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High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

scientificamerican.com

101–110 of 297 posts

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#101
post #3

> 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.

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.

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.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#102
post #34

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…

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.

I'm pretty sure "psychological disorders" map a lot more to being abnormal than smart specifically. It's really hard to cope when you aren't getting that social hit that comes from belongingness.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#104

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.

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.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#105
post #5

> 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…

Update: I'm reading people with (more) negative experiences. I guess YMMV :) Still, I wouldn't draw absolute conclusions based on this. I was a Mensa associate, and participated to evening meetings in two countries (evening meetings are only part of the activities). You're assuming, with "people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club", that associates sit on a high horse due to their IQ. It was quite the oppos…

No need to walk back your comment! I'm glad you had a positive experience, and didn't mean the "insecure" thing as an attack.

I guess it feels weird to me because according to the scores page, I could join this club, but my brother would be excluded. We could both join a chess club.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#107
post #39

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.

Downvoting without thinking is also not healthy, because @amelius is right. In fact, there are quite a few HN submissions discussing the side affects of too much thinking.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#108

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…

"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief." - Ecclesiastes 1:18

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#109

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…

I think the article points at the correct root cause of most of this - “overthinking”.

It isn’t just the overanalysis of day to day occurrences, the worrying about tangibles and the ratifying possibilities of every decision, the playing out of realistic hypotheticals - there are vast categories of intangibles to mull over which will really get you down if you consider them deeply enough.

Most hyper-intelligent people I know are more or less consumed by existential dread. Some cope better than others - and that’s usually environmental.

I found building a business ultimately unfulfilling, as no matter what success we found, it all just felt like so much artifice, sand castles in a playpit - and in the meantime I’d worry about the collapse of civilisation (my god, it’s a razor’s edge we blunder blithely along), the insignificance of all human existence in an immense and dispassionate universe, whether anything is even real, anyway, and then, what does real even mean. Down the miserable fucking rabbit hole you go.

A change of scene was good. I dig holes, build things, cut and plant trees, sow seeds, and while the dread is still most definitely there, it’s bearable with a more direct connection to the here and now, the simplicity and challenges of the changing seasons, of just surviving in nature. Oh, and appreciating just how little control I actually have over my environment - my decisions don’t mean shit more often than not, as nature usually has other ideas, and a coin toss is just as good.

Which makes me wonder if perhaps the problem isn’t intelligence itself, but what the intelligent choose to do with it - typically some highly abstracted field, where it’s easy to feel disconnected from everything, and where the decisions to be made are complex and deeply interconnected in their inputs and outputs.

It’d be interesting to slice the Mensa survey by profession. It might be stronger than the IQ correlation.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Update: I'm reading people with (more) negative experiences. I guess YMMV :) Still, I wouldn't draw absolute conclusions based on this. I was a Mensa associate, and participated to evening meetings in two countries (evening meetings are only part of the activities). You're assuming, with "people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club", that associates sit on a high horse due to their IQ. It was quite the oppos…

That's interesting. I joined and was immediately turned off by the group. The difference with joining a chess club is you get to play chess. So let's turn your proposal around: What do you get to do in a High IQ club that is different from any random collection of people? Besides talk about how you are in MENSA?

Just like in a fraternity, you get connections. Mensa is basically a network of highly intelligent people (or at least people with high IQ) that help each other in different ways for further their education and career. Being part of Mensa can open doors that would otherwise be locked or very hard to open.
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