15 ms·

High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

175 points by aminozuur 6y ago

ndiscussion 6y ago
This is a survey of people who joined MENSA. I would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at play.
- jw1224 6y ago
  I am normal, healthy, and a Mensa member. What exactly do you mean by that?
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Means that the typical mensa member is not necessarily the typical high IQ person.
  - viklove 6y ago
    Would you say your membership was worth the fees required to join? What do you get out of being a member?
    - jw1224 6y ago
      Haha, absolutely not. I get almost nothing out of it. I sat the exam out of curiosity, but if you qualify and want to join, you have to do so immediately — you can't decide to later on. I've been a member for 3 years, and doubt I'll renew next year. There's a private Facebook group for members, which has some lively discussion from time to time, but that's about it. To be honest I just posted my earlier comment to stir the pot a little :)
  - gpvos 6y ago
    n = 1
    - Sebb767 6y ago
      Compared to n=0 of the grandparent
  - voxl 6y ago
    He's saying that, on average, a high IQ person does not find Mensa valuable or interesting and so does not bother to join. Whereas, someone who is lonely, searching community, depressed, etc and _also_ has a high IQ would be more likely to apply and join. The fact that you happen to be normal, healthy, and a Mensa member isn't particular important when speculating about the possible selection bias. Although, we are just speculating.
    - jw1224 6y ago
      Yeah, I was well aware what the implication was :) I was just stirring the pot really... It's always interesting to read the general sentiment towards Mensa members — implying they join out of "loneliness" or "depression" is a hilariously unfounded assumption. I agree that Mensa is fairly pointless overall, but in my experience, its members are generally pretty representative of the general population.
  - davidbanham 6y ago
    My contention would be that many (not all) people are drawn to Mensa because they have difficulty forming relationships in mainstream society. I’d suggest it’s this trait that correlates with mental and physical disorders.
    - float4 6y ago
      The Dutch Mensa site[0] has the following bullet points in a "high IQ checklist": - [...] - Do you often fit poorly into a group? - Do you sometimes feel desperate due to all those slow people around you? - [...] I think that says a lot. [0] https://www.mensa.nl/hoogbegaafdheid https://www.mensa.nl/hoogbegaafdheid
  - Nokinside 6y ago
    >> would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at >I am normal, healthy, and a Mensa member What exactly do you mean by that? This is not very high-IQ :)
    - rltalker 6y ago
      You have to frame it in familiar terms for Mensa members: What conclusions can you draw from the following sentence? "I would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at play." a) All Mensa members are unhealthy. b) There may exist some normal, healthy, high-IQ folks in Mensa. c) All Mensa members have high IQ. d) No Mensa member has high IQ.
  - tomcam 6y ago
    Literally that you’re a spaz? (sorry, I’d say this if you were my best friend, so nothing personal. It was just too easy. This snark was totally be worth the inevitable downvotes) Mensa is the most boring organization I ever joined and its members the most self-aggrandizing. I quickly dropped my membership after a year. The Chamber of Commerce was infinitely more interesting.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - josefresco 6y ago
    The only person I know in Mensa used it in his resume which always grossed me out.
    - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
      I did that! Doubt I'm the person you're thinking of but it was something to put on my otherwise empty resume that would have consisted of jobs at Burger King and a oil change store. Once I had my first professional job under my belt, I left it off. No idea if it helped or hurt getting that first job but I suspect if nothing else it gave me a bit of confidence going into those first interviews after university.
      - josefresco 6y ago
        This was not that situation and I have no issue with someone young and bright using it (Mensa) to get their foot in the door. My guy was middle-aged, from privilege and used Mensa and other BS accomplishments to swindle people into thinking he was some sort of tech luminary.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - giardini 6y ago
      He's right to use it b/c Mensa membership is sometimes used as a hiring filter. It's neither discriminatory nor illegal to do so.
    - jw1224 6y ago
      This is a common discussion point amongst members, and almost everybody agrees it's a terrible idea. (Unless you look up the hiring manager in the membership directory first, and see they're a member too...)
  - hntrader 6y ago
    Self-selection bias. The insecure, the underachievers, the lonely, the narcissistic, etc, might be more likely to join. The confident, the successful, the popular, etc, probably are less likely to join.
- Foobar8568 6y ago
  Moreover, you don't even need to pass an IQ test to join MENSA US. https://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/ https://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/
  - mamon 6y ago
    What I find interesting on that page is that the more recent (past 2-3 decades) college preparatory tests (e.g. SAT) are not accepted as substitutes to IQ tests. Shows the trend of dumbing down the tests, I guess.
    - rory 6y ago
      That is odd. If the tests were simply dumbed down, wouldn't Mensa just raise the required score? The implication is that these tests have become less IQ-correlated. I'd be interested to see a comparison in the type of questions from the 70s vs today.
      - hanniabu 6y ago
        Probably less reliable and more overhead. You have to constantly evaluate what the new equivalent score and who knows, maybe even the max score isn't good enough anymore.
      - tux3 6y ago
        Responding in a vacuum, but the other explanation could be that these tests fail to discriminate at the high-end. If everyone with a high score is squished together, raising the floor just amplifies relative noise
      - alistairSH 6y ago
        That's exactly what they did - they have 3 bands of years for the SAT. Two year bands (<1974, 74-94) are accepted with different scores, and the more recent tests (94+) are not accepted. The major change in 1994 was the allowance of calculators during the math portion. I don't know why MENSA couldn't make a similar score adjustment here.
    - 6y ago
- lima 6y ago
  Yes. It's a weird bunch (not in a bad way!). I went to their meetings a couple times by invitation, and it never really "clicked" - for many of their members, their MENSA membership and related activities are a big part of their identity and their life, and I wasn't able to connect. I heard the same thing from a couple of friends who also met their entrance criteria, and there's certainly a lot of selection bias. Which is fine, but it's not representative by any means.
  - tomcam 6y ago
    I joined at a young age and after a couple of meetings realized it made no sense at all to me. Joining a club because you have a high IQ is like joining a club because you have a leg or a head. I think immutable attributes in general just aren’t enough to hold a group together, or at least make it interesting. Could be wrong on this one, though.
    - pizza234 6y ago
      > Joining a club because you have a high IQ is like joining a club because you have a leg or a head That's a bit too loose analogy. A more precise is like joining because one is tall. While the principle still somewhat holds, the difference is in the consequences. One may join Mensa because they're likely to find people with similar tendencies/interests, as much as tall people may like certain sports.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    Where are all of the satisfied Mensa members? Every time Mensa gets brought up a whole swarm of dissatisfied former members shows up to explain how it's not worth attending, and yet the organization persists. What's the other side of the story?
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I know of two Mensa members. They don't seem to be dissatisfied, but they don't seem to be active in it either. Maybe it depends on the expectations one has before joining.
- neaden 6y ago
  Yeah, this title is extremely misleading. These are Mensa members who answered an email survey, generalizing it like this isn't valid.
- 1023bytes 6y ago
  Yes. Associating with people based solely on their IQ is pretty misguided.
  - toolz 6y ago
    There seems to be some implication here that you believe joining mensa means you associate with people only for their high IQ. Just because that's the entrance criteria doesn't mean you hang out with some subset of those members soley based on their IQ. Just as joining a sports team doesn't mean you only hang out with members of that team because they enjoy the same sport - the same holds true for people who join mensa or any other group I'd imagine.
