If you really are a highly intelligent person, you should realize that I have little reason to believe what you say and much better reason to suspect braggadocio. This is the internet after all. Claiming to be a genius is pretty much the same as an appeal to authority while sitting comfortably with the knowledge that proving those credentials wrong is virtually impossible. You might as well say “and I know I’m right about this because I’m super duper smart.” If you still insist on quantifying your mental acuity numerically, at the very least take a few minutes to learn how the tests are scored, so that maybe you can claim a plausible score in the “rather bright person” range rather than the “super genius” range. If the human race were as smart as it claims to be on the internet, we would have long ago ascended to a higher plane of existence by sheer force of brainpower. As a general rule of thumb, the higher you claim your IQ to be, the more likely I am to suspect you are unfamiliar with the concept of a bell curve.
Now I’m off to post in threads about how you should listen to me about celebrity news because I’m tight with a lot of people who you have heard of but I won’t name, about how you should listen to me about scientific matters because I hold several degrees from prestigious universities, and about how my sex advice should be taken seriously because I have regular threesomes with supermodels.
I have an IQ of 2.000.000 and like other people of my intelligence am very smart. I wish to protest in the strongest possible terms terms with the content of the following post.
Yours faithfully, etc.
Henry J. Squigglebottom, deceased
I decide how intelligent people on line are on the basis of what they say, over time. If they tell me their IQ once, in a conversation about psychometrics, it’s a neutral. Multiple iterations become negatives. The positives are a bit harder to come by.
My IQ went up while I was incarcerated in a mental institution, so I always remember that too.
About a decade ago, on a different message board, I wrote an angry post and signed it Henry J. Pigglesbottom. It was one of the funniest threads I’ve ever been part of.
I find that the online world is full of that - there are times when it makes sense - e.g., starting a legitimate “Ask the Particle Physicist” thread, or establishing legit credibility when offering input on a real question…but beyond that, I don’t get it.