That’s the thing. If you want to find smart people, you have to, like… listen to them and think about what they have to say. BORING! Who has time for that? I want my smart people packaged up like processed American cheese.
I’m not a member of Mensa but know many who are and the hostility against them is amazing.
I mean, imagine a cartoon in which character A asked character B about how the latter is in a running club and character B says, yeah, we all we do is go running long distances three times a week [so you really can’t join unless you are super fit]. And then character A says well what do you do with all this fitness do you put it all to work delivering things for the elderly or doing hard work for the poor or whatever and character B says no we just run around in loops to no particular purpose other than just for the fun of running. Would that be seriously funny?
And yet, the same scenario about Mensans is apparently:
I don’t get it. Well, OK I do. I have some of the same weird prejudices as many others. But I don’t understand why.
What would it then be? Mensa’s test is its defining thing. If it didn’t have the test, how would you define it? It would just be a social club, which would end up with a profile of members that matched the societal average, and it would no longer be anything in particular. From being close to Mensans and going to a few of their events, the people there have a particular flavour to them. If that’s what they like, why the hell shouldn’t they have it? They don’t have access to special privileges, so it isn’t really an issue of egalitarianism.
There’s something about Mensa that irks some people beyond what the irrelevancy of the organisation requires.
You miss the point. SDMB’ers have a particular profile as a consequence of particular things about this place. One of the key things I suspect is the link to Cecil’s column, which subtlely biases the place in favour of people who like rigorous knowledge.
Mensa’s hook is different, but if it didn’t have one it wouldn’t be what it is. And unless you think there is some reason why it is improper for it to exist, then I can’t see why it is so wrong for it to do what it does to make it what it is.
So your gripe is that you are frustrated by Mensans not utilizing the optimal method of finding interesting people to talk to? You just can’t stand seeing people doing things in sub-optimal ways? I don’t believe a word of it.
If reading comprehension were part of the test, you’re not going to get in. Not that you would want to.
If the job advertisement says, “must have X years field experience”, then you should make sure that you have X years of field experience.
On the other hand, if you are a recent graduate, with only your degree and licenses, and you are applying for some entry-level job, competing against a million other recent graduates with the same paper credentials, then the miscellaneous stuff might make an incremental difference.
If the HR person has a favorable opinion of one of your clubs, then it might be an advantage. If the HR person has an unfavorable opinion of one of your clubs, then it might be a disadvantage. But in general, it is slightly more likely to help than to hurt.
[WHINE=ON]
Phi Beta Kappa is much more exclusive than Mensa, and they are not shy about hiring their own, yet nobody accuses them of oppressing the proletariat.
[WHINE=OFF]
OK, I knew that Asia Carrera was the Mensan pornstar. Who was the cartoonist?
Playing devil’s advocate here:
Re: Sour grapes. If you are unable to carry on a conversation with someone based on some abstract and flawed measure of that other person’s ‘intelligence’, the problem is not that said other person is not intelligent, it’s that you’re a lousy fucking conversationalist. I’ve often been described as being a pretty intelligent person, but I don’t recall ever meeting someone whom I was unable to have an interesting and stimulating conversation with. I could then argue that Mensans and the like are possessed of a ‘sour grapes’ attitude towards actual normal human interaction, blaming their inability to connect with people of differing backgrounds and educations on those people’s lack of ‘intelligence’. Sounds like sour grapes to me.
That’s a bit harsh perhaps, but a real reason I don’t have any respect for someone who joins Mensa is that they seem to believe that their measured intelligence is some kind of virtue, something that automatically should earn them respect. Some of them naively believe that they are discriminated against because of their intelligence. Now, I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve lived all across this country and hobnobbed with some of the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, the most educated Ivy-leaguers and mentally-ill homeless folk who never got past grade school. I’ve never personally met one person who harbored antipathy towards another person because that person was smarter than them. It’s my opinion based on experience that if you find people don’t like you, or if you can’t relate to people, it’s not because you’re just too smart. It’s because you’re an A-hole.
Edit: I guess that second part was a bit harsh as well.
I think Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has mentioned that he belongs to Mensa …
You rang?
