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Great insight. Regarding Mensa itself, or any claims to intellectual superiority: one of the big lessons of my life has been that being intelligent has no intr

Great insight. Regarding Mensa itself, or any claims to intellectual superiority: one of the big lessons of my life has been that being intelligent has no intrinsic value. If you are unable to manifest your intelligence in a way that can substantially (disproportionate to your effort) improve your life or the lives of others, then your mind doesn't matter. It has no impact in the world, and I am not the first person to observe that having a powerful mind is at many times a burden. You can see that other people may be more stupid than you, forwarding simpler arguments and relying on less rigorous thinking than yours, but if they don't want to be convinced of that, then you are powerless to make them see it. They go off blissfully, and you burn with anguish. Again, if you cannot manifest your intelligence in a way that forwards your agenda, who cares? To phrase it in a more confrontational way: if nobody is forced to contend with your mind, nobody knows it exists. Or to summarize it in a quote: "[Intelligence] is like being a lady: if you have to tell people you are, you aren't." -- Margaret Thatcher This clicked for me during my final year of college, when a friend of mine was taking an LSAT preparation course. During a break, he was chatting with the instructor about realistic outcomes, and said earnestly that he hoped to get a score of 168 (which IIRC is a very high score.) The instructor, a man of maybe 30, who had been out of school for several years, scoffed and replied, "Good luck, I only got 165 and I'm a genius." And what did the genius do when not teaching LSAT prep courses? Why, he worked at Target. Edit: expanded a little on the first couple of paragraphs.

