Based on this, the obvious next question is - does it make a difference to you if people are significantly less/more intelligent than you? I’m not talking about people who are willfully dumb and ignorant of the facts, I mean people who actually have less intelligence than you.
For example: Would you date someone who had 50 points of IQ higher or lower than you?
Would you date someone who was mildly mentally retarded?
Moderately?
Severely?
Would you date a genius?
Please be honest.
I would gladly marry a genius babe. Definitely on my list of things to do.
But in general I get along best with and prefer people who are cool. If they’re a genius and cool, then that’s cool. If they’re pretty low on the heap, but cool, I’ll stick up for them.
50 points higher: yes indeed. 50 points lower: not a chance. My IQ’s somewhere around 110 - 120, so someone with an IQ of 60-70 will be profoundly retarded and out of the question.
Mentally retarded: no way, no matter the degree.
Genius: most definitely.
Intelligence is sexy!
Everything Quartz said.
I don’t go around asking the random man what his IQ is, though. My ideal mate is someone with whom I can have a heated debate, each of us holding our own (holding our own what, I couldn’t say, but moving on…), and neither of us feeling stupid in comparison to the other. At the end of the hour or two or three, we need to be able to call a truce and laugh about it with each other. I’ve had one such occurence that stands out in my mind, and it is one of my favorite memories of that relationship.
I once kinda-sorta had a fling with a woman who was, if I may say so, dumb as a sack of hammers. I couldn’t stand it: I found myself getting impatient with her small vocabulary, and she got really mocking of me when I used big words. I called it off.
My wife is brilliantly intelligent, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Part of dating for me is having really interesting conversations on a wide variety of topics, many of which will be intellectual.
I can enjoy hanging out with folks who aren’t intellectuals, but I wouldn’t date them. I’d just piss them off, and they’d just piss me off.
Daniel
When I was in my teens, I spent about six months in a hospital, where I made friends with a really sweet boy who was, in today’s lingo, mentally challenged. We had a lot of fun talking and listening to music, and he had a neat sense of humor. I doubt that I could sustain such a friendship today; there isn’t enough child left in me.
I don’t judge on numeric intelligence as much as I do education*. If I were still single, it wouldn’t make much sense to me to pursue a relationship with someone who was dull** and without any interests in the world at large.
*Education can be formal or otherwise; one of the most articulate and informed people I know is a former co-worker who is a high school dropout. She may not have finished high school, but she certainly reads, thinks, and learns.
**Dull not in the sense of raw intelligence as much as in the sense of one who isn’t a seeker of understanding and knowledge.
Nah. I.Q. doesn’t really matter for much anyways. I’ve a decent I.Q., and lord knows I can learn and retain new things easily. It also happens that I’m dumber than a sack of really stupid rocks.
It doesn’t matter to me how smart someone is as long as they are a lot of fun. I guess I’m just shallow like that.
I have found through experience that I “hit it off” best with, and find it much easier to relate to, intelligent people.
Well, I haven’t yet posted over in the IQ thread. I guess I should?
Yes, I’m horribly biased against stupid people. People that can’t spell are highest on my list (remember my pit rant about spelling?).
I don’t date people. I’ll never get married. I’m very very anti-social. I just don’t see any point in sharing my life. I mean, it’s my life, why should I share?
Some of my friends think I’m stuck up.
I don’t value/judge the person based on intellect. I do, however, determine whether I want to be in a long term relationship with them. One of my favorite pastimes is discussing books, movies, religion, and philosophy on a fairly deep level; someone who can’t enjoy that is not going to be someone that I want to spend a whole lot of time with.
Also, to be blunt, I’m a very smart, and I’m equally impatient. I don’t like having to slow down, or explain myself, or dumb down what I’m saying.
Same here, though I don’t really consider myself all that smart. I spend enough time among people in non-dating situations who consider me a grade-A freak because of how I talk and how I think. I am definitely not going to date someone who feels that way about me. There has to be at least a roughly equal level of intelligence between us.
I once dated a guy who was great looking, made a lot of money (he had a very dangerous job that paid well), and was great in the sack (just being honest, folks!)
He was not, however, the brightest crayon in the box. I mean, I was afraid that if he ever saw a wet floor sign, he just might , ya know?
I really enjoyed his company…for awhile, anyway. Then it got kind of old not being able to have a serious discussion with him about anything more complicated than what was on t.v. last night.
I will take brains and a good heart over looks and money any day.
I’m quite intelligent, in a very specific way, one which manifests itself in being able to think incredibly quickly on my feet, have very good recall of random trivia, and generally come up with clever and funny thoughts. This makes me very good at games of the Charades/Taboo/Pictionary/Balderdash variety, which I happen to adore.
Women who are good at games of that sort make me weak at the knees. Women who are good at games of that sort and also really enjoy them, and are competitive in a trash-talking flirtatious way (without being jerks about it) cause me to propose marriage on the spot.
If a woman is NOT good at games of that sort, but obviously intelligent in other ways, then I can still find her very attractive, but if she’s just not very bright, then I’m not interested at all.