- zpeti 6y ago
  Same publication that two days ago posts about how climate anxiety is a white issue... At least they could stop calling themselves "scientific" american.
  - centimeter 6y ago
    That doesn't clash with my observations at all. Environmental activists of all strains, including climate enthusiasts, are overwhelmingly white.
    - astrange 6y ago
      This may be a consequence of the place you live in or the language you're reading their material in. I expect there are plenty of people doing environmental things (possibly under other names) in Africa/India/China. White people also invented "rolling coal", so we have both extremes.
    - zpeti 6y ago
      It might not clash with your observations but it’s a pretty racist thing to say
      - centimeter 6y ago
        If something is true, I don't really care if you're going to try to attach a negative emotional connotation to it (at least if we're discussing things at arm's length).
- coldtea 6y ago
  Yep. It attracts the insecure/not much to show for so I'll just show the number share of high IQ people.
- TheKnack 6y ago
  One can just listed to the podcast "My Year in Mensa" to confirm this as a major issue with this research. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-year-in-mensa/id1492147103 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-year-in-mensa/id149...
float4 6y ago
> researcher Ruth Karpinski and her colleagues emailed a survey with questions about psychological and physiological disorders to members of Mensa. I think at least part of the conclusions can be attributed to selection bias.
- walshemj 6y ago
  A lot of people in prison also have those and also better off people like mesa members are going to have easier access to heath care to even get a diagnosis.
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    They might also be more likely to realize that they have a problem in the first place. Medicine depends on patients having complaints after all.
rory 6y ago
> It’s also possible that people who join Mensa differ from other people in ways other than just IQ. For example, people preoccupied with intellectual pursuits may spend less time than the average person on physical exercise and social interaction, both of which have been shown to have broad benefits for psychological and physical health. Is Mensa really an "intellectual pursuit"? I'm not sure exactly what Mensa does, but maybe people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club are more likely to be those who suffer from setbacks in other parts of their lives.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  My limited experience with Mensa is that it's a social/dating club for high IQ people. It's been too long for me to remember the details, but I recall reading about studies that suggest relationships where IQs are too far apart (more than 5-10pts) have a high failure rate. If you're more than a standard deviation from the mean, it probably makes sense to have a special dating circle if you're looking for a long term partner.
  - rory 6y ago
    That's interesting. Similar to how many people rely on university networks to segregate their dating pool roughly by IQ (although more informally). Is the gender ratio reasonable for straight couples? My imagined version of Mensa is a club that mostly attracts men.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      IQ is not distributed equally among men and women. The median is the same, but there are more men at the extremes for IQ (both high and low). Mensa membership is 66% male. https://www.us.mensa.org/learn/about/demographics/ https://www.us.mensa.org/learn/about/demographics/
      - mhh__ 6y ago
        This is a weird one. There does seem to be evidence in support of the variation hypothesis, but merely mentioning its existence while not being a woman is enough to get you sacked. The thing I don't get about that, or at least I obviously do get it but it lead to think, surely if you were hiring in volume you might be better off hiring women anyway since you can more precisely know what kind of candidates you want to hire?
grimgrin 6y ago
Want to learn a bit more about Mensa? https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-my-year-in-mensa-55379945/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-my-year-in-mensa-55379945... Probably no better piece on it, if you want to consider Mensa as a group of interacting people
SimeVidas 6y ago
> Although the reasons are not fully understood, they also tend to live longer, healthier lives, and are less likely to experience negative life events such as bankruptcy. I’ll tell you why. Smart people listen to experts. Dumb people listen to other dumb people based on feeling. Case in point, the current pandemic. High-IQ people will get vaccinated. The people who won’t because of various conspiracy theories and misinformation are probably all low-IQ, so more of them will die.
- large 6y ago
  To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand rick and morty...
- rendall 6y ago
  Conspiracy thinking doesn't seem to correlate with IQ. I suspect it is an emotional issue.
  - SimeVidas 6y ago
    Conspiracy thinking is correlated with a lack of logic and critical thinking, which are correlated with high IQ.
    - rendall 6y ago
      One would think so, but not so much. MENSA forums are rife with conspiracy theories, as any MENSA member can attest. Anecdata, but shrug. It's all anyone has, AFAIK. I suspect that high IQ people are in fact more susceptible to conspiracy thinking than most. The randomness of the universe is scary. Sometimes bad things happen to good people for no reason. Much easier emotionally for some to live in a world where things happen for a reason, even if that reason is due to malevolent intent. At least a malevolent conspiracy can be fought or exposed or understood. IQ measures pattern recognition. If one is mentally ill, or otherwise intent on finding explanations where none exist, one might see patterns where none exist. If you have a high IQ, the more plausible and internally consistent your narratives will be, and since you're generally right about a lot, all the more reason to believe that your theory isn't a theory at all, but reality.
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
Long, long ago, I came to the conclusion that intelligence was inversely related to sanity. Not a scientific observation, just that people who I knew who were very smart also tended to have difficulties in more ways than the people I knew who had typical intelligence. Typical issues were depression, insecurity, difficulty relating or communicating with others, ... Certainly you can find people with these issues in all groups who have these attributes, and certainly there were many very intelligent persons who had their shit together, but issues seemed to be more common among the very intelligent persons.
- rory 6y ago
  Very-low-intelligence people also have high rates of psychological disorder as well though. Perhaps brains that are atypical in their intelligence also tend to be atypical in other ways.
  - toolz 6y ago
    my ignorant hypothesis is that being too far from average decreases your chances of having a healthy social life and being highly social would be the underlying factor in predicting health both physically and mentally.
    - smeej 6y ago
      Agreed. If you live in a world that is designed mostly for and by people who are unlike you in some significant way, it's hard not to feel like an outsider. And if feeling like an outsider is classified as a type of poor mental health or anxiety, well...
      - MaximumYComb 6y ago
        I feel that the best thing someone with a really IQ can do is enter into a work culture where their IQ is going to be kind of average. Their work peer group will overlap their social peer group and they'll have a sense of belonging. If you have a really high IQ child then get them into schools/clubs where they are more normal.
jpxw 6y ago
My pet (and layman) theory is that people with exceptionally high IQs might have a higher rate of genetic mutation compared to the general population. In my experience people with exceptionally high IQs often look unusual. If that relationship is true, it might also explain a higher rate of mental and physical disorders, many of which can result from genetic mutations.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  I have read the opposite hypothesis, that is, people with exceptionally high IQ have a smaller mutation rate so to speak. The argument is based on the belief that most mutations are destructive or disruptive and thus, when intelligent people procreate, there are fewer chances for the offsprings to be as intelligent or smarter than parents due to mutations. In essence, it is the same argument as to why it is harder for viruses to become more potent through mutations. However, I am not a geneticist nor a virologist or anything remotely close so take my comment with a large grain of salt.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Huh? I have met many high IQ individuals in my life and they've all looked relatively normal. Are college professors unusual looking? Are doctors and engineers unusual looking? I just don't see it. This article is a fluff piece based on a non-scientific survey of a non-scientific sample size.
