IQ?

[Robin.]

I was just wondering what your IQ is? Preferably if you took an official one from a psychyatrist. But I guess post it if its based on one of those online IQ tests too, but say which sort of test you took: online or official.

[tekla]

I'm smart enough to know better, and that's pretty much all I need.  The schools tried to test me several times only to run into my mom who would not allow it.  And I know why she did it, and in that she proved herself smarter than my teachers.

But really, those numbers have very little to anything in reality.  It's a measurement of potential, and not anything about putting it to work.  And often, some of those people have personality problems great enough to negate any advantage that the potential for intelligence gave them. 

Need proof?  Of course you do.

So go to the MENSA site, and check out their list of members who've done great things.  It's remarkable how devoid it is of anyone really great, or anyone who ever did anything good for anyone.  Now go and find a list of famous Eagle Scouts, that's mindblowing.  It's everyone from Supreme Court justices and presidents, to a pile of astronauts, to L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology among other things) and David Lynch who did Twin Peaks and some of the strangest movies ever. I mean Sam Walton who founded WallMart was an Eagle Scout, and so was Charles Whitman (the U of Texas bell tower sniper, perhaps the first real famous serial killer).  Lawrence Ferlinghetti who ran/runs City Lights Books and who first published Ginsburg's Howl and remains a champion of free speach was an Eagle Scout, as were John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's two top henchmen. 

That because one is about real and sustained accomplishment, the other is just a test.

[Jeannette]

You've got to love threads like this. It kinda reminds of that other one "transgender & intelligence"  If I recall correctly, everybody's IQ was above 120.  Nobody said their IQ was below standard or even "average". 

[tekla]

Yeah it's always like Lake Woebegone.

[Alyssa M.]

In this case, it might be true, for precisely the reason that Tekla mentioned. If we're all a bunch of misfits (Internet misfits who like to post to online forums, to be precise), perhaps that makes us more likely to be good at the solitary skills that help you score high on those meaningless tests. A lot of us (I'm looking in the mirror, here) might fit in well with a bunch of frustrated geeks at a Mensa meeting. And remember Mensa is only the top 2% of that menaingless test. Even if it were meaningful, it would still be quite a bit less exclusive than, say, an Ivy League graduate education, or even Eagle Scouts.

Whatever my IQ, I'm sure it's quite a bit higher than any meaningful measure of my ranking with regard to potential impact on society. That's not because society is bad, but because IQ is bunk.

[tekla]

Yeah if I could get paid to take tests I'd be richer than the Rolling Stones and Tiger Woods, combined.  However, of all the skills that are taught in school, doing real well at taking tests is perhaps the most devoid of any real world application.

But I sure enjoyed playing with the number two pencils and making pretty patterns on the paper filled with all them ovals.

I pretty much gave up on those things being of any value when I forgot that I had to take the SAT, and went out the night before to a Dead show and stayed up all night tripping my brains out on way too much very good LSD (this was 1973) at the coast.  It's not exactly like I could tell my mom that, so I went in and took it.  Still got in the top two percentile and I don't even remember taking the thing. (and it was a 100% bogus formality anyway, I had already been accepted at the university I wanted to go to, and my high school GPA was so high I could have scored a 0 and still got in.)  So, that's its value, high as hell on LSD, no sleep after a night of dancing and partying out on a beach and taking a test I didn't care about at all and it was a few points higher than my PSAT score from the previous year which I really did take seriously and try very hard at.

And I knew a few MENSA members and no thanks, that level of social ineptitude gathering together is almost a critical mass of fail

[V M]

You wanna give me an IQ Test?

Okay......But you'll have to pull it out of your butt later to score the results   

[tekla]

I'm not sure the scanner would be able to recognize anal leakage instead of a number two lead pencil.

And really, if you've ever looked at one of those tests, the first thing any intelligent person would decide is "I've got a lot more important things to do with my time than this."

"OK class, iron filings are to magnet as?
"Oh, oh teacher I know that, idiots to TV"

[V M]

Oh! Oh! teacher!!! Def. my ass is a magnet!!! 

