It’s that postdoctoral growth spurt. 
He may have taken the Miller Analogies Test and gotten a 56, 60, or a 66. A 66, prior to October 2004, would have qualified him for Mensa. Not every test is based on a 100-point scale.
See, now I’m guessing this was a clever in-joke which only people of a certain IQ (and related to the SD community, natch) would get.
If not, then perhaps it goes to show just how well some people don’t relate to their audience which is surely a crucial element of humour?
Isn’t random extrapolation fun…?!
What can I say? I was a late bloomer.
(Now me, I think things like that, where a small typo of one letter dropped changes the meaning into something else that makes sense, and that postdoc sort of comment in response … are funny. Even though the first part was of course unintentionally so.)
ROFL.
Okay, this may not really belong here as it is really more of a poll, but …
Of the brightest people you know, the ones you would guess have an IQ of at least 140, how many of them go around telling people they barely know what their IQs are?
Of the people who have, unsolicited, piped up that their IQs are in the “genius” range, how many have been people who have otherwise struck you as all that bright?
My experience is pretty clear. The brightest people I know would be embarrassed to discuss their IQ scores and almost resent people assuming that their IQs are all that high as they feel that discounts how hard they have worked to accomplish their goals as well. We all know they are smart without their stating the metric. And as to the converse, well …
(BTW, I like that idea of an alarm clock that really gets you up in the morning. You know, having the start of your day suck in a different way than it usually does. :))
You’re right. The general feeling among members of Mensa and similar organizations is “once you’re in, you’re in.” I know scores of people with IQs 140 and higher – much higher – and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of them who’ve told me their actual numbers or asked me mine. Some guy who walks around saying “Your IQ is 148? Mine is 152!” would be not only treated like the jerk he is, but topped by the nice lady at the euchre table, whose IQ is 159 but who has the good manners not to shoot off her mouth about it.
OTOH, non-Mensans who’ve told me their numbers are either 1.) Pompous attention-seekers who a.) are lying or b.) are telling the truth and expect me to be impressed, or 2.) are telling the truth and sincerely want me to help them to find other similar people to hang out with.
Reading this thread, the thought occurred to me that people in the high-normal range, around 120 or so (typical of very successful people in fields other than science), have no trouble realizing that they are quite bit smarter than those 30 points lower … but they don’t seem to grasp that the difference between themselves and those in the 150+ range is the same.
A man who is a genius and doesn’t know it, probably isn’t. – Stanislaw J. Lec
I think it’s pretty unlikely that an elementary school student was given the MAT.
I’m chronically insecure because I was teased as a child for being a retard- oops, sorry, in special ed. I’ve gone through my life with the persistant worry in the back of my head that I really am stupid, so I try to use the number on the sheet of paper as a defense against those feelings.
Stupid kids.
To support your point: I don’t know a single person (in real life, not on an mb) that has had an IQ test (or at least discussed anything about IQ). In general, the extent of that type of discussion is “X seems pretty sharp”.
Right. When I was in 3rd grade, a visiting psychologist had the idea of testing the whole lot of us and telling us the results. We were all in a pretty narrow band of scores but that didn’t stop us from using those scores to torment each other for weeks. After that, I don’t know of anyone IRL that knows or tells people their scores.
I even worked for a while on a field where for every job you needed a full psychological evaluation which more often than not included an IQ test. That means I spent a ton of time with a lot of people who had all been recently tested. Not once anyone ever mentioned his scores or asked for someone else’s.
Just like most (by which I mean all) people I know don’t ask and don’t tell their shoe size or penis length or salary or cup size of their wives.
Based on personal experience, I do believe there is some validity to the overall claim.
I consider myself a pretty intelligent person but, like most people, I’ve encountered people both less and more intelligent than myself. When I’m the ‘smarter’ one in a conversation, I feel like some of the nuances of my meaning are lost. When I am the ‘less smart’ in a conversation, I feel like I struggle to keep up and I’m sure I’m missing small details.
So maybe I’m derailing a bit, but I don’t think jokes are the best reflection of this understanding gap - instead I think it has to do with the nuances and additional/hidden meanings in some conversations.
I know that when I feel like I am really communicating with someone ‘at my level’ our conversation is usually taking place on a number of planes - including the obvious, the unsaid, the oblique.
Is he the guy who wrote Colaris?
Interesting. This might be similar to the effect I’ve noticed that the only people who use their doctorate as part of their title or business card are those who are the only PhDs in their organization. I’m also pretty sure the subject of IQ never came up even once in the four years I was at MIT. Also, when I was there at least, there was no MIT Mensa chapter.
No. You’re probably thinking of “Solaris” by Stanislaw Lem. Stanislaw Lec wrote “Unkempt Thoughts”.
No, groups are geographic, not academic. They aren’t chapters in the sense of fraternities.
Anyone attending or working at MIT would be in Boston Mensa, unless he chose to be reassigned to another group. Upon joining, you default to a local chapter based on your ZIP code, but if you are on the borderline and have more friends in another group, or they have more activities that interest you, or you live in one and work in another and would be attending events after work, or whatever, you just tell the administrators to move you. You don’t have to give a reason (or even have a reason).
In some cases, their employers might make them do it; they want the degree to impress the clients and figure that will do it. It’s not always the degree-holder’s vanity.
A fair number of kids have IQ tests in school. It’s my understanding that it was once pretty common to test whole classes of kids. IQ tests are also used to help identify children with learning disabilities or mental retardation, and they are sometimes required for admission into gifted programs. This was the case where I went to school, so my siblings and I all had IQ tests as elementary school students.
That said, having an IQ test as a child isn’t the sort of thing many adults would feel the need to mention, especially since they may never have been told their IQ scores and may not even realize that what they did was an IQ test.
There was no advertising, no mention anywhere, and no one I knew was in it. Mensa existed - I got invited to go the the New York branch in high school. (My SAT scores were plenty good enough) but, like Groucho, I don’t join any club that would have me as a member.
Never heard that, and most of these people were engineers, not client facing. Now, when we were hiring and I picked up a candidate for breakfast and an interview, the letter HR sent to students about to get their Ph.Ds always said Dr. Voyager, to prove i was part of the club. My alumni mail says it also, I suppose to make sure I won’t be offended and thus not donate. But my observation holds over a wide range of companies and people.
In one of the universities I attended faculty with Ph.Ds were called Dr. rather than Professor, because at that time there were faculty from the old days who did not have Ph.Ds, and thus having one was more prestigious than just being a professor. My department didn’t use this custom because of the professors did have Ph.Ds.
Yes. In the mid-60s all kids in NYC schools were tested, but were never given scores. It was, however, in the teachers roll book, and was seen on two occasions by kids in my class. (Two different years.)