- astrange 6y ago
  If they're so smart, they should be able to figure out how to use makeup/better clothes/plastic surgery and get a better haircut. (Reverse causation: you don't notice that other people are smart, because they're well-dressed.)
  - smeej 6y ago
    Just because someone chooses not to do something, it doesn't mean they can't figure out how. I'm quite sure I could learn the techniques for choosing fashionable clothes or applying makeup, but the list of things I'd rather do with my time is extremely long. I won't have time to get to half of them as it is, even if I live 200 years.
indigochill 6y ago
Aside from this being particularly focused around Mensa members rather than the population at large, it's unsurprising to me that there's a correlation between IQ and anxiety/depression. I'm reminded of a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
b-x 6y ago
They define high IQs as off the normal curve (on a given side), in the same way they define disorders. Why would they scream surprise when they correlate both factors?
rendall 6y ago
Perhaps the Mensa members are more likely to recognize a problem and seek treatment. This would align with high-iq-havers tending to live longer
austincheney 6y ago
As I am currently watching a documentary on the college admissions scandal I would love to see a correlation between standardized test scores, preparation in dollars, and IQ. My initial assessment is that there isn’t any correlation between IQ and test scores, ergo the tests are measure of preparation and preference not merit or performance.
- centimeter 6y ago
  > My initial assessment is that there isn’t any correlation between IQ and test scores This is completely false - I'm not sure how you got that assessment. Many test scores (e.g. ACT) are heavily IQ/g-predictive. SAT used to be better at predicting IQ/g but it's still pretty good. g-factor is the single largest predictor of academic success (which, these days, is mediated mostly by test scores).
  - austincheney 6y ago
    > Many test scores (e.g. ACT) are heavily IQ/g-predictive. Is there evidence of that? Many university recruiters at some of the most prestigious schools believe otherwise.
    - comp_throw7 6y ago
      Yes, the evidence is quite strong: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2015/06/18/on-sat-act-iq-and-other-psychometric-test-correlations/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2015/06/18/on-sat-act-iq-...
      - austincheney 6y ago
        > The SAT – ASVAB correlation is quite strong and it is probably weakened by range restriction effects. People with lower IQ scores and/or lower HS GPA are much less likely to sit for the SAT. That's a bullshit guess. More importantly that study did not account for performance disparities versus preparation.
benatkin 6y ago
High IQ people seem to give off different vibes. :) https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/ https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/
cs702 6y ago
A more accurate title would be: "Mensa membership is associated with mental and physical disorders" because the authors of the study base it on a survey of Mensa members.
kauffj 6y ago
Gwern's Algernon Argument is relevant here: https://www.gwern.net/Drug-heuristics https://www.gwern.net/Drug-heuristics Logically, it's likely there must be trade-offs for higher IQs or it would have been selected for more strongly.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  Agreed, there are probably some stability concerns. But I expect the largest aspect is just energy usage. Brains use a lot of energy and until recently it was the primary limiting factor. Otherwise we would also all have more muscle mass. There doesn't seem to be much downside to that.
  - astrange 6y ago
    Humans have (IIRC nearly unique) ability to have adaptive muscle mass. Gorillas get huge muscles without needing to exercise and by only eating vegetables, but we grow and shrink with our diets. This is helpful because it means we can survive with unpredictable diets. But there might be other benefits like heart health or avoiding cancer. Another big issue with huge brains is that your babies take longer to develop and are very hard to give birth to.
    - smeej 6y ago
      And your babies have to be born exceptionally helpless and vulnerable, often taking a year or more just to walk, whereas many animals begin walking in a matter of minutes or hours. A significant portion of their development has to be moved outside the safety of the womb or their heads would get them stuck!
- auganov 6y ago
  > or to be tantamount to training on IQ tests themselves which destroys their meaning (like memorizing vocabulary) I have trouble understanding how people can make this point and still be big believers in (utility of?) IQs. If training for IQ tests destroys their validity they never had much in the first place.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Makes sense, we see more clearly how fucked up the world is :) That's a heavy burden. But I think it stems also from being an outlier, never quite fitting in.
TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
There's a lot of “smart” people who were forced to be so by their parents, and suffer as a result of it. (Bad childhood experiences can cause all sorts of lasting damage.) I can see that being a possible factor for high IQ being associated with e.g. anxiety.
young_unixer 6y ago
People who have done IQ tests out of curiosity: Was it worth it? I want to do the test but I know I'll be disillusioned with the result.
- carabiner 6y ago
  Worth what? It takes like an hour or so and there are different types, WAIS, Stanford-Binet. You learn your IQ, then go home and do your laundry.
- giardini 6y ago
  "Worth it?" Many people are tested w/o their knowledge in childhood, so there is no cost. If you ever get a chance to examine your grades and/or middle school records then you may find an IQ there.
motohagiography 6y ago
High IQs also associated with being irritated by editors who write headlines like this. (n=1) They buried the lede: "It’s also possible that people who join Mensa differ from other people in ways other than just IQ. For example, people preoccupied with intellectual pursuits may spend less time than the average person on physical exercise and social interaction, both of which have been shown to have broad benefits for psychological and physical health."
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
SavantIdiot 6y ago
Mensa is so passe. Everyone is in the Triple Nines Society these days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Nine_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Nine_Society Edit: I am not in the 99.9% society Edit: /s
dcolkitt 6y ago
When understanding any sort of genetically determined trait, it's important to remember that there are often two orthogonal forces at work. One is the overall concentration of rare mutations. The vast majority of mutations have a negative impact on fitness, so rare mutations (which haven't had enough time to be selected by evolution), almost always are bad across the board. This is why we see an association between IQ and facial symmetry. A random cosmic ray that flips a bit in the genome will lead to transcription errors which cause subtle but persistent problems across the phenotype. Individuals with a high mutagenic load are more likely to have a whole cluster of unambiguously bad outcomes. The second force at work though are specific tradeoffs made by natural selection. Unlike rare mutations, an allele that's penetrated some fraction of the population comes with both advantages and disadvantages. Otherwise over time, it's penetration would either fall to zero if unambiguously bad, or rise to one if unambiguously good. You're more likely to see this allele have varying penetration for populations in different environments. For example Africans have high rates of sickle cell, because the advantage of malarial protection outweighs the disadvantages. Northern Europeans have high rates of hemochromatosis, because a very high dairy diet creates a high risk of anemia. With that in mind, it's very hard to disentangle the relationship between phenotypical traits. To a first approximation, high IQ people are mostly those who won the genetic lottery and have low mutational load. You'd expect them to be healthier along virtually every metric. However, that doesn't tell you if there's a fundamental evolutionary tradeoff. It very well could be the case that intelligence increases the risk of anxiety, schizophrenia or autism. There may be certain design constraints that evolution's working with, where increasing intelligence on the population level comes at too high of a cost in other areas. One example of this is that we know that APOE4, a gene that drastically increases risk of Alzheimers, confers a significant memory and IQ advantage in youth.
