In short, I was in many fights up to about 9th grade. Then something happened and people didn’t want to pick on me anymore.
This tended to stunt my perception of conflict and I started getting into fights again after High School. When one guy I fought used the old saying “You have no bark” it got me to thinking and I started observing.
The two takeaways I got out of it I will call ‘postering’ and ‘be on watch’
Have you ever seen to guys postering to each other before a fight? Looks stupid as hell, no? That’s what I thought. However, this display serves a very real purpose…to avoid a fight. Once I thought about this and allowed my self to participate in this silly ritual, my participating in actual fights plummeted.
The second thing was to be on watch. You actually have to watch people to make sure they aren’t ‘dissing’ you. Most everyone will start small with you and build up if you don’t react. If you catch it early and be firm, it usually goes away quickly.
Both learned from observation and experimentation One just has to apply oneself to learning it.
I tend to think of what I want to say, and how I want to phrase it, etc. before speaking. Many people just spew a stream of consciousness. As a result, I do OK in a one-on-one conversation or a structured setting where it is clear when it is my turn to speak. In a group of 3 (or goddamned more) speaking spontaneously I seldom get a chance to speak. Many years ago, I simply gave up. If someone wants to talk to me at a party they will need to seek me out, as I will not be joining any conversations.
I see a lot more nuance than those around me. It takes far more time to go into this than most people have patience. One example from the 2008 election is that every candidate but Obama seemed to think that lowering the Federal fuel tax would lower the price at the pump. Give me an hour and I can show you Obama was correct. Can’t be done in 30 seconds, especially if you don’t already understand how supply and demand work.
Most of the more interesting stuff I do at work can’t be explained to someone without significant experience in my field.
That makes sense. Taking time to “posture” allows time for, say, other interested parties to intervene non-violently (talking one or both of you down), or gives one or both parties the chance to back down gracefully and, ideally, save face.
Or we could take all of the people who would rather play sports and put them in college-level math classes. They might be discouraged from doing intellectually challenging activities where they would learn to interact with the bigbrains.
Right?
I don’t see why people sorting themselves by interests and capabilities is such a problem. So what if some people are awkward? Likewise, so what if some people aren’t good at sitting still and concentrating? It takes all kinds.
I’m one of those people with a very respectable IQ who is socially ‘challenged’. I recently attended a leadership training course where I work, and participated in a personality profiling session. It appears that I am extremely introverted (big surprise). What was a novel experience was being asked how I would like people to communicate with me. In my 50 years on this marble, I don’t believe anyone has ever asked me that.
I was struck by a moment of truth, and to the curiosity of my coworkers I shared that I am someone for whom small talk is physically painful. I can debate for hours about whether glass is a liquid or an amorphous solid, and walk away refreshed and happy. However, If I had to converse for 10 minutes about ‘The Bachelor’ or ‘Jersey Shore’, I would wonder why God was mad at me. I would be exhausted by trying to feign interest and contribute to something that has no value to me whatsoever.
The truth is that I am longing to connect on an intellectual level, but most people don’t get past my reticent veneer. Maybe if the socially confident would dig a little deeper, they may find value in us quiet folk.
If someone is talking about a problem I often try to offer advice or assistance, when they really just wanted to bitch. If you miss these social cues you will be seen as awkward, when really you were trying to engage in conversation.
There is also the fact that smart people often are desperate for actual conversation, instead of discussing the sexual hijinks on Jersey Shore etc.
Another thing to realize is many people are not really in truth talking about what they are talking about, they are doing it for other reasons you need to decode.
I see social skills as a form of intelligence, so if someone is terrible at them, I don’t necessarily think of them as particularly smart. Especially if they make a lot of mistakes I see some people in this thread making. You don’t have to like American Idol or Jersey Shore to have a conversation with the average person. If people don’t understand what you mean by a term, perhaps they just aren’t familiar with that term and they would understand it if you knew how to explain it better.
People are animals and, like most socially intelligent species, their behavior tends to follow certain patterns. Learning to read people is not as simple as learning programming, but that’s part of why I like it. I used to be terribly socially awkward and I’m naturally an introvert, but I’ve learned how to get along well with people by studying them like any other subjects.
This is an example of nothing more than that you like scientific navel-gazing and dislike reality tv. It’s not an example of introversion vs extroversion or smart vs dumb.
My point was that in my workplace reality TV is discussed widely on a daily basis and in passionate terms. Another topic of constant conversation is ‘purses’. This relentless banter does nothing for me, and because I don’t participate I am perceived as polite but distant.
If the conversation ever turned to something that was challenging, they would see the passionate me come out. What you labeled scientific navel-gazing was just an example of something that would stir my interest and satisfy my need to engage in thought provoking conversation. I work with stained glass, and I have studied it. It has some remarkable properties, and entire university programs are dedicated to solving it’s mysteries. Contemplating the science behind why it behaves as it does is great exercise for my aging brain. There is an elegance to it that fascinates me, but if I tried to discuss it at work I wouldn’t get any takers. Maybe if I talked about glass purses…
I am honestly dying for meaningful conversation. It doesn’t have to be high-minded, but for it to do the trick it does have to be challenging.