[Deanna_Renee]

So go to the MENSA site, and check out their list of members who've done great things.  It's remarkable how devoid it is of anyone really great, or anyone who ever did anything good for anyone.  Now go and find a list of famous Eagle Scouts, that's mindblowing.  It's everyone from Supreme Court justices and presidents, to a pile of astronauts, to L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology among other things) and David Lynch who did Twin Peaks and some of the strangest movies ever. I mean Sam Walton who founded WallMart was an Eagle Scout, and so was Charles Whitman (the U of Texas bell tower sniper, perhaps the first real famous serial killer).  Lawrence Ferlinghetti who ran/runs City Lights Books and who first published Ginsburg's Howl and remains a champion of free speach was an Eagle Scout, as were John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's two top henchmen. 

That because one is about real and sustained accomplishment, the other is just a test.

Okay, how about this question - How many Mensan's were Eagle Scouts? Probably not many. 

[Arch]

That because one is about real and sustained accomplishment, the other is just a test.

True, but how many of those people you mentioned COULD be members of Mensa if they really wanted to? I think a lot of eligible people are smart enough to realize that a Mensa membership doesn't mean squat.

Oh, and I wouldn't call an IQ test a test of potential. That's giving it too much credit. I'd call it a test of performance--how a person performs on that particular test.

[aubrey]

My friends neighbor apparently has an I.Q. of 248. That's what he said one drunken evening anyways

[childofwinter]

I've done many IQ tests online and usually get as low as 115 and as high as 142. I don't think we should put too much importance in these tests, as all human beings are highly intelligent - the difference is not the level of intelligence, it is the form of intelligence. A talented athlete is just as intelligent as a talented musician.

[Cindy Stephens]

     I'm going to regret this, but here goes.  I am trans, and a card carrying member of Mensa.  I have no need to convince you of that.  I am horrified at the vitriol being cast against a fairly innocuous group, by people who obviously know nothing about it. 
     From the Mensa website, "provides a forum for intellectual exchange among members. Its activities include the exchange of ideas by lectures, discussions, journals, special-interest groups, and local, regional, national, and international gatherings; the investigations of members' opinions and attitudes; and assistance to researchers, inside and outside Mensa, in projects dealing with intelligence or Mensa."
I admit to being a nerd with some pretty esoteric interests.  At parties I put people to sleep because I often use complete sentences and even paragraphs to put across my ideas.  Even my wife occasionally starts snoring or gets "the dazed" look.  I don't get that around Mensans, and don't we all tend to enjoy at least a little time around people like ourselves?  Nothing wrong there.
     I agree that being in Mensa means nothing more than having achieved a high score on a test.  A test of one very important form of intelligence in a world where there are a number of kinds of intelligence.  It can be shown, however, that intelligence does equate with approximately $500. per year of income for every 1 IQ point over the average.  I think it shows that that form of intelligence does have some worth in our society.
      At the 50th anniversary of Mensa, held at Disney World here in Florida, I met an older transitioner who taught advanced calculus at UC Berkley.  She was head of a design team that perfects "quietness" in nuclear submarine profiles when underwater.  Mensa gave her an outlet to tell her story in a lecture at that worldwide meeting(for those who wanted to attend) as well as a featured story in our national monthly magazine.  Maybe that is why I felt a need to respond.  I don't normally mention that I am a member to anybody.  I just think that they have been open and accepting and maybe deserved a little bit of defending.  Sorry for the rant.       

[glendagladwitch]

I had a 142 score in an official test years back, but the shrink said I had some problems with "manual performance."  More recently, I had one and it was a 128.  I was way off the charts for verbal IQ, but scored retarded on some parts of the performance IQ section.  Apparently, that fits the psych profile of a psychotic person, or maybe an acutely depressed person, or someone with ADD, or whatever.  The shrink said if I was younger I would be classified as having a learning disability.  Turned out I had really bad sleep apnia. 

I took one of those online tests and scored "145."  I took it again and maxed it out at "165+." 

On a real IQ test, anything over 145 is essentially meaningless, as it is 3 standard deviations above the norm.  Anyone scoring that high is likely to have very different results from test to test.  An IQ that high is generally considered unmeasurable. 

The scale changed decades ago, so be aware that the highest IQ ever recorded of 232 is actually equivalent to about a 180 on today's tests.