O_H_E 6y ago
Semi tangent: I would really recommend watching "Is Success Luck or Hard Work?" By Veritasium https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I
- bena 6y ago
  Is the answer "yes"? Because I often feel that it's a combination of both. You need luck to get certain opportunities, but fully taking advantage of them or maintaining them requires putting in the work.
  - O_H_E 6y ago
    I am not sure if that is a tongue in cheek "yes", but yeah IIRC his answer (after some precursory modeling/scripting) was that yes it's both. Something along the lines of: There is so many variables and so many people, so the person who is gonna be the next Gates/Jobs/Musk will have to hit the jackpot all of them in order to get there. Nb. it has been some time since I watched that video, don't quote Derek on my tongue.
    - bena 6y ago
      It's a bit of a cheeky answer, but such in the way that I apparently agree with the video in question. Dismissing the role luck plays in any endeavor is being obtuse. But so is ignoring the work that goes into being able to take advantage of the luck as well.
rafaelvasco 6y ago
High IQ: Your brain perceive and process much more data than people with less IQ. If you don't filter and process them adequately you're prone to disorders.
efficax 6y ago
Mensa is hardly representative of most high IQ people --- i would hope that many of them are smart enough to not join it!
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  Mensa always struck me as pretentious.
ggm 6y ago
I started refusing to do IQ tests at primary school and I've never regretted it.
867-5309 6y ago
(2017)
Perenti 6y ago
My opinion is that ultimately IQ is only a measure of performance on IQ tests. There is a positive correlation between IQ and performance in some tasks, but calling someone with a high IQ "smart" or "more intelligent" is a far reach in my experience, which is having an IQ over 179 (I did the test stoned and hungover in order to not score too highly) and being an idiot.
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  Having a high IQ does not mean that you always make the best choices or make the best decisions. Maybe just that you can arrive at your choice/decision more quickly than others might.
- tossaway321 6y ago
  Sometimes I get stoned just so I can deal with lower IQ people. Kinda have to dumb myself down sometimes in order to relax.
justbored123 6y ago
I some times wonder if the IQ of the people that conducts these studies is below average. 30 point of IQ of difference is with the average, an IQ of 70 or less is the IQ of a clinically retarded person. So, if you have 132 IQ, the average person is literally retarded compared to you. If you live in a world surrounded by retards you are going to be depressed and had all sorts of mental issues and a hard time to adapt, because everything is made to accommodate them, all of general society is designed for retards from your perspective.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  1) I don't think that the term "retard" is a constructive way to refer to people of IQ 70 or lower (or anyone, really). 2) Everyone I have ever met is, in some field or other, and in some kind of thinking, really dumb. Some people are low intelligence in everything, but I've never met anyone who was smart at every kind of thinking. 3) When dealing with, say, people who know way less about computer programming than I do, I don't feel depressed. I may find that certain topics of conversation aren't going to work, and thus want to find another group for those conversations (perhaps HN), but if you cannot find some constructive and rewarding way of interacting with people who have a different IQ than you, that is a problem you should (and can) work on.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
phendrenad2 6y ago
I should develop some physical ailments to become smarter.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
max_ 6y ago
How is this on the Hacker News front page? I thought guys here read Yudea Pearl?
HPsquared 6y ago
A more powerful car is more likely to spin off the road out of control. Fast-flowing fluids are more turbulent.
gwern 6y ago
It's not true. No high-quality study, some of which go much higher than MENSA level, corroborates anything remotely like what they claim from their doubly-selected MENSA respondents self-reports: https://www.gwern.net/SMPY#fn1 https://www.gwern.net/SMPY#fn1 For example, http://programme.exordo.com/isir2017/delegates/presentation/35/ http://programme.exordo.com/isir2017/delegates/presentation/... looks at health in SMPY participants, which are a full SD or so above Mensans. If OP were true, they would have odds ratios of scores or hundreds (or higher!) compared to normal people of serious psychopathology, and SMPY surveys would be a staggering wasteland of mental illness; instead, they are very healthy and have rates lower or just slightly above normal people. Or even more recently, "Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? Comparing Linear and Nonlinear Effects of Cognitive Ability on Life Outcomes" https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2021-brown.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2021-brown.pdf , Brown et al 2021, finds absolutely no evidence of any quadratic trend remotely like OP claims.
- zeleza 6y ago
  I agree, this is biased sample trash and Scientific American should feel bad about their reporting on this.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Lots of hating on Mensa here (which sadly smacks of 'sour grapes'). But its a club like many others (e.g. Methodist Mens' Club) that is arranged around a commonality, not a specific activity. Its not perfect, but what club is? Sure some folks have anecdotes about a poor local branch. You get out what you put in I think. If you want more interesting local meetings, then perhaps volunteer to find a speaker or event? Or even speak yourself? Mensa members are smart, sure. But what does that mean? I once bought a book of 'Mensa puzzles' published by the organization (by Dr. Salny anyway, their national head). I went through it from end to end, and figured out most of the puzzles. They ranged from wordplay to story problems to logical reasoning and on and on. In the back were the solutions, and the percentage of Mensa members tested that got them right. This was the most interesting part. For the math and arithmetic problems, from 10% to 25% of Mensa members got them wrong. How could that be right? Well, because (tested) intelligence isn't just about math. It ranges all over the map. And so do Mensa members. They have curiosity about the whole range of the human condition. And (good) member meetings are all about that - discussing and enlightening and disputing things, to a deeper level perhaps than folks normally get at a family dinner or meetup at a bar. Anyway for what it's worth the discussion here is more interesting for folks' reaction to Mensa, than for any real insight into what Mensa is about.
ilaksh 6y ago
If they compared existing averages to results from a survey that only went to Mensa members, then that doesn't prove anything. Need to send the same survey with the same intro letter to normal people also.
benmmurphy 6y ago
is this because high iq is correlated with ashkenazi jews and they have a bunch of genetic disorders?
biolurker1 6y ago
This thread here includes comments of a lot of IQ concept haters. Talking about selection biases.
smnthermes 6y ago
There's a theory that says that the factors that increase IQ are the same that, at very high levels, suppress species' innate characteristics, which can cause autism: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271507751_A_Theory_of_General_Reduction_of_Gene-Expression_Manifesting_as_Autism_1993_with_2014_revisions_of_presentation_-_now_2020_rev https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271507751_A_Theory_...
- bena 6y ago
  I've seen/heard about that or something similar. It makes me think that autism is essentially intelligence overclocked to the point of short-circuiting.
EmilioMartinez 6y ago
Dabrowski's overexcitabilities and his theory of positive desintegration is a deep rabbit hole. Simply put, he argued that gifted people transcended levels of humanity through their emotional intensity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_disintegration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_disintegration http://positivedisintegration.com/ http://positivedisintegration.com/
giardini 6y ago
"Mensa is associated with mental and physical disorders" FTFY Postscript: I am merely clarifying the title: whether the title is true or false is not my concern. PPS: Lots of dissing Mensa here! But Mensa members score higher on IQ tests and, on average, are significantly brighter than non-members.

