Triple nine

In My Humble Opinion
21

The celebration of stupidity and suspicion of intelligence is a well known problem in our society, one I’m as opposed to as you are. I’m referring not to a problem, per se, but simply a pet peeve of mine: High IQ Societies.

At least there are no clubs based on how stupid you are, right? Even really dumb people can add often something to the conversation.

As Stranger mentioned, listening to people at the top of their field can be inspiring and educational. But that’s what universities, professional organizations, conferences, trade shows, journals and tech papers are for.

Too bad no academic achievement, inspiring idea or interesting life experience is required for Mensa and the like. You just have to have scored highly on a fairly useless test. It seems like the only reason to join one of these organizations is to say you’ve done it. And of course brag about it, because otherwise, what’s the point? Successful people have other things to brag about, so I imagine most members of Mensa, Triple 9 and others are looking to prove to people that “even though I’m a boring, unaccomplished nobody – I’m still really smart, see!”.

I speak from a position of ignorance on these societies, never having joined or attended an event. From afar however it looks an awful lot like those national honor societies I was pelted with offers for in college. “You’re so smart! You’ve qualified for this extremely exclusive club that none of your friends can get into, and it only costs $89/year! Look, we can print your name in a book full of other smart people’s names, and sell it to you for $40, that way you can prove to people that you’re special! And if you’ve got any money left, we can…”

Again, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. CEOs, successful inventors, professors, scientists etc don’t feel isolated because they’ve already surrounded themselves with smart people through hard work. But if you’re as much a failure as the other trailer park residents, but you just know you’re smarter than them, I can see soothing your ego with Mensa being a pretty big draw.

22

Thank you for the reply. Judging from the response I have gotten so far it appears I made in error in judgement by starting this thread IMHO. I was not attempting to find opinions on whether or not IQ tests in general had validity.

I am not in any high IQ societies myself, I have no idea what my IQ is actually. I do not think IQ measures worth as an individual, or that those with superior IQ deserve special attention or higher status in society.

I do, however, find it to be an interesting subject. I was inspired to start this thread after reading “The Outsiders” by Grady M. Towers http://prometheussociety.org/cms/articles/the-outsiders.

This article makes a case for there being a fairly vast difference between someone with a 170 IQ and someone with an IQ of, say, 140. In other words, being at average Mensa level IQ is a much different situation than being at the triple 9 level. In much of what I have read, an IQ higher than about 155 is considered suboptimal due to the inability to interact with others on the same level among other things. The article does have some data and statistical analysis to show the correlation between IQ above a certain level and the prevalence of certain psychological downsides.

This quote expresses the findings in a fairly straightforward manner:

All things considered, the psychologist who has observed the development of gifted children over a long period of time from early childhood to maturity, evolves the idea that there is a certain restricted portion of the total range of intelligence which is most favorable to the development of successful and well-rounded personality in the world as it now exists. This limited range appears to be somewhere between 125 and 155 IQ. Children and adolescents in this area are enough more intelligent than the average to win the confidence of large numbers of their fellows, which brings about leadership, and to manage their own lives with superior efficiency. Moreover, there are enough of them to afford mutual esteem and understanding. But those of 170 IQ and beyond are too intelligent to be understood by the general run of persons with whom they make contact. They are too infrequent to find congenial companions. They have to contend with loneliness and personal isolation from their contemporaries throughout the period of their immaturity. To what extent these patterns become fixed, we cannot yet tell [3, p. 264].

As far as qualitative vs. quantitative, I think it is best to read the article in full to have a better idea of what that means.

23

I agree with everything Dr Cube said in post #21.

If I want to have a conversation with very intelligent individual I’ll ask my friend Andrew the robot builder and 3 D printer-maker about electricity or computers, or my friend Andrew in New Jersey about botany or chemistry or the experiments he’s doing with vacuum chambers, or my friend Andrew the wolfman about mythology or biology or physics. (One day I hope to get the three Andrews together in a summit and usher in the next Golden Age). I know that each of these men would qualify as a triple niner. But they have no interest in joining. They want to make things, and do things and learn things- not brag about how smart they are.

ETA- I have no desire to join the triple 9 society. But they have the COOLEST logo!

24

I get the point of the op … and I doubt he’ll find too many people here who could answer it and someone who really could (that one out of a thousand person) would likely be smart enough to private message the response rather than respond in a public forum.