I went to a Mensa meeting once (as my SAT scores qualified). They invited a couple of crackpots who IIRC were peddling a sort of neo-Creationism (tho they didn’t call it that). Everyone else at the meeting was gracious to a fault and avoided any criticisms of their guests, but I must have spent half-an-hour or more attempting to reason with these guys, fruitlessly as it turned out. Neither the fact that some club president invited them nor that nobody else came to my defense impressed me.
I can talk with someone who’s only interested in sports and celebrity gossip, despite the fact that I don’t follow either one. However, that doesn’t mean that I’ll find it an interesting and stimulating conversation. Maybe the blame is on me, but I rather think that the reason I don’t particularly care for such talks is because the other person doesn’t have any intellectual life at all, and prefers to get all his/her info from People and Sports Illustrated.
The reason that I was interested in Octomom, for instance, wasn’t because she was trying to model her life after whatzername, but rather because her case brought up issues about welfare, public support, the ethics of having all those kids, the ethics of multiple implantations when the mom wasn’t interested in selective abortions, etc.
I have preferences. I would much rather read a book that makes me think than a book of fluff, most times. I’d rather talk to people who think about issues, rather than those who sit in front of the boob tube and swallow whatever garbage is spewed. I tend to find that most Mensans think about issues, and are willing to talk about them.
Heh. In fact, my local chapter had a YEC for a speaker, and he was questioned rather thoroughly. Mostly he just said that he’d research it and get back to the questioner. I had several questions and comments, and afterwards I had several members come up and discuss the issues I’d raised. The thing is, we don’t pay for speakers, so we take whoever is willing to talk to us. Sometimes we get a banker who has a degree in space science. And sometimes we get a creationist who references Kent Hovind.
I’m amazed that anyone would judge a group by attending ONE meeting, unless, of course, they have an Amway promoter.
Getting back to the OP, this in fact is a currently running thread on the Mensa forum, and most people noticed no results from stating their membership on their resume. A couple of people were aware that membership was the main reason they landed a job. Me? I couldn’t even get an interview many years ago until I removed the Mensa reference - but then I work in an industry that’s mostly filled with uneducated, not-too-intellectual workers. I think it really depends on what industry you’re in.
I just visited their website. There is an element of exclusion that I detect from the membership info - they make a point of letting you know only 10% of students at the 10% of institutions are invited. But the criteria isn’t simply GPA or IQ - GPA is something of a reliable measure of maturity, intelligence, and diligence - there are any number of studies that correlate high grades in high school to high grades in college. IQ, as many have noted, is a very suspect measure of “intelligence,” and social capital (as well as economic status) can greatly affect one’s performance - taking a Kaplan course and learning how to score higher on the SAT may be more of a function of income than raw brainpower. Not to mention that soon after Binet developed the idea of IQ testing, some very unsavory characters came on the scene and championed their use and development.
It just strikes me if an organization is dedicated to the exalting of intelligence, they wouldn’t look at such narrow indicators of intelligence as these tests. But I do get the point that a lot of clubs and organizations are somewhat exclusionary.
I have a few honor societies on my CV, and I have two degrees from an Ivy League school. The honor societies are there only to show that I are smart (heh!) and the degrees, well, I earned 'em, so they’re staying on. I wouldn’t expect the honor societies to do a damn thing, except on the occasion that someone reading is a member and would know that it’s a proxy for a smart, hardworking person. Same with my fraternal affiliation. I think people either would care a teensy bit or not at all.
I hate Mensa more and more.
This really isn’t helping your case.
Why do you find it necessary to distort what people have said and make shit up?
There are a smattering of wankers in any group of people. I’ve met people who think that having a particular profession should automatically earn them respect, or that being physically big should automatically earn them respect, or being good at a popular sport should automatically earn them respect.
The real issue here is why you single out Mensans.
Meanwhile, most Mensans I know just like belonging to a social club which has a certain bias to it, and don’t need anyone to know they belong. Naturally, if nine out of ten Mensans are like that, the only one you would hear about is the tenth.
