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I took this test some months ago in the way they suggested and they said that I have a very high chance being admitted to Mensa or some such. I don't ever want

by rg111 4y ago

I took this test some months ago in the way they suggested and they said that I have a very high chance being admitted to Mensa or some such. I don't ever want to. What's the point of a community that is solely focused on some figure-based puzzle solving? I don't find any. And I have met several highly successful, resourceful, and influential (very effective in academic/business) who never had their IQ tested. And I have met multiple Mensa members who aren’t much. One was outright useless. Being a Mensa member usually means your parents want to feel special by admitting their children to such an institute. It serves as an extension of their social status. To me- it is practically a sign of privilege and having helicopter parents. I never took an IQ test. The one once prescribed by a doctor was cancelled midway by my dad because they hinted I had a very high IQ and my dad didn’t want me to live with hubris of a high-IQ kid. I am grateful to him now. A low or high IQ score wouldn’t matter to me now because I am beyond three-digits-signalling or defined-by-three-digits nonsense. But it would have mattered to a ten years old. I had an unhealthy level of arrogance already by topping each class and getting a lot of awards in co-curriculums.

hackinthebochs 4y ago
>What's the point of a community that is solely focused on some figure-based puzzle solving? I don't find any. Filtering for people with shared interests, or at least a capacity to see the world in similar ways is useful to just about everyone (skill at "puzzle solving" is correlated with other traits). Not everyone has the ability to use school as such a filter. And trying to find like-minded people in the real world, or on the modern internet is futile for someone whose interests/perspectives isn't well-represented by the interests of the mass. There's also the irony of people disparaging the idea of a group based around IQ commenting on hacker news, which has long since evolved passed the narrow focus on tech entrepreneurship. What makes this place better than /r/programming?
- rg111 4y ago
  > Not everyone has the ability to use school as such a filter I haven’t thought about this. Thank for giving me this perspective. > trying to find like-minded people in the real world I personally find people who base their identity on some number pretty boring. High IQ enables you to be better at other things, and that is where I would look for like minded people. > modern internet This is such a broad term. To the point of being meaningless in most discussions. Tiktok popular feed is modern internet. A niche programming language's Discord with 400 members is also modern internet. Saying something categorically about "modern internet" is like judging the highway system or rail network. > irony of people disparaging the idea of a group based around IQ If some community finds IQ -based signalling and IQ-based identity, it should be HN. Such a test does not measure a person’s true potential or intelligence. It's kinda stupid to base someone's ability or potential around some test. I love to be with and spend time with intelligent people, but whenever I see someone dropping their IQ or writing it on their social bios, I find it outright distasteful. It means you have little achievement beyond the IQ test score. That would be a pathetic life. Truly successful people- never seen them flaunt IQ- ever.
  - hackinthebochs 4y ago
    Your derision seems to be narrowly focused on IQ as a filter for its own sake. But it's not that an IQ filter is valuable as an IQ filter, but that it correlates with other traits that might be valuable to someone. But filtering is hard. If you agree that a high IQ allows you be good at X, then first filtering for high IQ will get you closer to finding those highly skilled X's. Sure, you can just find people who are good at X directly, but this isn't always easy and its not like connecting with such groups is trivial once found. Being good at X may require a massive upfront investment that not everyone is in a position to expend. Besides, the value of such groups isn't just being connected around some narrow technical/high skill topic, but rather being able to connect with people who have unique and interesting views on a wide range of issues. Just being, say, a contributor to some open source project isn't going to get you that. > Saying something categorically about "modern internet" is like judging the highway system or rail network. The "modern internet" is in contrast to the internet prior to social media where finding intelligent people to discuss various topics was as easy as finding a newsgroup or a forum on the subject. The self-selection effect of the pre-modern internet on the quality of average discourse is hard to overstate.

by rg111 4y ago

hackinthebochs 4y ago

>What's the point of a community that is solely focused on some figure-based puzzle solving? I don't find any. Filtering for people with shared interests, or at least a capacity to see the world in similar ways is useful to just about everyone (skill at "puzzle solving" is correlated with other traits). Not everyone has the ability to use school as such a filter. And trying to find like-minded people in the real world, or on the modern internet is futile for someone whose interests/perspectives isn't well-represented by the interests of the mass. There's also the irony of people disparaging the idea of a group based around IQ commenting on hacker news, which has long since evolved passed the narrow focus on tech entrepreneurship. What makes this place better than /r/programming?

rg111 4y ago
> Not everyone has the ability to use school as such a filter I haven’t thought about this. Thank for giving me this perspective. > trying to find like-minded people in the real world I personally find people who base their identity on some number pretty boring. High IQ enables you to be better at other things, and that is where I would look for like minded people. > modern internet This is such a broad term. To the point of being meaningless in most discussions. Tiktok popular feed is modern internet. A niche programming language's Discord with 400 members is also modern internet. Saying something categorically about "modern internet" is like judging the highway system or rail network. > irony of people disparaging the idea of a group based around IQ If some community finds IQ -based signalling and IQ-based identity, it should be HN. Such a test does not measure a person’s true potential or intelligence. It's kinda stupid to base someone's ability or potential around some test. I love to be with and spend time with intelligent people, but whenever I see someone dropping their IQ or writing it on their social bios, I find it outright distasteful. It means you have little achievement beyond the IQ test score. That would be a pathetic life. Truly successful people- never seen them flaunt IQ- ever.
- hackinthebochs 4y ago
  Your derision seems to be narrowly focused on IQ as a filter for its own sake. But it's not that an IQ filter is valuable as an IQ filter, but that it correlates with other traits that might be valuable to someone. But filtering is hard. If you agree that a high IQ allows you be good at X, then first filtering for high IQ will get you closer to finding those highly skilled X's. Sure, you can just find people who are good at X directly, but this isn't always easy and its not like connecting with such groups is trivial once found. Being good at X may require a massive upfront investment that not everyone is in a position to expend. Besides, the value of such groups isn't just being connected around some narrow technical/high skill topic, but rather being able to connect with people who have unique and interesting views on a wide range of issues. Just being, say, a contributor to some open source project isn't going to get you that. > Saying something categorically about "modern internet" is like judging the highway system or rail network. The "modern internet" is in contrast to the internet prior to social media where finding intelligent people to discuss various topics was as easy as finding a newsgroup or a forum on the subject. The self-selection effect of the pre-modern internet on the quality of average discourse is hard to overstate.