[tekla]

as all human beings are highly intelligent

Oh you need to get out more.  Einstein (pretty smart guy I hear, but not a MENSA member) once said: Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.  Frank Zappa - also pretty smart - put it a little more succinctly when he said we're dumb all over, and if that was true - and it is - then if we're dumb, then god is dumb and maybe even a little ugly on the side. Made in his image and likeness after all.

I did find one guy who was both an Eagle Scout and MENSA member, Robert Strange McNamara.  (Yeah, that is his real name.)  And what happens when someone that smart and such a little overachiever gets into power?  Well back when he was the youngest person ever to run an auto company, Ford, he was fondly remembered for the Edsel, which almost ruined Ford.  Not being content with that, he pretty much guided the U.S. situation in Vietnam, (clever boy, he refused to call it a 'war' always using the term 'conflict') getting us in so deep and so fast that right around the time we hit 10,000 young men dead and knew we really should end our involvement in their civil war, we were stuck so deep that took another 40,000 deaths to get out.  Us little dumb people get to make little dumb mistakes, really smart people get to make huge mistakes.

At the 50th anniversary of Mensa, held at Disney World
Oh in that case I take it back, because of course Disney World is the center of the intellectual universe.  What, was Chuck E. Cheese already booked with kid's birthday parties?

[Alyssa M.]

Always with the barbed tongue, eh Tekla?

I met a professor of physics who won a Nobel Prize -- three of them, as a matter of fact -- as well as one who wrote the standard undergraduate text in electromagnetism, and one who co-wrote one of the standard texts in quantum field theory. I met the latter at a session of a conference where I gave a talk. It turns out he's a really nice guy. I guess that means I'm hot s**t.

Okay, really It doesn't. All it means is that you can find a whole lot of people that are really smart just by hanging around a university. There are some morons as well, but also a lot of people at the top of whatever field they happen to be studying, which might be any of a wide range of fields. It's not just universities, either; that just happens to be my millieu.

Now, I'm not actually knocking Mensa. Far be it from me to judge someone else's choices in friends or acquaintances; I just don't think much of the test they use for determining membership. IQ is simply bunk. Perhaps it has a very slight correlation with income -- accounting for about $20,000 (less than half of per capita GDP), between the dead average person (100) and a Mensa-scale genius (140). That's not very much, if you ask me. There are a lot of other things that correlate much more closely and dramatically, such as level of education. But, what the heck, it sounds fairly harmless.

Enough. Ofey put it far better than I can:

🔗

[glendagladwitch]

I think an interesting factoid about the IQ test is that, when it was being developed, thay ran into the problem that women kept scoring about 30 points higher than men on average for randomly selected questions.  They knew the test would never gain widespread acceptance like that, so they started keeping track of the questions that men and women do better on, and loading the tests with questions that men do better on until they obtained an average IQ of 100 for both men and women.  I wonder if they would have bothered doing that if men had typically scored higher than women on average for randomly selected questions.

Perhaps because of the way the test was manipulated for gender, the standard deviation for women is quite different than that for men.  More specifically, the IQ scores of women are much more closely grouped around 100, while the scores of men tend to vary more greatly.  As a result, most people with high IQ scores are men.  Also, most people who are classified as severely mentally retarded are men.

[Cindy Stephens]

I find it interesting that Tekla keeps mentioning Scouting.  Isn't that the Organization that I couldn't join because I'm gay and, at the time, an atheist?  Even though it is a Federally Chartered Organization?  I personally find it offensive.  More importantly, the two organizations have totally different missions.  Mensa isn't designed to sell itself based on who is or isn't a member. Their official publications often have profiles of Mensans doing well, as well as doing good. The list of books and publications written by Mensans that are published every month is often extensive.  They simply don't crow about it as a sales tool.  Certainly they allow transgendered people, otherwise qualified, to join.  Unlike scouting.  While your denigration of Disney World as a meeting place seems bitter at best,  my point was to show that they gave a world wide audience to let a very intelligent transgendered person air his life history.  The thousands of people who attended from around the world seemed to have a good time.  Oh well, if you try to bring insight and they prefer to wallow in ignorance, not much can be done.  The good news is that you can always join Densa!

[Miniar]

My IQ is a number assigned to my mental capacities based off of how well I answer a group of questions that which only test a couple of aspects of intelligence (memory, information retention, solving logic puzzles).