salgernon 14y ago
I met a genius that worked in the shipping department of the first software company I worked for. (Back when people shipped software.) But working in the shipping department was only what he did in order to persue his passion, which was bird watching and photography. That is where he expressed his genius, although he couldn't make a living from it, it made him happy. Reminds me of http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley who first photographed snowflakes. His genius never gained him fortune.
- 46Bit 14y ago
  There's a great deal of the population who spend their lives working in shops and so forth doing relatively menial work. Why they're doing it is not about intelligence at all, it's all about drive. A driven person who's terrified of Maths and Sciences is unlikely to become a leading Physicist, but they might well power through enough basic sums to successfully establish businesses. An intelligent person who's not driven might never achieve anything like fame, at least in their lifetime, but they still probably enjoy their free time and passions.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    There are plenty of people doing "menial" work who have plenty of drive. The work is to earn a paycheck and their life isn't about that. The drive is centered on something that doesn't earn them a living (e.g. family, bird watching). Not everything in life is about work and money.
    - 46Bit 14y ago
      Nicely put, very much agreed.
spec_laconic 14y ago
My best friend in HS happened to be a genius on paper. Got straight A's freshman and sophomore year, ended up doing less well junior and senior year, and, when he got to college, failed out. He now parks cars in a garage. I don't really care for IQ levels, I think they're mostly meaningless.
jeffdavis 14y ago
I'll add that being able to work well with others is usually what determines whether you can manifest your intelligence in a useful way. Working well with others takes many forms: being able to inspire and lead are obvious ones; but also the ability to take constructive criticism from others and learn from their perspectives -- which can be hard to do when you perceive the other person to be less intelligent (and perceiving others to be less intelligent is a problem by itself).
- nodemaker 14y ago
  Absolutely. Lots of really intelligent people seem to fall into the trap of being too individualist and selfish. (Ayn Rand!) While some of them eventually shine really bright, most fail to achieve anything significant.
graeme 14y ago
That's interesting. I'm an LSAT instructor. My first reaction to reading the instructor's comment was, 'Ha, only 165, he's no genius'. But, MENSA accepts 163 as a cutoff LSAT score for entry. So if MENSA == genius, then he is a genius. Among people who take the LSAT though, he's only 92nd percentile. He doesn't have much business teaching the test. Anyone who's at an Ivy League law school has a better score than him. I completely agree that intelligence, on it's own, is near useless. It needs to be combined with the other elements that make someone effective. THEN, and only then, do you have the ingredients for something powerful. Our society lionizes intelligence to the point that many people with little but intelligence smugly rest on their laurels, and accomplish less than their potential due to defects in social skills, initiative, etc.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- anothermachine 14y ago
  Anyone at an Ivy League law school might have more lucrative opportunities than teaching LSAT classes.
  - graeme 14y ago
    You'd be surprised ;) On an hourly basis, you can earn more teaching the LSAT than as an Ivy League law grad. Mind you, I don't work 80 hour weeks, so I don't make as much on an absolute basis, but the work is more interesting, and I've branched out into LSAT books and an online LSAT course. But mainly, I wanted to point out that the instructor is unreasonably arrogant. By comparison with his reference group, he's far from exceptional. By implication, the Mensa cut-off is also far from 'genius'. Top 2% is 1 in 50.
    - Pinatubo 14y ago
      To be fair, that's 1 in 50 from a group that was relatively accomplished in an academic setting before the test. But I agree that it doesn't qualify as "genius."
deleted 14y ago
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gnosis 14y ago
"And what did the genius do when not teaching LSAT prep courses? Why, he worked at Target." Kafka was a clerk at an insurance company. Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher. Van Gogh only ever sold one painting during his life, and that was to his brother. There are hordes of other people widely regarded as "geniuses", who lived and died in dire poverty. Many others were cheated out of the fame and fortune they deserved by others who got the credit. And many more are probably still unrecognized. The cold hard fact of the matter is that the world generally does not reward intelligence, "genius", or even hard work. True, some have the temperament and luck to scale the greasy pole of "success", but many others don't -- or choose to focus their energies elsewhere.
- hellrich 14y ago
  Kafka and Einstein had white collar jobs when those were rare and Wittgenstein gave away his (inherited) fortune.
  - gnosis 14y ago
    The OP was judging a person by his job, and implying that the person in question couldn't be a genius because he worked at a menial job. I simply provided some counterexamples. Furthermore, white collar or not, I doubt that many would contend that Kafka or Einstein were some sorts of models of "success" if judged by their jobs, and few would judge them "geniuses" solely by looking at what they did for a living. The fact that Wittgenstein gave away his inheritance is completely irrelevant. We were talking about jobs as marks of genius, not about inherited wealth. However, I will grant that being born in to a wealthy family, being given a first-rate education, and being surrounded by highly accomplished individuals (as Wittgenstein was) does usually give the beneficiary a tremendous head start over most people. I would certainly have bet on someone born in to Wittgenstein's highly privileged position making something of himself than on someone born in to poverty. That said, plenty of people born in to tremendous wealth squander it and their lives. A couple of interesting, relatively recent documentaries on the subject are "Born Rich"[1] and "The One Percent"[2]. [1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342143/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342143/ [2] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819791/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819791/
rayiner 14y ago