Lots of us here are smart enough. Many tested well and many, more importantly, are intellectually curious. Some probably were even “gifted” (not a high bar, really). But we (I presume to speak for the bulk of us here) are not the far end outliers. I’d imagine that such might actually be a lonely place. Maybe triple nine is not far enough out for it to really be the case … after all one in a thousand means that you can pretty easily find people who are smart enough for you and find the rooms that you are not the smartest occupant of. But boy, I enjoy the fact that I am not usually the smartest person in the rooms I occupy and that I get to learn from other people; it would be sad to not be able to find those rooms, don’t you think?

25

I have an Olympic gold medal in smartness. True story.

26

Smartness or smartass?

Stranger

27

I would have easily qualified a couple of decades ago. I think I reached my intellectual peak sometime in my 40s, and it’s been downhill ever since. Now, when I’m around people who are as smart as I used to be, I can’t always follow the conversation, and that’s depressing.

28

I thought this would be an OK forum for this kind of discussion; there was a previous thread in which several respondents spoke openly about their MENSA experiences and several gave specific IQ scores. Perhaps that was a while ago and the board has changed. I also thought the generally intellectual curiosity of the board participants would lead to a different line of discourse. Mostly I am sensing hostility in regards to this topic, and little commentary in regards to the issue I am discussing. One never knows until one ask though, I suppose.

29

The collective hive mind has evolved. Matured,if you will. We are having difficulty relating to you. Mmmmmm.

30

I am a relatively new member, it is more my place to try to relate to you than the other way around is how I have come to feel. I just do not have enough familiarity with the board to know how people will react to things.

The article prompted me think of people who may have tremendous intellectual abilities but little social status. I think perhaps sometimes I am guilty of being dismissive of people based upon the wrong criteria, although that would not be something I would necessarily think out loud, sort of “if you’re so smart why aren’t you doing xyz” type of thinking.

There is a lot of discussion about people in this category living a “double life” where they take positions which are generally more menial; for example, Grady Towers was a night watchman. Perhaps life is really different for people with these characteristics, perhaps I could understand the situation of someone with these abilities and try to have greater sympathy for their particular circumstances. This sort of spoke to me in the sense of thinking that I am too narrow minded in some of my views.

31

There are academics who study intelligence and IQ, but few of them publish popular press items because of the hostility you mention. If you want to learn about it, I recommend the writings of Charles Murray, such as The Bell Curve and Coming Apart.

People with extremely high IQs tend to know how high their IQ is. They also tend to eventually realize the futility of …

32

Mine’s platinum. When I show it to people they think it’s silver. Morons.

33

I have a sneaking feeling that intelligence tests are designed by those who score high on them.

34

I thought the Bell Curve was not very highly regarded, I have not read it though. Have you read it? What is your opinion of it beyond the basic recommendation you just gave me? I don’t know my IQ so it looks like the odds of me having excessively high IQ are low, WOO HOO!! One less thing to worry about.

35

But what if really unintelligent people designed IQ tests? Then if you score well it means you aren’t smart and doing poorly actually means you’re a genius but everyone thinks you’re dumb because you failed the test? sounds like some sort of twilight zone episode:eek:

36

I probably should tell the OP about us Quadruple Nines, but that would just be cruel.

37

It is highly regarded by those in the field of the study of intelligence as insightful and accurate. It is soundly trashed by the liberal-leaning popular press.

Yes, I have read it – wouldn’t have recommended it to you otherwise. It is a science book. Reading and understanding it will not make you popular, but it will make you a little less ignorant.

38

I posted a smart-ass response originally, but included in it was a kernel of a real question. Looking over your OP, I find a lot of “poisoning the well”.

You refer to extreme intelligence as a “condition”. You postulate that people suffering from this condition feel different, that the condition makes them feel isolated and that they have to seek out their place, presumably in life. You wonder whether people who have it (extreme intelligence) ascribe the difference they feel to qualitative or quantitative … something. (Quantitative? What would we be measuring? Cranial capacity? Number of facts per cubic millimeter?)

Poisoning the well like this to begin with makes the questions you ask produce somewhat different answers than what you may have hoped for. IMHO, of course.

39

Despite Turble’s protestations to the contrary, yes, there are academics who don’t think highly of it (and some that do). They’ve got legitimate criticisms, and they’re not just members of the “liberal press” (note, reference to a “liberal press” is a big, big warning sign in itself).

No, Murray, Rushton, and their cohorts don’t have a monopoly on studying intelligence nor on how IQ relates to intelligence. Nor are their conclusions the scientific slam dunk some would have everybody believe.

There are a number of threads discussing these points, and I have very little desire to rehash the points, but you can do a thread search to find them. Unsurprisingly, most if not all of them involve attempts to “scientifically” claim some races (as socially defined) must be genetically inclined to higher or lower intelligence.

40

Those stupid Giga Society members!