IQ difference and jokes.

Factual Questions
81

Its not high IQ that makes it funny, just having learned a rather obscure fact.

High IQ probably helps with making the connection in the first place, making more subtle jokes possible, but lots of knowledge helps as well.

Same with telling jokes… High IQ will probably help making the observation to begin with. Strong memory will keep it in your head for the retelling.

A story about jokes and memory. Sorry I can’t remember it better.

The author was telling about a meeting with Isaac Asimov, in which Asimov told a joke about a camel. The author asked him to tell another joke with a camel, which Asimov proceeded to do. The author then asked him how many jokes he knows with a camel in it, to which Asimov responded quickly, “7”.

82

Could the person have been kidding, do you think?

83

P.S. I don’t get the joke about the Georgia Tech people at the ATM.

Weren’t they there to get money (or to deposit money)? Why is the ATM deviating from its function?

84

It’s college rivalry joke. The ATM assumes the first customer with a high IQ and good job must be a Georgia Institute of Technology graduate, so it talks about the Yellow Jackets (the Georgia Tech team). The ATM then assumes that the customer with a low IQ and no job must be a University of Georgia graduate, so it talks about the Bulldogs (the Georgia team).

85

Sigmagirl, the problem is that it appears that Sister Vigilante was told by someone from Mensa, “You’ve scored 160 on our test. That puts you in the top 1% of the population.” That’s like telling someone, “I’ve just measured your height. You’re 7’2”. That puts you in the top 1% of the population." People don’t talk that way normally. It’s more likely that Sister Vigilante misunderstood somebody at some point or is mushing together in her mind two different I.Q. tests she took.

Voyager, while what you say is true, it’s still more likely that Sister Vigilante misunderstood something at some point than that there were two people in her class with I.Q.'s of 160 and 165. Her entire story is confused. She doesn’t seem to have any clear idea of how rare certain I.Q.'s are. I’m still waiting for her to return to this thread. Sister Vigilante, could you please return to this thread and give us much more details on all of this? Where did you go to school? What was the range of I.Q.'s in your class? Tell us more about what happened to a group of people with such high I.Q.'s.

I know this comes across as unfriendly, but whenever someone tells a personal story like this on the SDMB, I suspect that they are remembering something wrong. A lot of people here don’t question stories like this enough. Most people don’t have very good memories and mix up things that happened to them just a few years before.

86

My experience is that it’s knowledge rather than intelligence that influences whether or not someone will get many jokes. Back in my sordid past, during the eighties, when I was in my late twenties, I dated a twenty-one year old who was the first person in his family to (barely) graduate from high school. I sat him down in front of an episode of Cheers once. I laughed my head off, and he sat there and occasionally chuckled. I realized that he simply lacked the cultural references to find the dialogue funny. The guy wasn’t stupid (although he probably wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack), but he had no reference points. Admittedly, there is a fair amount of overlap between intelligence and knowledge, but it is by no means one to one.

87

Well, lucky for Sister Vigilante you are here to tell her what she is really thinking. :wink:

88

Do you want me not to be skeptical? That’s what we do here on the SDMB, we act skeptical towards things that other people just accept. I wasn’t accusing Sister Vigilante of lying. I wasn’t even saying that for sure her story was misremembered. I wasn’t saying that for sure I knew what the real story was. I just said that some of it sounds improbable, and it would be nice if she came back to the thread and filled in some details so we can examine it more. Sapo, this is not the “Let’s All Hug after We Tell the Story of Our Lives So We Can All Accept Each Other” Message Board. It’s the Straight Dope Message Board, and sometimes we have to be a little skeptical about personal stories that people tell.

89

Indeed. I know nothing of Georgia universities, but for me the joke fails because its premise hinges on something wholly implausible, i.e. an ATM that asks people what schools they went to. That just derails the joke long before one can get close to a punchline.

“So, the other day I was getting a blowjob from my alarm clock and-”
“Wait… what? You have an alarm clock that gives blowjobs?”
“Well, not really, but just pretend I-”
“That’s stupid.”

90

What if it didn’t ask, it just tried to guess based on their PIN?

91

Oh, in THAT case, it make PERFECT sense.

92

"1-2-3-4-5?! That’s the stupidest combination I’ve ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage! "

93

That’s amazing! That’s the same combination I have on my air shield!

94

Skepticize away, my friend. I just found it funny that you say that someone else’s story is confused or misunderstood something like you can see her thoughts better than she can do it herself. No harm, no foul.