175 points by aminozuur 6y ago

This is a survey of people who joined MENSA. I would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at play.

jw1224 6y ago
I am normal, healthy, and a Mensa member. What exactly do you mean by that?
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Means that the typical mensa member is not necessarily the typical high IQ person.
- viklove 6y ago
  Would you say your membership was worth the fees required to join? What do you get out of being a member?
  - jw1224 6y ago
    Haha, absolutely not. I get almost nothing out of it. I sat the exam out of curiosity, but if you qualify and want to join, you have to do so immediately — you can't decide to later on. I've been a member for 3 years, and doubt I'll renew next year. There's a private Facebook group for members, which has some lively discussion from time to time, but that's about it. To be honest I just posted my earlier comment to stir the pot a little :)
- gpvos 6y ago
  n = 1
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    Compared to n=0 of the grandparent
- voxl 6y ago
  He's saying that, on average, a high IQ person does not find Mensa valuable or interesting and so does not bother to join. Whereas, someone who is lonely, searching community, depressed, etc and _also_ has a high IQ would be more likely to apply and join. The fact that you happen to be normal, healthy, and a Mensa member isn't particular important when speculating about the possible selection bias. Although, we are just speculating.
  - jw1224 6y ago
    Yeah, I was well aware what the implication was :) I was just stirring the pot really... It's always interesting to read the general sentiment towards Mensa members — implying they join out of "loneliness" or "depression" is a hilariously unfounded assumption. I agree that Mensa is fairly pointless overall, but in my experience, its members are generally pretty representative of the general population.
- davidbanham 6y ago
  My contention would be that many (not all) people are drawn to Mensa because they have difficulty forming relationships in mainstream society. I’d suggest it’s this trait that correlates with mental and physical disorders.
  - float4 6y ago
    The Dutch Mensa site[0] has the following bullet points in a "high IQ checklist": - [...] - Do you often fit poorly into a group? - Do you sometimes feel desperate due to all those slow people around you? - [...] I think that says a lot. [0] https://www.mensa.nl/hoogbegaafdheid https://www.mensa.nl/hoogbegaafdheid
- Nokinside 6y ago
  >> would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at >I am normal, healthy, and a Mensa member What exactly do you mean by that? This is not very high-IQ :)
  - rltalker 6y ago
    You have to frame it in familiar terms for Mensa members: What conclusions can you draw from the following sentence? "I would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at play." a) All Mensa members are unhealthy. b) There may exist some normal, healthy, high-IQ folks in Mensa. c) All Mensa members have high IQ. d) No Mensa member has high IQ.
- tomcam 6y ago
  Literally that you’re a spaz? (sorry, I’d say this if you were my best friend, so nothing personal. It was just too easy. This snark was totally be worth the inevitable downvotes) Mensa is the most boring organization I ever joined and its members the most self-aggrandizing. I quickly dropped my membership after a year. The Chamber of Commerce was infinitely more interesting.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- josefresco 6y ago
  The only person I know in Mensa used it in his resume which always grossed me out.
  - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    I did that! Doubt I'm the person you're thinking of but it was something to put on my otherwise empty resume that would have consisted of jobs at Burger King and a oil change store. Once I had my first professional job under my belt, I left it off. No idea if it helped or hurt getting that first job but I suspect if nothing else it gave me a bit of confidence going into those first interviews after university.
    - josefresco 6y ago
      This was not that situation and I have no issue with someone young and bright using it (Mensa) to get their foot in the door. My guy was middle-aged, from privilege and used Mensa and other BS accomplishments to swindle people into thinking he was some sort of tech luminary.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - giardini 6y ago
    He's right to use it b/c Mensa membership is sometimes used as a hiring filter. It's neither discriminatory nor illegal to do so.
  - jw1224 6y ago
    This is a common discussion point amongst members, and almost everybody agrees it's a terrible idea. (Unless you look up the hiring manager in the membership directory first, and see they're a member too...)
- hntrader 6y ago
  Self-selection bias. The insecure, the underachievers, the lonely, the narcissistic, etc, might be more likely to join. The confident, the successful, the popular, etc, probably are less likely to join.
Foobar8568 6y ago
Moreover, you don't even need to pass an IQ test to join MENSA US. https://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/ https://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/
- mamon 6y ago
  What I find interesting on that page is that the more recent (past 2-3 decades) college preparatory tests (e.g. SAT) are not accepted as substitutes to IQ tests. Shows the trend of dumbing down the tests, I guess.
  - rory 6y ago
    That is odd. If the tests were simply dumbed down, wouldn't Mensa just raise the required score? The implication is that these tests have become less IQ-correlated. I'd be interested to see a comparison in the type of questions from the 70s vs today.
    - hanniabu 6y ago
      Probably less reliable and more overhead. You have to constantly evaluate what the new equivalent score and who knows, maybe even the max score isn't good enough anymore.
    - tux3 6y ago
      Responding in a vacuum, but the other explanation could be that these tests fail to discriminate at the high-end. If everyone with a high score is squished together, raising the floor just amplifies relative noise
    - alistairSH 6y ago
      That's exactly what they did - they have 3 bands of years for the SAT. Two year bands (<1974, 74-94) are accepted with different scores, and the more recent tests (94+) are not accepted. The major change in 1994 was the allowance of calculators during the math portion. I don't know why MENSA couldn't make a similar score adjustment here.
  - 6y ago
lima 6y ago
Yes. It's a weird bunch (not in a bad way!). I went to their meetings a couple times by invitation, and it never really "clicked" - for many of their members, their MENSA membership and related activities are a big part of their identity and their life, and I wasn't able to connect. I heard the same thing from a couple of friends who also met their entrance criteria, and there's certainly a lot of selection bias. Which is fine, but it's not representative by any means.
- tomcam 6y ago
  I joined at a young age and after a couple of meetings realized it made no sense at all to me. Joining a club because you have a high IQ is like joining a club because you have a leg or a head. I think immutable attributes in general just aren’t enough to hold a group together, or at least make it interesting. Could be wrong on this one, though.
  - pizza234 6y ago
    > Joining a club because you have a high IQ is like joining a club because you have a leg or a head That's a bit too loose analogy. A more precise is like joining because one is tall. While the principle still somewhat holds, the difference is in the consequences. One may join Mensa because they're likely to find people with similar tendencies/interests, as much as tall people may like certain sports.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  Where are all of the satisfied Mensa members? Every time Mensa gets brought up a whole swarm of dissatisfied former members shows up to explain how it's not worth attending, and yet the organization persists. What's the other side of the story?
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I know of two Mensa members. They don't seem to be dissatisfied, but they don't seem to be active in it either. Maybe it depends on the expectations one has before joining.
neaden 6y ago
Yeah, this title is extremely misleading. These are Mensa members who answered an email survey, generalizing it like this isn't valid.
1023bytes 6y ago
Yes. Associating with people based solely on their IQ is pretty misguided.
- toolz 6y ago
  There seems to be some implication here that you believe joining mensa means you associate with people only for their high IQ. Just because that's the entrance criteria doesn't mean you hang out with some subset of those members soley based on their IQ. Just as joining a sports team doesn't mean you only hang out with members of that team because they enjoy the same sport - the same holds true for people who join mensa or any other group I'd imagine.
zpeti 6y ago
Same publication that two days ago posts about how climate anxiety is a white issue... At least they could stop calling themselves "scientific" american.
- centimeter 6y ago
  That doesn't clash with my observations at all. Environmental activists of all strains, including climate enthusiasts, are overwhelmingly white.
  - astrange 6y ago
    This may be a consequence of the place you live in or the language you're reading their material in. I expect there are plenty of people doing environmental things (possibly under other names) in Africa/India/China. White people also invented "rolling coal", so we have both extremes.
  - zpeti 6y ago
    It might not clash with your observations but it’s a pretty racist thing to say
    - centimeter 6y ago
      If something is true, I don't really care if you're going to try to attach a negative emotional connotation to it (at least if we're discussing things at arm's length).
coldtea 6y ago
Yep. It attracts the insecure/not much to show for so I'll just show the number share of high IQ people.
TheKnack 6y ago
One can just listed to the podcast "My Year in Mensa" to confirm this as a major issue with this research. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-year-in-mensa/id1492147103 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-year-in-mensa/id149...

