[QUOTE=monstro]
I was going to start a companion thread to this thread: Who’s average and not afraid to admit it?
Let me be the first to say “I am completely and totally average and I’m ok with it!”
I am the pinnacle of average! I am average height. I am average weight. I have average looks. I am of average intelligence. I have an average degree from an average university. I have an average job. I live in an average house in an average neighborhood. I have an average number of kids. I play an average number of sports, you guessed it, averagely.
However, when you look at that bell curve, you will notice that my average ass is sitting right up there at the zenith of the curve! Not to mention that everyone measures themselves against me!! That’s right folks, all of you amazingly brilliant people would be just another pretty face without me to measure yourselves against!
But being good at or interested in football and getting together with others to talk about your affinity for football is different from falling into a supposedly more-intelligent-than-average group and getting together to talk about that intelligence (as opposed discussions about IQ tests in general), rather than talk about the interesting topics which that intelligence can lead you to become interested in, learn about or accomplish something with regards to that interest.
And this is coming from someone whose higher intelligence was all he had, until he learned different and now has nothing to live for.
Oh come on. I have never seen this EVER. Not now, not in high school. Sometimes I think people around here have a severe martyr complex. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but… really? I swear, most of the time when I hear about Dopers getting beat up at school every day and having absolutely no friends because they were good at math, I have to assume its because they were being insufferably arrogant pricks, not because “cool kids hate smart kids”.
No, my numbers were real if not barely arbitrary. I do have an understanding of psychometrics and normal curves. A good rule of thumb is that someone who claims to have an IQ of 145 or above is almost certainly lying (but barely possible) and someone that claims to have an IQ of 160 or above is definitely lying. The tests can’t measure that high reliably and tacking on a few bonus points for yourself at the high end has an effect that the people that claim these things can’t understand ironically enough. A claimed score of 130 is starting to strain the truth without further evidence of intelligence.
What I hate is when so called smart people become Self Appointed Experts On Everything. You can’t have a discussion with them. If you disagree with them in the least, they spend the whole conversation trying to prove how stupid you are, even if it’s a simply matter of personal preference.
Well, I read the referenced thread to be more of “when did you realize you were different and/or a nerd?”. I freely admit to being a nerd, I deny being or thinking of myself as a genius, despite my moniker.
Anyway, those kinds of threads are no different than the mastabatory “I’m better than all the people who post in that kind of thread about how special they are but I want people to notice me and how special I am for not posting in that thread so I’ll make a pit thread to complain about those people” thread.
I’m also overweight, my singing scares small children and strong men, and my office always looks like a tornado hit it (I don’t even want think about the state of my car).
Smart is nice; I like being smart. I’d probably like being tiny, tuneful, and tidy, too, but that is not my lot in life. Eh. Pity, because those qualities are valued in my society.
I don’t talk about being smart because, well, how far can that conversation go?
“I’m smart.” “So am I.” “Cool.”
Kind of a dead-end unless you want to discuss how dimensional analysis underpines all basic scientific inquiry.
But frankly I’d rather discuss my brains than someone else’s diet.
[I’m always up for house-keeping tips, though.]
Sometimes people do irrationally pick on other people. In high school (in Korea) a lot of people resented the fact that I’d lived abroad. This was despite the fact I never mentioned it, brought it up, or otherwise tried to call attention to it. It wasn’t something I could do anything about, yet there were students who disliked me for it. And as an angsty teenager it affected me a lot more than it should have.
But as an adult, I have yet to be actively disliked because I am “smart.” I will run into the occasional person who will be snarky when they find out I went to grad school and/or teach college English, but the snark is mild and such people are few and far between.
(And as a kid in the US I did get picked on for being a nerd, but I probably did deserve some of it, as I was an insufferable stuck-up know-it-all.)
I think people mistrust and dislike smart people who talk about being smart. Just like people don’t like the jocks who constantly talk about their superior physicality and they don’t like the people who constantly talk about their good looks.
Being smart is good, but so are a myriad of other traits. Imagine a thread entitled: When did you realize, vis-a-vis other kids, that you were good-looking? Do you think it would go over well? Don’t you think there’d be a negative reaction?
People often talk about the anti-intellectualism that faces smart children, but from my experience, the bullying went both ways. I was teased by smart kids for not measuring up to their level–despite my superior grades and demonstrated intelligence. My crime was competing against them without being blessed with a “gifted” label. They were special and I wasn’t.
Cry me a river. I was called nerd, dork, and geek growing up, and you know what? Those names didn’t sting nearly as much as when kids called me retarded. I don’t remember the names of the kids who ridiculed me for being smart, but I do remember the one guy who brought me to tears because he kept calling me retarded while doing a cruel imitation of a spastic person. I’m sure he’s still talking about how smart he is and how stupid his classmates were.
Just look at the board. Dopers don’t hesitate insulting others because of their lack of intelligence (moron, tard, retard, etc.). When is the last time a Doper has been ridiculed for being too smart? They might get taken down a peg for being arrogant, but smart? Ha!
There IS rampant anti-intellectualism, true. But don’t get it confused with anti-obnoxiousness.
Relating stories of the first realisation that you’re not the same as others is not the same as placing a value on that difference. In fact, many posters in that thread went out of their way to point out that while the difference is there, it is not really helping them in their careers, etc. Why is it unacceptable to discuss these particular experiences?
Shagnasty
When you ask the person for their IQ, do you also ask which particular instrument was used? Otherwise how would you know where the cutoff for lying was? I’m sure you realise that the major ones have differing standard deviations.
I doubt it was because you were smart. I recall people in my classes who made very high marks and nobody teased them about it. Likewise there were some students who were barely passing that got made fun of somewhat frequently. I think the dynamics of school bullying and popularity is a bit more complicated than jumping on the smart kids.
I hate smart people that feel the need to let everyone know how smart they are, constantly. I’m smart, but I assume that people, if they care, will notice it on their own. And if they don’t, I generally don’t care. I used to do this program at MIT for high school kids and there was so much fucking competitiveness about how high the little brats IQs were. I stayed out of it. They claimed to be in the 185 to 215 range. I knew they were lying, trying out do the others. That’s left a sour taste in my mouth until this day.
My IQ was tested by a doctor (don’t remember if it was a psychologist or a psychiatrist). Not because my parents wanted to parade me around as their gifted daughter, but because my teachers thought that I was mentally retarded. I was eight and could not read at all. The number was high, at the upper end of what I consider to be a believable number. I base this judgment on other people that have similar scores to mine and I think are equivalently intelligent. Anyone I’ve met who quotes scores more than 15 points over mine seems to be a windbag.
Being smart really never got me much. All the other kids disliked me in school. I feel this pressure to achieve, that I’m wasting my potential if I’m not perfect. There are days I wish I could be less smart. And there are days when I’m hitting my head against a wall at work, wishing I could understand.
The only real clinical instruments have a standard deviation of 15 or 16 with 15 being overwelmingly the most common. In any case, it doesn’t matter for these purposes.
This is getting into some serious controversial issues. Lots of tests can approximate IQ scores as determined by clinical tests like the Stanford-Binet or Wechsler. There are charts that can convert approximate IQ scores from such tests as the SAT and ACT into an established IQ score. They tend to correlate well so if you have the score from either of those, you can just translate them. This concept is known as the G factor of intelligence which means that all scores on roughly similar tests will end up with approximately the same result.