95

I think it has a lot to do with how important smart is to both the people in the relationship. Smart people, on the average find smart to be extremely important, and it is a fairly rare occurrence for a person thirty IQ points higher than another to both be aware of all the other aspects of interpersonal relationships unrelated to intellect, and fortunate enough to have a relationship with a person of much lesser IQ who is equally aware that their worth as a human being is not limited by intellect.

I am not sure of the mathematical differences, but I have known two couples of obviously divergent intellectual abilities who have deeply committed relationships of long standing. However, in both cases the “smart” one had profoundly unhappy experiences with the academic social world, and pretty much found being smart a matter of limited applicability in the realm of happiness. They were both smart enough, and both lucky enough to find someone who did not have that terrible sense that intelligence and human worth were synonymous.

By they way, one of the dumb ones describes himself as Rock Stupid, Usually with a grin. His wife generally simply smiles, and says nothing when he says that. I once asked her if he was really all that dumb, and she said, “He can figure out right from wrong, and he knows more about nice than anyone else I know.” She is some sort of techie designer, he is a tire mechanic.

The other couple are a brilliant executive, some sort of financial company, and his gorgeous dumb blond wife. It’s a caricature relationship, and “everyone knows” all the things everyone always knows about that sort of marriage. But, they have been married about thirty years now, their children grown, and moved on. They still seem completely happy to me.

So, while my experience says that statistically both couples are phenomenally lucky, and probably uncommonly wise, I think that pride of intellect is a more likely source of the statistics than some inherent barrier to communication.

Not to mention all the “both of them smart” marriages that seem to have the same, or even greater rate of separation and divorce that I have known, and no doubt you all have known. I think happiness in marriage is not really about being smart, or dumb, or the same. I speak not as an expert, but as just another divorced guy, but I don’t think intellect had a lot do with it. Selfish seemed to be a bigger part. But that’s just me.

Tris

96

Considering that there are now alarm clocks that jump off your dresser and run around the room to make them hard to turn off - clock makers, get to work! :stuck_out_tongue:

97

Sapo just doesn’t appreciate how predictable it is that somebody drops into a discussion about IQ just to add the amazing factoid about how high their IQ is … and how it almost always whose post (and/or past posts) belie their claim of amazing intellect. Shagnasty’s Principle.

It also works by proxy btw (Shagnasty-by-proxy … it’s sort of like Munchhausen-by-proxy just different). I know of a case in which the individual has no recollection of ever having his IQ tested but his older siblings swear up and down that not only was he tested when he was seven but that he scored “something like 160 … pretty sure 160” and how their father was so proud and how it made everyone resent him forevermore. Both parents now dead so cannot be asked. Now the guy knows he’s no 160. 130 to 140 maybe, if he was ever even really tested at all, but no 160. His siblings though swear to it. And they won’t budge; they are shocked that he has somehow blocked out the memory!

Odd thing how things grow in the remembering. Of course I remember that lockers in grad school were HUGE and now they look small, so there you have it.

98

Like verbal contracts!

99

Sapo, nowhere did I say that I know Sister Vigilante’s thoughts. I said that her story had a number of improbable aspects to it. Saying that I think that she has misremembered something is not saying that I know the thoughts in her head. It’s saying that I can compare her story to what I know about probable events regarding I.Q. scores and notice that something doesn’t add up.

100

It’s possible she did have a test that used the ratio scoring method I described in post #53. A 160 would still be rare, but perhaps not that rare. I don’t know how rare it would be for say an eight year old to have a “mental age” of almost 13, but I could believe it’s more than .003% of eight year old children. As I mentioned before, this method of IQ scoring doesn’t necessarily produce consistent results as the child ages and doesn’t work for adults at all. It wouldn’t be a compliment to tell a 40 year old they had the mind of a 64 year old!

Oh, as a sort of reverse version of “Shagnasty’s Principle”, I once knew a guy who told me he’d always known he wasn’t that smart. He said he’d had an IQ test in school and that he didn’t do well. He said he didn’t remember what his score was exactly, but that it had a “6” in it. I said “If it was 96 or 106 then those are both pretty average.” He said he thought it had actually been a 60. I assured him that there was no way he could really have an IQ of 60. I mean, this guy was no genius, but he clearly wasn’t mentally retarded either. I think he was just misremembering his score, although I guess if he’d been distracted or nervous about the test he might have performed far below his true ability.