float4 6y ago

> researcher Ruth Karpinski and her colleagues emailed a survey with questions about psychological and physiological disorders to members of Mensa. I think at least part of the conclusions can be attributed to selection bias.

walshemj 6y ago
A lot of people in prison also have those and also better off people like mesa members are going to have easier access to heath care to even get a diagnosis.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  They might also be more likely to realize that they have a problem in the first place. Medicine depends on patients having complaints after all.

rory 6y ago

> It’s also possible that people who join Mensa differ from other people in ways other than just IQ. For example, people preoccupied with intellectual pursuits may spend less time than the average person on physical exercise and social interaction, both of which have been shown to have broad benefits for psychological and physical health. Is Mensa really an "intellectual pursuit"? I'm not sure exactly what Mensa does, but maybe people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club are more likely to be those who suffer from setbacks in other parts of their lives.

Consultant32452 6y ago
My limited experience with Mensa is that it's a social/dating club for high IQ people. It's been too long for me to remember the details, but I recall reading about studies that suggest relationships where IQs are too far apart (more than 5-10pts) have a high failure rate. If you're more than a standard deviation from the mean, it probably makes sense to have a special dating circle if you're looking for a long term partner.
- rory 6y ago
  That's interesting. Similar to how many people rely on university networks to segregate their dating pool roughly by IQ (although more informally). Is the gender ratio reasonable for straight couples? My imagined version of Mensa is a club that mostly attracts men.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    IQ is not distributed equally among men and women. The median is the same, but there are more men at the extremes for IQ (both high and low). Mensa membership is 66% male. https://www.us.mensa.org/learn/about/demographics/ https://www.us.mensa.org/learn/about/demographics/
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      This is a weird one. There does seem to be evidence in support of the variation hypothesis, but merely mentioning its existence while not being a woman is enough to get you sacked. The thing I don't get about that, or at least I obviously do get it but it lead to think, surely if you were hiring in volume you might be better off hiring women anyway since you can more precisely know what kind of candidates you want to hire?

grimgrin 6y ago

Want to learn a bit more about Mensa? https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-my-year-in-mensa-55379945/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-my-year-in-mensa-55379945... Probably no better piece on it, if you want to consider Mensa as a group of interacting people

SimeVidas 6y ago

> Although the reasons are not fully understood, they also tend to live longer, healthier lives, and are less likely to experience negative life events such as bankruptcy. I’ll tell you why. Smart people listen to experts. Dumb people listen to other dumb people based on feeling. Case in point, the current pandemic. High-IQ people will get vaccinated. The people who won’t because of various conspiracy theories and misinformation are probably all low-IQ, so more of them will die.

large 6y ago
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand rick and morty...
rendall 6y ago
Conspiracy thinking doesn't seem to correlate with IQ. I suspect it is an emotional issue.
- SimeVidas 6y ago
  Conspiracy thinking is correlated with a lack of logic and critical thinking, which are correlated with high IQ.
  - rendall 6y ago
    One would think so, but not so much. MENSA forums are rife with conspiracy theories, as any MENSA member can attest. Anecdata, but shrug. It's all anyone has, AFAIK. I suspect that high IQ people are in fact more susceptible to conspiracy thinking than most. The randomness of the universe is scary. Sometimes bad things happen to good people for no reason. Much easier emotionally for some to live in a world where things happen for a reason, even if that reason is due to malevolent intent. At least a malevolent conspiracy can be fought or exposed or understood. IQ measures pattern recognition. If one is mentally ill, or otherwise intent on finding explanations where none exist, one might see patterns where none exist. If you have a high IQ, the more plausible and internally consistent your narratives will be, and since you're generally right about a lot, all the more reason to believe that your theory isn't a theory at all, but reality.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

Long, long ago, I came to the conclusion that intelligence was inversely related to sanity. Not a scientific observation, just that people who I knew who were very smart also tended to have difficulties in more ways than the people I knew who had typical intelligence. Typical issues were depression, insecurity, difficulty relating or communicating with others, ... Certainly you can find people with these issues in all groups who have these attributes, and certainly there were many very intelligent persons who had their shit together, but issues seemed to be more common among the very intelligent persons.

rory 6y ago
Very-low-intelligence people also have high rates of psychological disorder as well though. Perhaps brains that are atypical in their intelligence also tend to be atypical in other ways.
- toolz 6y ago
  my ignorant hypothesis is that being too far from average decreases your chances of having a healthy social life and being highly social would be the underlying factor in predicting health both physically and mentally.
  - smeej 6y ago
    Agreed. If you live in a world that is designed mostly for and by people who are unlike you in some significant way, it's hard not to feel like an outsider. And if feeling like an outsider is classified as a type of poor mental health or anxiety, well...
    - MaximumYComb 6y ago
      I feel that the best thing someone with a really IQ can do is enter into a work culture where their IQ is going to be kind of average. Their work peer group will overlap their social peer group and they'll have a sense of belonging. If you have a really high IQ child then get them into schools/clubs where they are more normal.

jpxw 6y ago

My pet (and layman) theory is that people with exceptionally high IQs might have a higher rate of genetic mutation compared to the general population. In my experience people with exceptionally high IQs often look unusual. If that relationship is true, it might also explain a higher rate of mental and physical disorders, many of which can result from genetic mutations.