I think the LSAT is a pretty good... well whatever it is. It has the salient quality of being almost completely unambiguous. Out of 1000+ of LSAT questions I saw when studying for the test, I found maybe half a dozen that didn't have one unambiguously correct answer and four unambiguously incorrect answers. Of course, it assumes a level of familiarity with formal logic and English grammar/vocabulary.
- graeme 14y ago
  Yes, they're surprisingly good at it. I've taken and taught other standardized tests, and often find them frustrating or boring. I once found an LSAT question I considered ambiguous. I sent in a complaint to the LSAC. They replied with a three page letter that convinced me I was incorrect.
  - mcherm 14y ago
    Now THAT is impressive.
- meepmorp 14y ago
  > it assumes a level of familiarity with formal logic and English grammer/vocabulary. Grammar, not grammer.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    This is one of those things that can make an otherwise intelligent person look like an idiot. And I'm not talking about the typo.
    - meepmorp 14y ago
      That's desperately clever. Really.
  - rayiner 14y ago
hackinthebochs 14y ago
I find interesting the backlash against those who may have any interest in knowing their IQ, or god-forbid even feel good about it. What your anecdotes tell me is not that IQ itself is meaningless, but that success has a large factor of luck involved. It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind. This growing trend of derision for those who acknowledge their own raw intelligence is only making it worse.
- nickzoic 14y ago
  Success contains a large factor of luck for sure, but I'd say also a large factor of something not measured by IQ tests. Charisma? "Emotional Intelligence"? Mental flexibility? Gumption? Who knows.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Grit.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  > It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind. Or maybe it's a failing of those high IQ people? The genius who proudly saves the codebase at Zynga every single day is completely useless compared to any single nurse working her shift right now. Even the doctor at the top of the hospital does not necessarily have a stellar IQ. What other way is there to put it? Should we feel bad for smart people because society tricks them into financial services rather than less-paid cancer research? (No one would look down on someone who does the latter.)
  - gurkendoktor 14y ago
    (I would love to be proven wrong by somebody who knows what Mensa spends their brainpower thinking about :))
  - hackinthebochs 14y ago
    >Should we feel bad for smart people because society tricks them into financial services rather than less-paid cancer research? No, we should feel ashamed that we've created a society where the brightest are funneled into financial services. We should feel utterly devastated that we let genius wallow in menial jobs. It is a failing of the system at every level that these people fall through the cracks and end up doing nothing with their gifts. Raw intelligence is a resource that society should work hard to 'exploit'. Sure doctors and nurses save a lot of lives and that doesn't necessarily require genius. But compared to, say, the guy who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, their impact on humanity doesn't even come close.
deleted 14y ago
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lywald 14y ago
being intelligent has no intrinsic value Loving what we are has to be worth something, or why bother with progress?
- drumdance 14y ago
  So if you suffered a brain injury, would you love yourself less?
Osmium 14y ago
> being intelligent has no intrinsic value We value lots of things in life that have no intrinsic value. Art, for example. There's nothing wrong with valuing intelligence too. It's what separates us from the apes after all. That said, I don't disagree with your overall point. I've known many intelligent people woefully unprepared to deal with everyday life, and it always seemed sad to me. Two of them ended up as alcoholics, one with gambling debts. It doesn't matter how intelligent you are if it means you can't deal with life.
777466 14y ago
> if nobody is forced to contend with your mind, nobody knows it exists. I'm sure this has already been explored somewhere, but I've always wondered what it says about us as humans that we consider our lives in isolation to be meaningless, but put a bunch of meaningless people together into a society, and impacting them becomes very meaningful. What's going on here, synergy?
- Evbn 14y ago
  Genetic predisposition to pack living and altruism in service of sexual reproduction of genes.
trotsky 14y ago
It seems like a lot of people over think intelligence and success. Properly balanced or even an excess of serotonin and norepinephrine are what primarily ensures survival and procreation, which generally translates into happiness and sufficient wealth. Trying to measure and identify abstract cognitive ability like IQ tests do is almost somewhat of an autism spectrum-esque devotion. While some smart men and women may contribute greatly to society it's unusual for it to be a personal victory or indeed be as significant as dozens of better predictors of personal trajectory. Over-thinking things may even position excess cognitive function as a net negative drag on success.
samspot 14y ago
> being intelligent has no intrinsic value Thinking about this the other day, I was noticing that many people of great intelligence act as though it is a free pass to not putting forward much effort. Similarly they may neglect to pay attention to others who they regard as less intelligent than them (often their teachers or professors).
kamaal 14y ago
If your success depends on impacting peoples life through your work, then intelligence isn't even relevant to the discussion of success.
kahawe 14y ago
To further your excellent point: IQ, "intellectual superiority" and improving-life-for-the-better or "happiness" are generally three separate things; or at least much more separate than we like to see them as clearly correlating if not causations. And the people you meet at Mensa spread surprisingly many/all levels of society...
xiaoma 14y ago
A lack of high earnings by no means implies a lack of genius or a lack of success. Mozart drank himself to death by age 30 and was hounded by creditors. Socrates, Nicola Tesla, Oscar Wilde and many other great minds died penniless.
ed_blackburn 14y ago
/"one of the big lessons of my life has been that being intelligent has no intrinsic value. If you are unable to manifest your intelligence in a way that can substantially (disproportionate to your effort) improve your life or the lives of others, then your mind doesn't matter."/ It saddens me the number of intellectually bright people I work with who don't grok basics like sound engineering principles. Your code is off little value if it's unmaintainable, or impossible to prove it works, regardless of how clever the implementation may be.

