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Anyone else fascinated by the "window of comprehension" mentioned in the article? It's really fascinating to me. As the article says, it's the idea that "no mea

Anyone else fascinated by the "window of comprehension" mentioned in the article? It's really fascinating to me. As the article says, it's the idea that "no meaningful communication is possible among people not sharing a common window of 30 IQ points." I have no idea how true it is, but it's a really interesting idea. At least in my experience it's a probabilistic thing: as people get more different in IQ communication becomes harder, with a few exceptions. What do you all think?

apeace 10y ago
I also found it fascinating and enjoyed reading through the other IQ-related content on the same website: http://www.t3x.org/iq/index.html http://www.t3x.org/iq/index.html
clairity 10y ago
this seems like an observation rather than a hard-and-fast rule, meaning that we can use social skills to "break" the rule. if i'm high intelligence but low on impatience, then the rule seems to be true for me, since i'll just give up on talking with low intelligence people (according to the rule). but when i'm feeling generous and patient, then i can have a lot more compassion and empathy to see the world the way the other person does without worrying about what the "intelligent" position is. rationality (what intelligence is good for) is only one input to our decision-making, and i believe intelligent people particularly need to periodically remind themselves of that (rather than allowing supposed rules like this to short-circuit our behavior).
scandox 10y ago
I was certainly very interested in this concept. I admit my instant reaction was one of complete repugnance. Human communication comprises a huge array of different things, the minority of which have to do with abstract reasoning. IQ is a very specific measure of one aspect of human intelligence. In a sense this concept (the window of comprehension), reductive as it seems, would be more likely to reinforce the problems the individuals mentioned have, by emphasizing human communication as an intellectual rather than a social activity. In general my experience of very intelligent people is that they have an excellent ability to interact with people of all types, including people with relatively undeveloped powers of abstract thought. After all understanding context is to my mind a strong indicator of intelligence. On the other hand I'd be interested to hear more from people of very high IQ on this topic - if they think they can get their ideas across to me over the 30 point barrier
- deleted 10y ago
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- rabidrat 10y ago
  The key here is "meaningful". I'm not sure about 145 talking to 115, but I can imagine that 115 talking to 85 would be downright painful. We would just not care about the same things.
  - scandox 10y ago
    Thought experiment: you're the last two humans. You've an IQ of 115 and the other person has an IQ of 85. In my imagination a hell of a lot of that difference would become meaningless within the first week or so.
jazzyb 10y ago
The window of comprehension is a (probably) over-generalized concept. It was first mentioned in the 1985 paper "Intelligence and personal influence in groups: Four nonlinear models" by Dean Keith Simonton with respect to "leadership". The point in question from the abstract: > Model 4, the intellectual stratification model, expands on the fact that the mean group IQ varies across different groups and, consequently, predicts a high correlation between the group mean IQ and the IQ of its most influential member, with a leader–follower gap of between 8 and 20 points, depending on the submodel. The theory is that one's influence over others decreases as the intelligence gap between one and others increases. Simonton theorized that this is probably due to the increase in the complexity of ideas as IQ increases. The reason I say it is probably over-generalized in this case is because I don't think influential communication necessarily counts as "meaningful communication".
giardini 10y ago
I've thought the same at times but concluded that it depends on one's patience and the time and effort one is willing to devote to communication. The phrase "putting oneself in the other person's shoes" seems to best describe what's necessary. Perhaps that skill is something that, while socially very useful, IQ tests fail to measure. Heck, we can even communicate with other animals to some degree. Aside: it appears that, rather than describing only the article's subjects' problems with very high IQ, there may be a variety of problems being expressed here by posters, varying from a very high IQ to grandiosity, ADHD, autism, indeed the full spectrum of psychological disorders plus normal behavior. It's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

apeace 10y ago

I also found it fascinating and enjoyed reading through the other IQ-related content on the same website: http://www.t3x.org/iq/index.html http://www.t3x.org/iq/index.html

clairity 10y ago

this seems like an observation rather than a hard-and-fast rule, meaning that we can use social skills to "break" the rule. if i'm high intelligence but low on impatience, then the rule seems to be true for me, since i'll just give up on talking with low intelligence people (according to the rule). but when i'm feeling generous and patient, then i can have a lot more compassion and empathy to see the world the way the other person does without worrying about what the "intelligent" position is. rationality (what intelligence is good for) is only one input to our decision-making, and i believe intelligent people particularly need to periodically remind themselves of that (rather than allowing supposed rules like this to short-circuit our behavior).

scandox 10y ago

I was certainly very interested in this concept. I admit my instant reaction was one of complete repugnance. Human communication comprises a huge array of different things, the minority of which have to do with abstract reasoning. IQ is a very specific measure of one aspect of human intelligence. In a sense this concept (the window of comprehension), reductive as it seems, would be more likely to reinforce the problems the individuals mentioned have, by emphasizing human communication as an intellectual rather than a social activity. In general my experience of very intelligent people is that they have an excellent ability to interact with people of all types, including people with relatively undeveloped powers of abstract thought. After all understanding context is to my mind a strong indicator of intelligence. On the other hand I'd be interested to hear more from people of very high IQ on this topic - if they think they can get their ideas across to me over the 30 point barrier

deleted 10y ago
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rabidrat 10y ago
The key here is "meaningful". I'm not sure about 145 talking to 115, but I can imagine that 115 talking to 85 would be downright painful. We would just not care about the same things.
- scandox 10y ago
  Thought experiment: you're the last two humans. You've an IQ of 115 and the other person has an IQ of 85. In my imagination a hell of a lot of that difference would become meaningless within the first week or so.

jazzyb 10y ago

The window of comprehension is a (probably) over-generalized concept. It was first mentioned in the 1985 paper "Intelligence and personal influence in groups: Four nonlinear models" by Dean Keith Simonton with respect to "leadership". The point in question from the abstract: > Model 4, the intellectual stratification model, expands on the fact that the mean group IQ varies across different groups and, consequently, predicts a high correlation between the group mean IQ and the IQ of its most influential member, with a leader–follower gap of between 8 and 20 points, depending on the submodel. The theory is that one's influence over others decreases as the intelligence gap between one and others increases. Simonton theorized that this is probably due to the increase in the complexity of ideas as IQ increases. The reason I say it is probably over-generalized in this case is because I don't think influential communication necessarily counts as "meaningful communication".

giardini 10y ago

I've thought the same at times but concluded that it depends on one's patience and the time and effort one is willing to devote to communication. The phrase "putting oneself in the other person's shoes" seems to best describe what's necessary. Perhaps that skill is something that, while socially very useful, IQ tests fail to measure. Heck, we can even communicate with other animals to some degree. Aside: it appears that, rather than describing only the article's subjects' problems with very high IQ, there may be a variety of problems being expressed here by posters, varying from a very high IQ to grandiosity, ADHD, autism, indeed the full spectrum of psychological disorders plus normal behavior. It's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.