PartiallyTyped 6y ago
I have read the opposite hypothesis, that is, people with exceptionally high IQ have a smaller mutation rate so to speak. The argument is based on the belief that most mutations are destructive or disruptive and thus, when intelligent people procreate, there are fewer chances for the offsprings to be as intelligent or smarter than parents due to mutations. In essence, it is the same argument as to why it is harder for viruses to become more potent through mutations. However, I am not a geneticist nor a virologist or anything remotely close so take my comment with a large grain of salt.
chrisco255 6y ago
Huh? I have met many high IQ individuals in my life and they've all looked relatively normal. Are college professors unusual looking? Are doctors and engineers unusual looking? I just don't see it. This article is a fluff piece based on a non-scientific survey of a non-scientific sample size.
astrange 6y ago
If they're so smart, they should be able to figure out how to use makeup/better clothes/plastic surgery and get a better haircut. (Reverse causation: you don't notice that other people are smart, because they're well-dressed.)
- smeej 6y ago
  Just because someone chooses not to do something, it doesn't mean they can't figure out how. I'm quite sure I could learn the techniques for choosing fashionable clothes or applying makeup, but the list of things I'd rather do with my time is extremely long. I won't have time to get to half of them as it is, even if I live 200 years.

indigochill 6y ago

Aside from this being particularly focused around Mensa members rather than the population at large, it's unsurprising to me that there's a correlation between IQ and anxiety/depression. I'm reminded of a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

b-x 6y ago

They define high IQs as off the normal curve (on a given side), in the same way they define disorders. Why would they scream surprise when they correlate both factors?

rendall 6y ago

Perhaps the Mensa members are more likely to recognize a problem and seek treatment. This would align with high-iq-havers tending to live longer

austincheney 6y ago

As I am currently watching a documentary on the college admissions scandal I would love to see a correlation between standardized test scores, preparation in dollars, and IQ. My initial assessment is that there isn’t any correlation between IQ and test scores, ergo the tests are measure of preparation and preference not merit or performance.

centimeter 6y ago
> My initial assessment is that there isn’t any correlation between IQ and test scores This is completely false - I'm not sure how you got that assessment. Many test scores (e.g. ACT) are heavily IQ/g-predictive. SAT used to be better at predicting IQ/g but it's still pretty good. g-factor is the single largest predictor of academic success (which, these days, is mediated mostly by test scores).
- austincheney 6y ago
  > Many test scores (e.g. ACT) are heavily IQ/g-predictive. Is there evidence of that? Many university recruiters at some of the most prestigious schools believe otherwise.
  - comp_throw7 6y ago
    Yes, the evidence is quite strong: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2015/06/18/on-sat-act-iq-and-other-psychometric-test-correlations/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2015/06/18/on-sat-act-iq-...
    - austincheney 6y ago
      > The SAT – ASVAB correlation is quite strong and it is probably weakened by range restriction effects. People with lower IQ scores and/or lower HS GPA are much less likely to sit for the SAT. That's a bullshit guess. More importantly that study did not account for performance disparities versus preparation.

benatkin 6y ago

High IQ people seem to give off different vibes. :) https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/ https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/

cs702 6y ago

A more accurate title would be: "Mensa membership is associated with mental and physical disorders" because the authors of the study base it on a survey of Mensa members.

kauffj 6y ago

Gwern's Algernon Argument is relevant here: https://www.gwern.net/Drug-heuristics https://www.gwern.net/Drug-heuristics Logically, it's likely there must be trade-offs for higher IQs or it would have been selected for more strongly.

akvadrako 6y ago
Agreed, there are probably some stability concerns. But I expect the largest aspect is just energy usage. Brains use a lot of energy and until recently it was the primary limiting factor. Otherwise we would also all have more muscle mass. There doesn't seem to be much downside to that.
- astrange 6y ago
  Humans have (IIRC nearly unique) ability to have adaptive muscle mass. Gorillas get huge muscles without needing to exercise and by only eating vegetables, but we grow and shrink with our diets. This is helpful because it means we can survive with unpredictable diets. But there might be other benefits like heart health or avoiding cancer. Another big issue with huge brains is that your babies take longer to develop and are very hard to give birth to.
  - smeej 6y ago
    And your babies have to be born exceptionally helpless and vulnerable, often taking a year or more just to walk, whereas many animals begin walking in a matter of minutes or hours. A significant portion of their development has to be moved outside the safety of the womb or their heads would get them stuck!
auganov 6y ago
> or to be tantamount to training on IQ tests themselves which destroys their meaning (like memorizing vocabulary) I have trouble understanding how people can make this point and still be big believers in (utility of?) IQs. If training for IQ tests destroys their validity they never had much in the first place.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Makes sense, we see more clearly how fucked up the world is :) That's a heavy burden. But I think it stems also from being an outlier, never quite fitting in.

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago

There's a lot of “smart” people who were forced to be so by their parents, and suffer as a result of it. (Bad childhood experiences can cause all sorts of lasting damage.) I can see that being a possible factor for high IQ being associated with e.g. anxiety.

young_unixer 6y ago

People who have done IQ tests out of curiosity: Was it worth it? I want to do the test but I know I'll be disillusioned with the result.

carabiner 6y ago
Worth what? It takes like an hour or so and there are different types, WAIS, Stanford-Binet. You learn your IQ, then go home and do your laundry.
giardini 6y ago
"Worth it?" Many people are tested w/o their knowledge in childhood, so there is no cost. If you ever get a chance to examine your grades and/or middle school records then you may find an IQ there.

motohagiography 6y ago

High IQs also associated with being irritated by editors who write headlines like this. (n=1) They buried the lede: "It’s also possible that people who join Mensa differ from other people in ways other than just IQ. For example, people preoccupied with intellectual pursuits may spend less time than the average person on physical exercise and social interaction, both of which have been shown to have broad benefits for psychological and physical health."

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

SavantIdiot 6y ago

Mensa is so passe. Everyone is in the Triple Nines Society these days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Nine_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Nine_Society Edit: I am not in the 99.9% society Edit: /s

dcolkitt 6y ago

When understanding any sort of genetically determined trait, it's important to remember that there are often two orthogonal forces at work. One is the overall concentration of rare mutations. The vast majority of mutations have a negative impact on fitness, so rare mutations (which haven't had enough time to be selected by evolution), almost always are bad across the board. This is why we see an association between IQ and facial symmetry. A random cosmic ray that flips a bit in the genome will lead to transcription errors which cause subtle but persistent problems across the phenotype. Individuals with a high mutagenic load are more likely to have a whole cluster of unambiguously bad outcomes. The second force at work though are specific tradeoffs made by natural selection. Unlike rare mutations, an allele that's penetrated some fraction of the population comes with both advantages and disadvantages. Otherwise over time, it's penetration would either fall to zero if unambiguously bad, or rise to one if unambiguously good. You're more likely to see this allele have varying penetration for populations in different environments. For example Africans have high rates of sickle cell, because the advantage of malarial protection outweighs the disadvantages. Northern Europeans have high rates of hemochromatosis, because a very high dairy diet creates a high risk of anemia. With that in mind, it's very hard to disentangle the relationship between phenotypical traits. To a first approximation, high IQ people are mostly those who won the genetic lottery and have low mutational load. You'd expect them to be healthier along virtually every metric. However, that doesn't tell you if there's a fundamental evolutionary tradeoff. It very well could be the case that intelligence increases the risk of anxiety, schizophrenia or autism. There may be certain design constraints that evolution's working with, where increasing intelligence on the population level comes at too high of a cost in other areas. One example of this is that we know that APOE4, a gene that drastically increases risk of Alzheimers, confers a significant memory and IQ advantage in youth.

