An actual answer to the OP - I realized that I was smarter than everyone else early on, when it seemed like I was a different species than most people. It always felt more like most other people were mere children and I an adult, most people dogs and me a dog walker, etc.
But I knew it was true when I joined MENSA and thought everyone else there was dumb.
I don’t think simply mentioning a fact about yourself is bragging per se, and I think it’s weird that a lot of people take it as such. There’s a difference between mentioning a fact because it’s relevant and mentioning a fact simply to show off. False modesty is as unbecoming as arrogance in my mind.
Remember Principal Snyder’s commencement speech in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? “You have all proven to be more or less adequate.” That’s the kind of affirmation I’m looking for. Instead all of my evaluations turned out to be like Joel Cairo’s line to Kaspar Guttman in The Maltese Falcon. “…you imbecile, you bloated idiot. You stupid fat-head you”. Good times.
I’m glad you admitted that because really, IMHO no does use the phrase “vis a vis” anymore in any kind of normal conversation unless they think it makes them appear smarter.
I agree…the SAT and GRE are aptitude tests, not IQ tests. As others have pointed out, you can improve your score by studying, which you shouldn’t really be able to do with an IQ test. I’m sure there is correspondence, but there can’t be a true equivalence.
A psych prof of mine said he could swing IQ test results a standard deviation in either direction by how he gave it. He could be cold, aloof, dispassionate etc. and the child would lose some self-confidence and start performing badly. But if he were encouraging, warm and friendly, the child would blossom. +/- a standard deviation would be a difference of 30 points.
Add to this practice effects or having a good or bad day, and you’d need repeated tests under different circumstances and with different administrators to zero in on an average that would presumably reflect the truth.
Or maybe it just reveals a deeply-rooted ambivalence about the value that intelligence has, and ought to have, in our society. Either way you look at it, you’ve got people being judgmental. On the one side you’ve got smart people judging dumb people. On the other side you’ve got smart people judging other smart people for bragging about being smart. Now you’re judging the smart people who say they don’t care but claim they are smart. Which is the greater character flaw – arrogance, insecurity, false modesty or moral superiority?
Albert Einstein was a Patent Office clerk at one time.
Your posts alone are enough to convince me that the average IQ of a Doper is way, waaay below 130. We are not talking about a 5000 member self-selecting subset of nearly two hundred million. We are talking about a message board that is open to anyone in the world with internet access & £7.88 knocking around their paypal account. Why are you so bent on assuming that the IQ of the average doper is two whole standard deviations above the mean? RickJay, Shagnasty and others have done a good job of explaining why this is so unlikely as to be not worth considering. I just don’t understand where you’re coming from.
By the same token, posts like this somehow manage to smack of jealousy and petulant sour-grapes. Neither side winds up looking particularly good, especially when you start making assumptions about motive.
So was Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Walt Whitman . . . it’s not the low-level mindless job that the name would indicate.
How would you if they are intelligent instead of merely average?
I mean there are people I work with who I’m sureare idiots. I’m not sure if the work is over their heads or they are just lazy or both. But you can definately go a lot further being of average intelligence but a hard worker than being a delicate genius.
Well, I’ve done both intellectual work and manual labor, and I think I would prefer a living based off of my intellect.
I think this is called being maladjusted, not smart.
And, smartypants, it’s not an answer to the OP - it’s an answer to the OTHER THREAD, so apparently your reading comprehension ain’t so great.
It’s not exactly the pinnacle of academic achievement, either. I’d wager far more folks of slightly above-average intellect have held the position than notables such as those mentioned.
I read the email notice of this post, which doesn’t include the quoted post, and thought, “These guys worked at call centers?”
It was even funnier to watch in the original thread…
“Well, I never felt smarter than the other kids…sure, I scored a 150, and I skipped a grade, and learned to read when I was a twinkle in daddy’s eye, but I never really saw myself as smart”
I think Sarafeena makes a terrific point about it not being a classy thing to call others morons while bragging of your own smarts.
Class is a very simple concept. I have seen* children* grasp it with absolute ease. I find it interesting how so many supposedly smart people can’t seem to wrap their huge brains around it.
Thank you for pointing out the IQ inflation that seems to be a popular trend on the internet. I am certainly not referring to the Dope. I am new to the board, and it is obvious that this is an extremely bright group of people. I don’t need IQ scores to convince me.
I always laugh to myself when I see people proclaiming IQ measurements that fall into a percentile that represents 1% of the population. I am sure there are people with impressive IQ measurements, but the reality is most people probably have not taken a valid, reliable IQ test, one that is administered by a psychologist. The ability tests given to school children are group administered, which is fine and does measure ability, but it is not a reliable IQ test. Kids can and do have significant variances in normative ability scores from one year to the next.
Mensa accepts IQ scores from individually administered test but I believe they also accept group ability tests like the Otis-Lennon and Naglieri.
I do understand how intellectually gifted adults can feel bitterness in a society that seems to mock intellect. I am a firm believer that exceptionally bright children should receive accommodation in school. Although it goes against my indoctrination as a teacher, I actually support the idea of tracking and segregating exceptionally bright kids into classes taught by teachers endorsed in gifted education.
You are completely correct Aesiron. And the pathetic thing is; I was watching an episode of Star Trek the original series yesterday right around the time I posted. :smack: I’ll turn in my ‘smart’ card at the door.
There seem to be some people here who really know a lot about IQ tests.
For you guys - How many kids actually get tested for IQ in the US? Are the tests administered to place kids in gifted programs really IQ tests and if not do they have any relationship to IQ? It seems that half of the members here claim to have been given an IQ test as a kid and have been given a score.
I know for certain that I’ve never been given one, although I didn’t go to school in the US. I do have two kids post-elementary school and I know that they haven’t taken them either. They have taken standardized tests that might be able to assign them to a percentile, but I don’t imagine that those correlate to IQ very well.
Are IQ tests as common as the posters on here seem to indicate?
I am assuming nothing about the people posting here; I am simply disagreeing with RickJay’s argument that it is statistically unlikely the average I.Q. on the SDMB is 130 using the numbers quoted below and U.S. census data.
I am estimating the pool; U.S. estimates on the current population between 18 and 64 is roughly 188,000,000. This does not correct for internet access. This does exclude U.S. teens and retirees, who may have more time for the boards, and everyone else in the world. So, I’m calling it even and rounding up; really, we talking orders of magnitude with population estimates.
According to those numbers, a very small percentage of the pool would need to be regular posters, unless I mislaid a power or two of ten.
(Did anyone check my calculations? I could be wrong.)
To evaluate the possibility better, we would need to correct for at least internet access, non-U.S. membership, and message board use by age. I’m not going to do that.
What really has me puzzled is why you think this is not a self-selecting subset.