salgernon 14y ago

I met a genius that worked in the shipping department of the first software company I worked for. (Back when people shipped software.) But working in the shipping department was only what he did in order to persue his passion, which was bird watching and photography. That is where he expressed his genius, although he couldn't make a living from it, it made him happy. Reminds me of http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley who first photographed snowflakes. His genius never gained him fortune.

46Bit 14y ago
There's a great deal of the population who spend their lives working in shops and so forth doing relatively menial work. Why they're doing it is not about intelligence at all, it's all about drive. A driven person who's terrified of Maths and Sciences is unlikely to become a leading Physicist, but they might well power through enough basic sums to successfully establish businesses. An intelligent person who's not driven might never achieve anything like fame, at least in their lifetime, but they still probably enjoy their free time and passions.
- protomyth 14y ago
  There are plenty of people doing "menial" work who have plenty of drive. The work is to earn a paycheck and their life isn't about that. The drive is centered on something that doesn't earn them a living (e.g. family, bird watching). Not everything in life is about work and money.
  - 46Bit 14y ago
    Nicely put, very much agreed.

spec_laconic 14y ago

My best friend in HS happened to be a genius on paper. Got straight A's freshman and sophomore year, ended up doing less well junior and senior year, and, when he got to college, failed out. He now parks cars in a garage. I don't really care for IQ levels, I think they're mostly meaningless.

jeffdavis 14y ago

I'll add that being able to work well with others is usually what determines whether you can manifest your intelligence in a useful way. Working well with others takes many forms: being able to inspire and lead are obvious ones; but also the ability to take constructive criticism from others and learn from their perspectives -- which can be hard to do when you perceive the other person to be less intelligent (and perceiving others to be less intelligent is a problem by itself).

nodemaker 14y ago
Absolutely. Lots of really intelligent people seem to fall into the trap of being too individualist and selfish. (Ayn Rand!) While some of them eventually shine really bright, most fail to achieve anything significant.

graeme 14y ago

That's interesting. I'm an LSAT instructor. My first reaction to reading the instructor's comment was, 'Ha, only 165, he's no genius'. But, MENSA accepts 163 as a cutoff LSAT score for entry. So if MENSA == genius, then he is a genius. Among people who take the LSAT though, he's only 92nd percentile. He doesn't have much business teaching the test. Anyone who's at an Ivy League law school has a better score than him. I completely agree that intelligence, on it's own, is near useless. It needs to be combined with the other elements that make someone effective. THEN, and only then, do you have the ingredients for something powerful. Our society lionizes intelligence to the point that many people with little but intelligence smugly rest on their laurels, and accomplish less than their potential due to defects in social skills, initiative, etc.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
anothermachine 14y ago
Anyone at an Ivy League law school might have more lucrative opportunities than teaching LSAT classes.
- graeme 14y ago
  You'd be surprised ;) On an hourly basis, you can earn more teaching the LSAT than as an Ivy League law grad. Mind you, I don't work 80 hour weeks, so I don't make as much on an absolute basis, but the work is more interesting, and I've branched out into LSAT books and an online LSAT course. But mainly, I wanted to point out that the instructor is unreasonably arrogant. By comparison with his reference group, he's far from exceptional. By implication, the Mensa cut-off is also far from 'genius'. Top 2% is 1 in 50.
  - Pinatubo 14y ago
    To be fair, that's 1 in 50 from a group that was relatively accomplished in an academic setting before the test. But I agree that it doesn't qualify as "genius."