I think the cartoonist who drew the strip was referring to himself. I think the Mensa strips are his way of making a joke at his own expense.
I am sure that not all people who share the trait of intelligence are the same, but I bet you do see certain commonalities among intelligent people - just as you’d probably find certain common traits among people with superior athletic ability or superior musical talent. Nobody would criticize a group of elite athletes for wanting to get together to talk with similar people and get to play sports with people on their own level, so why is it so terrible for geniuses to want to talk to other geniuses?
It is well known nowadays that “Gifted Children” tend to face social problems (difficulty relating to other kids, pressure from their parents, etc.) that other kids don’t encounter. I believe this is a big part of why so many intelligent people wind up as socially awkward nerds. I could definitely see the value in these kids, who grew up not being able to relate to their same-age peers, wanting to find other nerdy intellectual adults who know what it was like.
I certainly prefer hanging out with smart people rather than dumb people. I’m not sure I could explain why… well, not in a way that many of you would understand. 
Congrats on being a people person. It is certainly commendable if you can find something interesting about everyone. However, if someone admitted to me that they would rather have a conversation about the nature of the universe with Stephen Hawking (or my personal favorite, the late Richard Feynman) rather than a random questioner on Yahoo Answers, I would not consider them to automatically be some kind of elitist snob - just honest!
If you want to talk to someone about the weather, it does not matter if they are smart or stupid. However, sometimes smart people do want to talk about deeper topics that a stupid person would have trouble with.
Haven’t you ever had the experience of trying to explain something to someone who wasn’t understanding what you were talking about? It can be frustrating to talk to someone who “just doesn’t get it”.
I’m not saying anything about education or accomplishments in life. I’m just saying that sometimes it IS more interesting to talk to someone who is able to pick up new concepts quickly and has a broad base of knowledge to share.
Still, that doesn’t mean that people who aren’t gifted intellectually are not worthwhile people. Athletic talent, artistic talent, etc. are not tied to intellect and are things to be proud of. I’m just saying that I think there is good reason why someone would want to be around their intellectual peers.
I’ll throw out one other thing. One of those programs is being given by a Doper and that same person’s going to be contributing some of the homemade cookies.
Look, to those of you who have a low opinion of Mensa, 10 years ago, I would have agreed with you. I’d met a bunch somewhere else and had thought them a bit arrogant and exclusionary. That’s why, when I met a science fiction writer and his best friend at a science fiction convention and they tried to get me to join Mensa, the look that crossed my face was, “Oh. And you looked like such nice people.” I didn’t have anything better to do the following Labor Day when my local group held their Regional Gathering, though, so I went, expecting to stay a polite 3 hours and leave. Instead, I left on Monday morning.
I’m geeky, socially awkward, and I know full well I don’t fit in well with normal people, which is why I was going to SF conventions in the first place. I don’t care about celebrity gossip or what distant acquaintances are up to, but I love talking about current events and I have a weakness for puns and double-, triple-, and quadruple entendres! I’ve even been known to pull of bilingual puns for the fun of it. There are a lot of guys out there who think intelligent women are scary, and some have told me so to my face. Mensan men think intelligence is sexy, as a rule, and the guys who talked me into joining told me I’d have my pick. To my great delight, they were right, and I picked the best of them! I was a member of the SCA when I took up with Mensa. Frankly, I found the local group to be more arrogant and exclusive than the Mensans I met, which is why I’m no longer with the SCA. Mileage varies.
As for using membership in Mensa to get a job, my husband laughed when I told him this. Then he pointed out that, with Mensa membership, you probably could get a job anywhere in the country – one in which you ask, “Do you want fries with that?” Speaking from personal experience, for a while my resume listed the fact that I’d run programs for a Mensa Regional Gathering on it. It still took me 7 months to find a job, and that was in a lower paying one which wasn’t in my field. So much for that!
I’m not surprised to learn that a lot of Dopers are members or qualify for membership. To me the SDMB at it’s best has a lot in common with the conversations at a good RG, which is something I’ve always loved about this board. I didn’t join for the bragging rights. I joined because I enjoy the company. When I don’t do that anymore, I’ll drop my membership and move on to something else. I’m not dropping the gentleman, though.