Very high intelligence is one of only two Absolute Dealbreaker Requirements I have for women, the other being not being a truly mean person.
I do value intelligence, especially the sharp/think-on-your feet kind that MaxTheVool described. My mother is just a little slow on the uptake, and it drives me absolutely nuts – I can’t imagine dating anyone like that. Education is important, too, even though I know it’s no guarantee of anything: when I do searches on Match.com, I look for men with a minumum of a bachelor’s degree. However, the real key is that the guy isn’t significantly more or less intelligent than I am: finding someone “at my level” is more important than any external and/or objective measure of his education or intelligence.
Would you date someone who had 50 points of IQ higher or lower than you? IQ doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t even know my own, and feel no need to find out.
Would you date someone who was mildly mentally retarded? No.
Moderately? No.
Severely? No
Would you date a genius? It would depend on his personality (some geniuses are arrogant or somewhat antisocial – or both), but genuis alone isn’t a dealbreaker.
Please be honest. Always! 
My criteria for the Intelligence of people I associate with are pretty loose - I do get easily frustrated when there’s a recurring communication barrier, so dealing with significantly mentally-challenged individuals on a regular basis would be high-stress for me.
Honestly, my primary criterion for whether or not I want to associate with someone is whether or not they share my interests. Oh, and my sense of humor. My two criteria are common interests, and a common sense of humor. And a dirty mind. … My THREE criteria…
I guess I should put in my viewpoint too…my IQ is about 110-120, so I am no genius myself. And like Quartz, I couldn’t date someone with 50 points less than me because they’d be severely mentally retarded.
I wouldn’t ever date someone who was even slightly mentally retarded.
50 points higher? Isn’t that already almost in the realm of genius? Anyway, yes, I would, provided they could deal with me and weren’t arrogant about it!
I do have a fairly quick wit *some * of the time, and I do like guys who have a quicker wit than me.
My ex was not as intelligent as I am. He wasn’t stupid, but I’d rate him as of average intelligence, and I rate myself a bit higher than average 
(hey, it’s the straight dope, we’re all of higher intelligence here)
I count that as a large part of why it didn’t work out between us. He was decent looking, a really nice guy, and worked pretty hard. But his dunderheadedness really got to me. I lost a lot of respect for him, and we established some bad habits, relationship-wise. I couldn’t trust him to make decisions because invariably he’d end up with some convoluted mess. I don’t think I’m being a control freak here or anything like that - I realize that everyone’s decision making process is different, and even though a solution might not be the one I came up with, it’s equally valid. I’m talking stuff like when he designed the sprinkler system for our new house, somehow we ended up with no sprinklers in either garden. Um… isn’t that the point of a sprinkler system? To water the fookin’ plants? (No, we didn’t divorce over the sprinklers, that’s just one of the more benign incidents that illustrates my point.)
Anyway, I digress. It was difficult to talk to him on a high level, and difficult to live with him. So maybe that makes me a snob. But the new Mr. Athena is a smartie, and even though we have our disagreements, I respect him and never have to question his intelligence. We’re much more of an even match.
So I guess the point of this is to say that I wouldn’t want to be with anyone who was either a lot dumber than me or smarter than me. Dumber, because of my experience with my ex. Smarter, because I don’t want to my husband thinking I’m the dunderhead!
As far as general friendships, I’d rather be a friend with somebody who’s not as smart as me than with somebody who is willfully dumb and ignorant of the facts. Willful ignorance is something I cannot stand!
I don’t put much stock on IQ, but assuming that they are an accurate depicter of intelligence;
Yes, I would date someone with an IQ 50 points higher than mine.
I actually don’t know my own IQ, but I’ll assume it’s in the super-genius range 
If that’s the case, somebody with an IQ 50 points lower would still be of at least average intelligence, and dateable.
No, I would not date someone who is mentally retarded, at any level.
I would date a genius (if I wasn’t already married!) if her personality did not clash with mine.
I have no idea what my IQ is, so I can’t really tell what 50 points lower or higher would be. But I do think that there are different kinds of intelligences, and someone whose “social” intelligence, for example, is significantly lower than mine likely wouldn’t bother me.
Ok, maybe that’s not true. A guy asked me out a few days ago by saying something like, “My IQ’s 125; is that high enough for you to go out with me?” Done right, that could have been really funny. Instead, I thought, how strange that that’s what he starts with. (Then there’s the Porsche guy, as in: “see that Porsche over there? Mine. Wanna go out?” Again, has the potential to be a really, really good pick up line, but not the way he delivered it.)
Bottom line, I think that I would only date someone who was in my ballpark generally in terms of smarts – who was smarter than me in some areas, or less smart than in others, but generally on my level. I get very impatient, and dating someone who wasn’t quick on the uptake makes my stomach clench in knots. But every man I’ve ever gone out with (bar one) has been in my ballpark, so maybe since I’ve never explored where the limit is, it might be lower than I thought.