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

gnosis 14y ago

"And what did the genius do when not teaching LSAT prep courses? Why, he worked at Target." Kafka was a clerk at an insurance company. Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher. Van Gogh only ever sold one painting during his life, and that was to his brother. There are hordes of other people widely regarded as "geniuses", who lived and died in dire poverty. Many others were cheated out of the fame and fortune they deserved by others who got the credit. And many more are probably still unrecognized. The cold hard fact of the matter is that the world generally does not reward intelligence, "genius", or even hard work. True, some have the temperament and luck to scale the greasy pole of "success", but many others don't -- or choose to focus their energies elsewhere.

hellrich 14y ago
Kafka and Einstein had white collar jobs when those were rare and Wittgenstein gave away his (inherited) fortune.
- gnosis 14y ago
  The OP was judging a person by his job, and implying that the person in question couldn't be a genius because he worked at a menial job. I simply provided some counterexamples. Furthermore, white collar or not, I doubt that many would contend that Kafka or Einstein were some sorts of models of "success" if judged by their jobs, and few would judge them "geniuses" solely by looking at what they did for a living. The fact that Wittgenstein gave away his inheritance is completely irrelevant. We were talking about jobs as marks of genius, not about inherited wealth. However, I will grant that being born in to a wealthy family, being given a first-rate education, and being surrounded by highly accomplished individuals (as Wittgenstein was) does usually give the beneficiary a tremendous head start over most people. I would certainly have bet on someone born in to Wittgenstein's highly privileged position making something of himself than on someone born in to poverty. That said, plenty of people born in to tremendous wealth squander it and their lives. A couple of interesting, relatively recent documentaries on the subject are "Born Rich"[1] and "The One Percent"[2]. [1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342143/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342143/ [2] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819791/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819791/

rayiner 14y ago

I think the LSAT is a pretty good... well whatever it is. It has the salient quality of being almost completely unambiguous. Out of 1000+ of LSAT questions I saw when studying for the test, I found maybe half a dozen that didn't have one unambiguously correct answer and four unambiguously incorrect answers. Of course, it assumes a level of familiarity with formal logic and English grammar/vocabulary.

graeme 14y ago
Yes, they're surprisingly good at it. I've taken and taught other standardized tests, and often find them frustrating or boring. I once found an LSAT question I considered ambiguous. I sent in a complaint to the LSAC. They replied with a three page letter that convinced me I was incorrect.
- mcherm 14y ago
  Now THAT is impressive.
meepmorp 14y ago
> it assumes a level of familiarity with formal logic and English grammer/vocabulary. Grammar, not grammer.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  This is one of those things that can make an otherwise intelligent person look like an idiot. And I'm not talking about the typo.
  - meepmorp 14y ago
    That's desperately clever. Really.
- rayiner 14y ago

hackinthebochs 14y ago

I find interesting the backlash against those who may have any interest in knowing their IQ, or god-forbid even feel good about it. What your anecdotes tell me is not that IQ itself is meaningless, but that success has a large factor of luck involved. It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind. This growing trend of derision for those who acknowledge their own raw intelligence is only making it worse.