I would not necessarily think that was arrogance. I’d interpret the intent behind such a feature to be more of a humorous “This just goes to show that being in Mensa isn’t everything!” message rather than to make fun of non-Mensa spouses.
I did very well in school and have an advanced degree, while my boyfriend ended up leaving community college without a degree, so just going on that info people would probably expect more from me than him. However, in daily life, he often is more perceptive and a better problem solver than I am. If I were going to point that out, it’d be to make fun of myself, not him.
A friend of mine worked in HR at a large local company–one of the largest. Their resume review included giving out points for memberships. Any memberships. If you were applying at this company it was just as relevant if you were a member of Mensa as if you were a member of Mystery Writers of America, the Daughters of the American Revolution, or the Junior League. The more the better. The points were equal. (Okay, so I couldn’t say if membership in NAMBLA would count.)
It showed “community involvement.” Obviously it was not the only thing considered, by a long shot, but it would be another added point to whatever else you had going.
No, YOU missed the point, and God knows how, considering it was right there in the post you quoted. There is NO TEST to join the SDMB. ANYONE is welcome. If they don’t like it here (too much pointy-headed talk and intellectual wanking, not enough People and Sports Illustrated, apparently the periodicals of mental midgetry), they can leave, but anyone can enter. You don’t have to pass a test, heck, you don’t event have to pony up 8 bucks anymore if you can live with the ads. I don’t give a rat’s ass about organizations that skew one way or another based on interests – a chess club obviously has “subtle biases in place in favor of people who like” chess. So what? My problem with Mensa isn’t that smart people are in it. My problem is that it is exclusionary, and artificially so.
Yes, their “hook” is different: their hook is that you can’t get in unless you prove you have some arbitrarily-set level of intelligence. This doesn’t mean it is “improper for it to exist” or even that I particularly care that it exists. I can have minor negative feelings about a lot of things without wanting to banish them. And it would be very easy to over-estimate how much I care about this particular topic, which in reality is “not a lot.” If people want to belong to Mensa, they obviously don’t need my permission nor is it any skin off my nose. That doesn’t mean I have to approve of it, but if I don’t I will hardly cop to any degree of “hostility” over it.
It’s the phrasing of it in terms of what other people would “rather do” (talk to Yahoo Answers, apparently), versus what you would “rather do” (talk to Stephen Hawking) that is just another aspect of the elitism of it – or what looks like elitism from here. That, and the presentation of such a false dichotomy, as if the extreme ends of the intelligence spectrum are representative of it – so extreme and falsified a dichotomy, in fact, that you didn’t even link to Yahoo Answers, but rather to the most amazingly stupid answers possible to find. (And what’s a smart girl like you doing over at “Something Awful” anyway? Slumming?) And you can be both honest and elitist at the same time. There really isn’t anyway to overlook the obnoxiousness in a statement like “Sometimes smart people do want to talk about deeper topics that a stupid person would have trouble with.” So then the question becomes – do you just not see the obnoxiousness? Because that’s a whole 'nother issue, of course.
I don’t divide my universe into “stupid people” and “smart people”. If I did, I wouldn’t automatically assume I’m in the “smart people” camp, because as others have already said, “smart” and “stupid” are contextual. If I can’t communicate effectively with someone who is standing in front of me, I am as likely to assume it is a failure of communication on my part as that it is a failure of intelligence on theirs.
Frankly, the pro-Mensa people in this thread who sound like they’d be the least irritating to be around, are those who say, in effect, “my intelligence is sometimes a social barrier and I like hanging around with others who have the same experience, because we can relate to each other comfortably and because we tend to find the same sorts of things fun and interesting.” It may be false modesty to play your intelligence as a liability – almost certainly is false modesty, in fact – but it’s certainly less off-putting than “I’m so darn smart that I’m daily bored by all the stupid people I have to deal with.”
Which is why IMO Mensa membership usually doesn’t belong on a resume: You are either bragging about your exceptional intelligence or copping to a degree of social ineptitude. Neither is really the way you want to go while job-hunting, IMO.