O_H_E 6y ago

Semi tangent: I would really recommend watching "Is Success Luck or Hard Work?" By Veritasium https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I

bena 6y ago
Is the answer "yes"? Because I often feel that it's a combination of both. You need luck to get certain opportunities, but fully taking advantage of them or maintaining them requires putting in the work.
- O_H_E 6y ago
  I am not sure if that is a tongue in cheek "yes", but yeah IIRC his answer (after some precursory modeling/scripting) was that yes it's both. Something along the lines of: There is so many variables and so many people, so the person who is gonna be the next Gates/Jobs/Musk will have to hit the jackpot all of them in order to get there. Nb. it has been some time since I watched that video, don't quote Derek on my tongue.
  - bena 6y ago
    It's a bit of a cheeky answer, but such in the way that I apparently agree with the video in question. Dismissing the role luck plays in any endeavor is being obtuse. But so is ignoring the work that goes into being able to take advantage of the luck as well.

rafaelvasco 6y ago

High IQ: Your brain perceive and process much more data than people with less IQ. If you don't filter and process them adequately you're prone to disorders.

efficax 6y ago

Mensa is hardly representative of most high IQ people --- i would hope that many of them are smart enough to not join it!

annoyingnoob 6y ago
Mensa always struck me as pretentious.

ggm 6y ago

I started refusing to do IQ tests at primary school and I've never regretted it.

867-5309 6y ago

(2017)

Perenti 6y ago

My opinion is that ultimately IQ is only a measure of performance on IQ tests. There is a positive correlation between IQ and performance in some tasks, but calling someone with a high IQ "smart" or "more intelligent" is a far reach in my experience, which is having an IQ over 179 (I did the test stoned and hungover in order to not score too highly) and being an idiot.

annoyingnoob 6y ago
Having a high IQ does not mean that you always make the best choices or make the best decisions. Maybe just that you can arrive at your choice/decision more quickly than others might.
tossaway321 6y ago
Sometimes I get stoned just so I can deal with lower IQ people. Kinda have to dumb myself down sometimes in order to relax.

justbored123 6y ago

I some times wonder if the IQ of the people that conducts these studies is below average. 30 point of IQ of difference is with the average, an IQ of 70 or less is the IQ of a clinically retarded person. So, if you have 132 IQ, the average person is literally retarded compared to you. If you live in a world surrounded by retards you are going to be depressed and had all sorts of mental issues and a hard time to adapt, because everything is made to accommodate them, all of general society is designed for retards from your perspective.

rossdavidh 6y ago
1) I don't think that the term "retard" is a constructive way to refer to people of IQ 70 or lower (or anyone, really). 2) Everyone I have ever met is, in some field or other, and in some kind of thinking, really dumb. Some people are low intelligence in everything, but I've never met anyone who was smart at every kind of thinking. 3) When dealing with, say, people who know way less about computer programming than I do, I don't feel depressed. I may find that certain topics of conversation aren't going to work, and thus want to find another group for those conversations (perhaps HN), but if you cannot find some constructive and rewarding way of interacting with people who have a different IQ than you, that is a problem you should (and can) work on.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

phendrenad2 6y ago

I should develop some physical ailments to become smarter.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

max_ 6y ago

How is this on the Hacker News front page? I thought guys here read Yudea Pearl?

HPsquared 6y ago

A more powerful car is more likely to spin off the road out of control. Fast-flowing fluids are more turbulent.

gwern 6y ago

It's not true. No high-quality study, some of which go much higher than MENSA level, corroborates anything remotely like what they claim from their doubly-selected MENSA respondents self-reports: https://www.gwern.net/SMPY#fn1 https://www.gwern.net/SMPY#fn1 For example, http://programme.exordo.com/isir2017/delegates/presentation/35/ http://programme.exordo.com/isir2017/delegates/presentation/... looks at health in SMPY participants, which are a full SD or so above Mensans. If OP were true, they would have odds ratios of scores or hundreds (or higher!) compared to normal people of serious psychopathology, and SMPY surveys would be a staggering wasteland of mental illness; instead, they are very healthy and have rates lower or just slightly above normal people. Or even more recently, "Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? Comparing Linear and Nonlinear Effects of Cognitive Ability on Life Outcomes" https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2021-brown.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2021-brown.pdf , Brown et al 2021, finds absolutely no evidence of any quadratic trend remotely like OP claims.

zeleza 6y ago
I agree, this is biased sample trash and Scientific American should feel bad about their reporting on this.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Lots of hating on Mensa here (which sadly smacks of 'sour grapes'). But its a club like many others (e.g. Methodist Mens' Club) that is arranged around a commonality, not a specific activity. Its not perfect, but what club is? Sure some folks have anecdotes about a poor local branch. You get out what you put in I think. If you want more interesting local meetings, then perhaps volunteer to find a speaker or event? Or even speak yourself? Mensa members are smart, sure. But what does that mean? I once bought a book of 'Mensa puzzles' published by the organization (by Dr. Salny anyway, their national head). I went through it from end to end, and figured out most of the puzzles. They ranged from wordplay to story problems to logical reasoning and on and on. In the back were the solutions, and the percentage of Mensa members tested that got them right. This was the most interesting part. For the math and arithmetic problems, from 10% to 25% of Mensa members got them wrong. How could that be right? Well, because (tested) intelligence isn't just about math. It ranges all over the map. And so do Mensa members. They have curiosity about the whole range of the human condition. And (good) member meetings are all about that - discussing and enlightening and disputing things, to a deeper level perhaps than folks normally get at a family dinner or meetup at a bar. Anyway for what it's worth the discussion here is more interesting for folks' reaction to Mensa, than for any real insight into what Mensa is about.

ilaksh 6y ago

If they compared existing averages to results from a survey that only went to Mensa members, then that doesn't prove anything. Need to send the same survey with the same intro letter to normal people also.

benmmurphy 6y ago

is this because high iq is correlated with ashkenazi jews and they have a bunch of genetic disorders?

biolurker1 6y ago

This thread here includes comments of a lot of IQ concept haters. Talking about selection biases.

smnthermes 6y ago

There's a theory that says that the factors that increase IQ are the same that, at very high levels, suppress species' innate characteristics, which can cause autism: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271507751_A_Theory_of_General_Reduction_of_Gene-Expression_Manifesting_as_Autism_1993_with_2014_revisions_of_presentation_-_now_2020_rev https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271507751_A_Theory_...

bena 6y ago
I've seen/heard about that or something similar. It makes me think that autism is essentially intelligence overclocked to the point of short-circuiting.

EmilioMartinez 6y ago

Dabrowski's overexcitabilities and his theory of positive desintegration is a deep rabbit hole. Simply put, he argued that gifted people transcended levels of humanity through their emotional intensity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_disintegration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_disintegration http://positivedisintegration.com/ http://positivedisintegration.com/

giardini 6y ago

"Mensa is associated with mental and physical disorders" FTFY Postscript: I am merely clarifying the title: whether the title is true or false is not my concern. PPS: Lots of dissing Mensa here! But Mensa members score higher on IQ tests and, on average, are significantly brighter than non-members.