nickzoic 14y ago
Success contains a large factor of luck for sure, but I'd say also a large factor of something not measured by IQ tests. Charisma? "Emotional Intelligence"? Mental flexibility? Gumption? Who knows.
- scott_s 14y ago
  Grit.
gurkendoktor 14y ago
> It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind. Or maybe it's a failing of those high IQ people? The genius who proudly saves the codebase at Zynga every single day is completely useless compared to any single nurse working her shift right now. Even the doctor at the top of the hospital does not necessarily have a stellar IQ. What other way is there to put it? Should we feel bad for smart people because society tricks them into financial services rather than less-paid cancer research? (No one would look down on someone who does the latter.)
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  (I would love to be proven wrong by somebody who knows what Mensa spends their brainpower thinking about :))
- hackinthebochs 14y ago
  >Should we feel bad for smart people because society tricks them into financial services rather than less-paid cancer research? No, we should feel ashamed that we've created a society where the brightest are funneled into financial services. We should feel utterly devastated that we let genius wallow in menial jobs. It is a failing of the system at every level that these people fall through the cracks and end up doing nothing with their gifts. Raw intelligence is a resource that society should work hard to 'exploit'. Sure doctors and nurses save a lot of lives and that doesn't necessarily require genius. But compared to, say, the guy who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, their impact on humanity doesn't even come close.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

lywald 14y ago

being intelligent has no intrinsic value Loving what we are has to be worth something, or why bother with progress?

drumdance 14y ago
So if you suffered a brain injury, would you love yourself less?

Osmium 14y ago

> being intelligent has no intrinsic value We value lots of things in life that have no intrinsic value. Art, for example. There's nothing wrong with valuing intelligence too. It's what separates us from the apes after all. That said, I don't disagree with your overall point. I've known many intelligent people woefully unprepared to deal with everyday life, and it always seemed sad to me. Two of them ended up as alcoholics, one with gambling debts. It doesn't matter how intelligent you are if it means you can't deal with life.

777466 14y ago

> if nobody is forced to contend with your mind, nobody knows it exists. I'm sure this has already been explored somewhere, but I've always wondered what it says about us as humans that we consider our lives in isolation to be meaningless, but put a bunch of meaningless people together into a society, and impacting them becomes very meaningful. What's going on here, synergy?

Evbn 14y ago
Genetic predisposition to pack living and altruism in service of sexual reproduction of genes.

trotsky 14y ago

It seems like a lot of people over think intelligence and success. Properly balanced or even an excess of serotonin and norepinephrine are what primarily ensures survival and procreation, which generally translates into happiness and sufficient wealth. Trying to measure and identify abstract cognitive ability like IQ tests do is almost somewhat of an autism spectrum-esque devotion. While some smart men and women may contribute greatly to society it's unusual for it to be a personal victory or indeed be as significant as dozens of better predictors of personal trajectory. Over-thinking things may even position excess cognitive function as a net negative drag on success.

samspot 14y ago

> being intelligent has no intrinsic value Thinking about this the other day, I was noticing that many people of great intelligence act as though it is a free pass to not putting forward much effort. Similarly they may neglect to pay attention to others who they regard as less intelligent than them (often their teachers or professors).

kamaal 14y ago

If your success depends on impacting peoples life through your work, then intelligence isn't even relevant to the discussion of success.

kahawe 14y ago

To further your excellent point: IQ, "intellectual superiority" and improving-life-for-the-better or "happiness" are generally three separate things; or at least much more separate than we like to see them as clearly correlating if not causations. And the people you meet at Mensa spread surprisingly many/all levels of society...

xiaoma 14y ago

A lack of high earnings by no means implies a lack of genius or a lack of success. Mozart drank himself to death by age 30 and was hounded by creditors. Socrates, Nicola Tesla, Oscar Wilde and many other great minds died penniless.

ed_blackburn 14y ago

/"one of the big lessons of my life has been that being intelligent has no intrinsic value. If you are unable to manifest your intelligence in a way that can substantially (disproportionate to your effort) improve your life or the lives of others, then your mind doesn't matter."/ It saddens me the number of intellectually bright people I work with who don't grok basics like sound engineering principles. Your code is off little value if it's unmaintainable, or impossible to prove it works, regardless of how clever the implementation may be.