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Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

scientificamerican.com

11–20 of 232 posts

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#12
I wonder if the mood disorders are causal.

For instance, the largest mood disorder was anxiety. Let me recast anxiety as "overly caring". An anxious person may work 3x as hard at a presentation or an exam.

I don't want to glamorize mental disorders, but I think this might not be a coincidental connection.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#13
post #3

Their entire high IQ sample comes from Mensa. So this should be restated something like "Inclination to join Mensa correlates with mental and physical disorder"

Going further, maybe the inclination to join any social organization correlates with mental and physical disorder. Such organizations, while limiting membership based on specific acceptance criteria, may be generally welcoming to people whose traits are orthogonal to those criteria.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#14
So, is this "scientifiamerican" a serious publication, or what? I mean, it says that high IQ leads to various good outcomes (a fact that is obvious, well-known and easily explained) and then basically says the opposite because of a...Mensa survey. Like, uh, that's not how you do science. At all. Not at all.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#15

I've met plenty of incredibly intelligent people in my life, and very few mentioned Mensa. Those who did had a yearning for being recognized as smart or exceptional. Perhaps using Mensa membership to draw inferences about smart people in general isn't statistically applicable. It could be that people who want to be recognized as smart have those mental issues, which other smart people don't.

[deleted]

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#17
post #3

Their entire high IQ sample comes from Mensa. So this should be restated something like "Inclination to join Mensa correlates with mental and physical disorder"

I guess I'm the control here, because I was briefly a member of ISPE. Not because I have an IQ in the 99.9+% (as far as I know), but because they couldn't figure out how to password protect their Ning group.

Based on the posts though, the members didn't seem any smarter than the average person on HN and the discussions were generally less interesting.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#18
Seems like some of the OEs they mention the article are a contributing factor, but it also seems very likely that people who were aware of their higher IQ are more likely to go to doctors and psychologist, and therefore more likely that any other conditions are also caught. A population with a disproportionate level of observations will yield more results.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#19

I've met plenty of incredibly intelligent people in my life, and very few mentioned Mensa. Those who did had a yearning for being recognized as smart or exceptional. Perhaps using Mensa membership to draw inferences about smart people in general isn't statistically applicable. It could be that people who want to be recognized as smart have those mental issues, which other smart people don't.

Mensa is not exceptionally smart. It's 2% of all people. [removed a distracting point about social group size.] Most people are likely to know someone who could qualify for Mensa.

Mensa is quite smart, but I wouldn't use the word "exceptional." If you write a method that throws an exception on 2% of all inputs, I think maybe you're doing it wrong. 2% is still too common, in my opinion, to be considered an exception.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#20

I've met plenty of incredibly intelligent people in my life, and very few mentioned Mensa. Those who did had a yearning for being recognized as smart or exceptional. Perhaps using Mensa membership to draw inferences about smart people in general isn't statistically applicable. It could be that people who want to be recognized as smart have those mental issues, which other smart people don't.

Mensa is not exceptionally smart. It's 2% of all people. [removed a distracting point about social group size.] Most people are likely to know someone who could qualify for Mensa. Mensa is quite smart, but I wouldn't use the word "exceptional." If you write a method that throws an exception on 2% of all inputs, I think maybe you're doing it wrong. 2% is still too common, in my opinion, to be considered an exception.

You are making quite the assumption there about the number of one's friends and acquaintances.
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