Some really intellegent people know how to be with themselves without having to be with others. Ever had no one around to make conversation with, now how do you stay awake ? This is the same with inellegent people, they are not really dependent on others for their entertainment, socalizing is a group entertainment, TV in real time. Intellegent people can understand self-sufficiency, and they practice it by not seeking the recognizition of others for their entertainment.
Good meaningful conversation is the exchange of open minded intelligent humans, with similar interests and a desire for expanding their understandings. It matters very little what you think of me, it really matters what I think of you. This would be an intellegent angle of an honest, open minded human, if you add and how can I use this for my gain then you would have a sociopath.
Virtually impossible to tell. The IQ test is (in theory) calibrated to fit a normal curve, allowing for a slight overage of people below average (on the basis that head trauma can reduce your brain capacity, but it’s very difficult to thump yourself smart). Because of this, anything more than two standard deviations out from the average is unreliable and kind of a squiffy estimate at best. Three standard deviations out and you’re just guessing. One standard deviation is either 15 or 16 points, depending on your version of the test. Scores tend to be reasonably consistent through 130 or so, wobbly but within a range from 130-150, and complete ass-pulls beyond that, particularly when testing young children.
In a more practical sense, even if you do test that high, you might not really know what your score was, at least without phoning up the test people and pestering them in person. I suppose they might have fixed it by now, but when I was a kid, pegging the needle on an IQ test or one of the other standardized tests used in the American public school system broke the software they used to print your results. Go over something like the 99.9th percentile and whatever they used to generate the graph evidently took the limit of something very confused, and the end of the bar whapped right off the edge of the margin.
On-topic, I would not be surprised if a high IQ resulted in more dissatisfaction, especially socially. It’s not that very smart people never like the same things as average-smart people, but that there are additional topics that very smart people think about that require a lot of raw intelligence/formal education/both to understand. It’s extremely frustrating knowing that there’s a lot locked away inside your head that you just can’t talk about with anyone you meet in your daily life. You have to continually hold back a part of yourself, unless you like making people really uncomfortable, sometimes bordering on angry.
I think everyone’s had the experience of feeling like you were really connecting with someone they’ve met only to have the other person say something that suddenly makes you realize they really don’t “get” what you were trying to say. Very smart people get that a lot intellectually on top of all the times everyone gets it emotionally. It hurts.
OK. The writer of the article, Grady M. Towers, discusses alienation and IQ. He presents the work of Lewis M. Terman and Leta S. Hollingworth. I would summarize the article as saying:
I will leave aside the fact that it was written in 1987, and so is 25 years old. I will ignore that the measures of “adjustment” and IQ that are presented were made in the 40’s & 50’s, with both being analyzed in ways that would not be pertinent today. The most important thing to note is that the article was not written by a scientist or a science journalist. It was not published in a scientific journal, a newspaper, or a magazine.
The article was published in the newsletter of The Prometheus Society. The Prometheus Society is a social club. Like Mensa and Triple Nine, it has an IQ test requirement for entry, but it is a social club. There was no peer review of this article. It is an opinion piece with quotes. The author did not do a review of all available literature and reach an analyzed conclusion. There are no footnotes and no bibliography. The information is from “a study” and “her book”. And it’s difficult to tell when the author is still quoting and when he’s inserting his own opinion.
I would not take this article as evidence of anything beyond the times when the author is quoting members of The Prometheus Society discussing their own personal experiences with IQ and alienation. And that is at the level of anecdote. Read it if you enjoy reading letters to the editor with data tables for decoration.
I have to assume that Mr. Towers would spit if he could see his article republished in a blog with the banner: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life! Think Yourself Sane! Not to mention the misspelling in the blog’s over-title. And the mis-represented IQ break. (The article supports an “outsider” break at 150/155. The title says 170.)
Which is an odd situation I’m running into. In some circles, a self-deprecating sense of humor is what you strive for…Oh that little thing? That’s was nothing.
And speaking personally, I’m pretty kinda smart. Well versed too. I’ve found a little local group of REALLY SMART people and it’s frankly pretty cool to not have to talk down to them…and to be occasionally befuddled with what they’re saying. Their behavioral quirks are the kinds of things you kinda take with the territory.
That said, I find myself looking for work, and it’s really hard to strike a balance between I know my shit, and I know a lot of it and did I come on too strong?
This is true a lot, I’ve found. Even if you never actually say the words “I’m really smart” and do your best to not inadvertently run anyone over with it, people still know.
I cringe inwardly whenever anyone looks at me and says the words, “Wow. You’re really smart, aren’t you?” It means that no matter how intelligent they may in fact actually be, they think they aren’t as intelligent as I am, and I am going to have to be super-careful not to smart at them if I want to interact with them in the future without them disengaging and withdrawing out of some weird sense of embarrassment or inadequacy. It’s a specific variation of the general “reasons why we don’t hang out with people who continually claim to not deserve us” case, I just happen to get that variant a lot.
[QUOTE=BlinkingDuck]
He gets the 180 figure from doing IQ tests on the internet. I imagine some people on here do the same.
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I can’t say anything about your acquaintance, but I know I got my official ludicrous number mostly because the last time I was properly tested, I was four or five. One factor that goes into your score is the time you take to answer, and the way you calculate IQ is dividing mental age by chronological age, then multiplying by 100 to eliminate the decimal. Small children who happen to read very rapidly, even if they lack other education or context, break the metric.
One just has to apply oneself to learning it.