAlice

How many people on your block or whatever would view what you do here as being irrelevant, pointless, and maybe even question your sanity?

Probably all...including myself... No, seriously, I enjoy the time I spend here, and for me, that's enough...and is the point. No point in life if you don't enjoy yourself. I spend hours a day not enjoying myself, to pay for the moments I do, so I try and get my money's worth...

reply to post by TrueBrit

A relative of a close friend, is a Mensa member, and works for the government in the field of physics

Not someone you would call a mind of significance

Yeah, sure... whatever.

You do realize that none of the "Negatives" that you mentioned have anything to do with intelligence, right?

She has however managed to start kitchen fires by leaving simple WATER on to boil too long

Oh, she has forgotten things? Must be retarded then.... Down syndrome?

I am to assume that you mean that stupid people don't ever forget things, and have accidents?

cannot park her car worth a damn

This is a skill, not a lack of intelligence...

Geez, you are transparent.

has personal cleanliness problems

And stupid people are universally indicitive of cleanliness?

Being clean doesn't have anything to do with intelligence.

Your "Evidence" for intelligent people being dumb, is Dumb.

Go shill somewhere else.

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by WhiteAlice

 

How many people on your block or whatever would view what you do here as being irrelevant, pointless, and maybe even question your sanity?

Probably all...including myself...

No, seriously, I enjoy the time I spend here, and for me, that's enough...and is the point. No point in life if you don't enjoy yourself. I spend hours a day not enjoying myself, to pay for the moments I do, so I try and get my money's worth...

Yes, no one knows of my past time that has recently become a full time past time due to (hopefully) temporary disability (when I'm not so distracted that I'm trying to stuff cereal where it cannot go, I have my second issue of not minding my step.). Ah ha! now you know why I have so much time on my hands. Honestly, ya'll are saving my sanity. I think I'd lose it without the lot of you because I'd be stuck with staring at four walls. Interestingly enough, I'm usually the type of person who can't abide not feeling productive. Not doing anything drives me batty. As strange as it may sound, talking with people here helps me feel a little more productive. Then again, I have always thought that sharing information, insight and experience are all very beneficial and productive things and people are fascinating.