I’m 46. I’m a physics PhD dropout. When i got married, I quit academia and got a job with AT&T.
My degrees are math and physics, but frankly I never really fit in with the physics folks in general. my best friend was an English major. We had a lot of great conversations but unfortunately he moved away recently. I’ve been single now for 2 years. I work in software and computer technology, but I’ve never been able to connect with my peers there. I want to talk about philosophy, literature, art, music (and mathematics… but mathematics itself is enough to satisfy me. I don’t really have to talk about it with people).
I live near the University of Kansas and the University of Missour-Kansas City… but I have no idea how to interject myself into the desired social circles… or even how to find them!
It really isn’t that difficult to meet smart people. My interests and education are somewhat similar (my PhD work was in CompSci), but I don’t have much difficulty meeting people and having interesting conversations, it’s just a matter of realizing that I can’t necessarily talk about ALL of my interests with everyone I meet. For example, I can easily talk about film with my coworkers, and despite having uncommon tastes in music, they’re broad enough I can connect with most and I still manage to find a person here and there that I can go down the rabbit hole with. I’ve met plenty of people at the gym where I can discuss pretty much any topic. I’m often discussing my philosophical musings or recent film and music discussions with some of the gym regulars between sets. Hell, not that long ago, after a workout, I spent about 45 minutes in a philosophical discussion with an attractive woman–too bad she’s not single–whom I’d met some time ago and had other similar lengthy conversations because she had overheard part of a conversation and was fascinated. And almost everyone I meet at concerts, or other similar places where I’m even more likely to have something in common with people, are really awesome to talk to.
Yeah, there’s a ton of stupid people out there, but you’ll be surprised how many intelligent people there are in all walks of life. Some people are really bright but maybe they either just aren’t that interested in academics or didn’t really get inspired to do well at it until later in life. Some made mistakes in life along the way that got them in jobs other than where one might have thought their intelligence would lead them. Some people might just be doing certain types of work and apply their intelligence in other ways, like writing, composing, or painting on their own time. And even people that aren’t particularly might still have a lot of wonderful insight on some topic, either because of personal experience or because it’s a topic of interest to them.
So, my word of advice on this is just to strike up conversations with people pretty much anywhere that you might meet people. Sure, plenty of them will end up just being fairly superficial. Sure, for every person I meet at the gym I can talk to about a topic I’m really interested in, I probably meet half a dozen others that I can only talk to about gym stuff like sports, weight training, diet, etc. And those less interesting people just become people I have short chats with from time to time when I see them wherever. The others, I become closer friends with, and then through those people I meet other people. Really, I end up meeting more interesting people than I even have the energy to really get to know, which is actually kind of frustrating in a way.
Are you into politics at all? During the last presidential election, I volunteered for a presidential campaign, and that tends to draw people who care about current events, economics, philosophy, etc. It’s not exactly what you named in your OP, but it’s similar in the sense that people aren’t meeting to talk about sports and celebrities, but stuff that actually matters in the grand scheme of things.
For extra good results make sure they can be decoded two ways: “Meet at <address> on Friday for a good discussion about General Relativity” and also “The body was buried at <address> on Friday.”
The cryptanalysts will really admire your chops & soon you’ll have a whole party at your place. Maybe even before Friday.
I just used DSL Reports new HTML 5 speed test, and I got *better *than a gigabyte upload speed.
Also there are some very smart people in Kansas City, MO and Lawrence, KS. Sure, it doesn’t totally make up for a bunch of drooling mouth-breathers in large swaths of both states, but I know at least one Nobel prize winner.
By the way, meeting smart people in real life is vastly over-rated. Based on past experience, most Dopers are best appreciated via text, and are selfish, spoiled twits in person (myself included.)
Before even beginning to help you find smart people, I would first of all ask if you know what your objectives are.
Are you looking for someone to marry? Are you looking for some romance? Or are you just looking for a group of people to sit around on the weekends drinking beer and laughing and telling jokes?
I think it’s a very good idea to first become clear as to what your objectives are.
One interesting idea would be for you to learn to play Bridge or Chess or some other kind of game that requires some high level of intelligence and that also has clubs where people meet on a regular basis. Like Bridge clubs or Chess clubs or that Mensa hookup concept.
But, if you are looking for romance, I think it might be very valid to suggest that you might find a lot more happiness with someone of average intelligence than someone of high intelligence.
In my experience, the happiest kinds of couples - both married people and even just buddies - are people who do not have similar attributes. They have “gaps” and they help each other fill their “gaps”. Do you remember that movie from 1976? Rocky? He spoke about “gaps” and how both his character and the female lead character had “gaps” and that both characters helped to flll each others’ “gaps”. I found that to be remarkably valid.
So, tell us, … do you know what your objective is? Is it romance? Or just friendship? Or … is it as I suspect … which is - anything that you can get? Is that it?
If you come to agree that joining a social club might just be much more rewarding for you than joining a club that features high intelligence, then maybe you might want to learn to dance and join a Dance club. Or maybe you might want to join a purely social club. There are many of them and they feature hiking and other joint activities.
If you are not clear as to your objectives, it just might be a real good idea to spend some time discussing them before you throw yourself into a specific kind of organization.
I’ve gone to lots of different meet up groups. It seems by far the highest average IQ is in the cycling groups - I’m basing this on the number of people with Phd’s and Masters, especially in hard sciences.
You would think the literature groups would be up there, but as far as I’ve seen they tend to be a couple very very smart people and a lot of others who seem to have questionable reading comprehension abilities.
I read you said that you were were married. But, are you still married? Or, are you just looking for friendship or companionship?
If you are still married, where do you see your wife fitting into your plans here?
Whatever you are looking to do, I’m guessing your wife will expect to play a part in that. If you t think you can have a new romance or friendship that does not include your wife, then I’m guessing your new friendship or romance is headed for a rocky landing on some abandoned rocky harbour and your “ship” will be smashed to pieces.
