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High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

scientificamerican.com

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Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#61

Post by tux3 »

amelius wrote: post #39
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #26

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 al…

Too much thinking is unhealthy. The brain's main purpose is to be idle as much as possible. Perhaps your intelligent friends would do better if they meditated regularly.

And how much thinking led you to this conclusion, exactly? ;)

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#62

Post by Consultant32452 »

rory wrote: post #51
Consultant32452 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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/

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#63

Post by alistairSH »

rory wrote: post #25
mamon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

That's exactly what they did - they have 3 bands of years for the SAT. Two year bands (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.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#64

Post by giantg2 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #48
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a list of different aptitude tests, e.g. LSATs, GREs and so on.

Aptitude tests are IQ tests in a socially acceptable disguise.

Not exactly. There may be some correlation, but there are certainly people who can get in via an aptitude test who would not be able to get in using an IQ test. The testing methods are completely different.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#66

Post by [deleted] »

whatshisface wrote: post #31
lima wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Whi…

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?

[deleted]

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#68

Post by zpeti »

ndiscussion wrote: post #2

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.

Same publication that two days ago posts about how climate anxiety is a white issue...

At least they could stop calling themselves "scientific" american.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#70

Post by toolz »

1023bytes wrote: post #24
ndiscussion wrote: post #2

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.

Yes. Associating with people based solely on their IQ is pretty misguided.

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.

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