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High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

scientificamerican.com

201–210 of 297 posts

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#201
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a virus is also "something being injected into your body" and it's much more dangerous than mRNA, which has no reported risks and is 100% guaranteed to be not self reproducing. Actually, we know that getting vaccines (esp. flu shot) somehow improves your health even beyond not getting what they vaccinate for. Getting the covid vaccine appears to cure long-term effects of covid infection in patients.

There's a difference between requesting that something be injected into your body and something injecting itself into your body against your will, and it's disingenuous to conflate them.

You’re right...the latter is far worse!

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#202

My opinion is that ultimately IQ is only a measure of performance on IQ tests. There is a positive correlation between IQ and performance in some tasks, but calling someone with a high IQ "smart" or "more intelligent" is a far reach in my experience, which is having an IQ over 179 (I did the test stoned and hungover in order to not score too highly) and being an idiot.

Sometimes I get stoned just so I can deal with lower IQ people. Kinda have to dumb myself down sometimes in order to relax.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adopting a sedentary lifestyle isn't very smart. You'd think a club of high-IQ folk would know better.

A good example is that world chess champions are actually very athletic, especially the Soviet ones in the past and Magnus Carlsen today. My FAANG experience is that people like outdoor sports and going to the gym too, I wonder where all the Linux con t-shirts and drinking Jolt cola people went…

In my experience, mostly DevOps.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There may be some correlation There is so much correlation that the correlation of an aptitude test with an IQ test is basically equal to the correlation of one IQ test with another IQ test. (Around 0.8) By any definition other than "it can't be an IQ test unless that's part of its name", the aptitude tests are IQ tests. They do not differ in function.

That's simply not true. The form and function of the tests are fundamentally different. The biggest difference is that you can study for one, but studying for the other is considered cheating. You can see my other comment for further clarification.

You can respond to facts by saying "that's simply not true", but it's not going to be an effective way of convincing anyone else or of developing a coherent model of the world. The facts are that aptitude tests are psychometrically identical to IQ tests. They have the same characteristics and reveal the same information. Someone's score on an aptitude test as is predictive of their score on an IQ test as their score on an IQ test is.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#205
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to see how a list of accepted IQ tests supports the idea that you don't need to pass an IQ test to join.

It's more the fact that these are not all IQ tests.

That is not a fact; they are all IQ tests.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care one way or the other, but my impression is the group offers a setting for like-minded (read 'higher-IQ') individuals to come talk about anything and not just the thing they are there for.

No interest group or club that I've belonged to has ever stuck only to that topic in discussion.

Of course not, but it does provide an easy conversation starter that paves the way for other topics.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#207

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…

> intelligence was inversely related to sanity

That stands to reason, if we assume that evolution arrives at largely efficient (specifically locally optimal) solutions: any trait that comes in handy would be selected for until its negative consequences (on average) just compensate any further increase.

This would predict that higher intelligence is correlated with something detrimental, whether it be insanity or something else.

EDIT: Someone said it much better here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26573055

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#208
post #86
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…

> I'm not sure exactly what Mensa does Gives a mermbership certificate and a number that they think they brag about to socially naive, gullible and arrogant (but otherwise smart), people (I say "think they can brag about" because nobody will actually be impressed by it, and it just makes them appear as crude idiots - IQ is not an accomplishment by itself, and the proof of genius is in genius work).

It’s your requirement though, not theirs. I’m not part of Mensa and have no chance neither will to join, but this attitude “do some genius work then we’ll talk” really annoys me. It’s unlikely that I will do, but if I did, we wouldn’t talk, cause who cares. Like they need to work hard to prove something to a stranger (I’d make it invalidate membership). Some people can beat that score, some cannot, that’s it. Social people do things to feel accepted and loved (or feared, or hated). Unsocial may do that for themselves, out of curiosity, for an idea, to fight with reality, because they can. But not to impress some guy out there. It doesn’t have to be utilitarian; analyzing sudoku solving methods with 4 digits or playing other hard “games” is as intellectual as creating a cure for cancer. The only difference is how some Joe judges or benefits from it, which is irrelevant.

If this reads harsh, I did not mean it, but you social guys think you understand better, but often you do not.

I never announced my iq because I’ve seen that the answer other people usually get is either “ooh that’s high” or “what are you bragging about, it’s a number” or “mine is N”. Never heard the one that I find actually interesting: “which test it was, and oh, how did you analyze Nth, because it has three patterns with similar fitness, but only two were available as an answer”. Never once.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#209
It's not true. No high-quality study, some of which go much higher than MENSA level, corroborates anything remotely like what they claim from their doubly-selected MENSA respondents self-reports: https://www.gwern.net/SMPY#fn1

For example, http://programme.exordo.com/isir2017/delegates/presentation/... looks at health in SMPY participants, which are a full SD or so above Mensans. If OP were true, they would have odds ratios of scores or hundreds (or higher!) compared to normal people of serious psychopathology, and SMPY surveys would be a staggering wasteland of mental illness; instead, they are very healthy and have rates lower or just slightly above normal people. Or even more recently, "Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? Comparing Linear and Nonlinear Effects of Cognitive Ability on Life Outcomes" https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2021-brown.pdf , Brown et al 2021, finds absolutely no evidence of any quadratic trend remotely like OP claims.

Re: High IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never joined Mensa but I very clearly see the thing about neglecting physical and social pursuits because they are harder than intellectual ones :) Makes sense to choose things you're naturally good in, it's not really a 'preoccupation' as such. Someone who is great at sports will tend to focus on that. It's just natural to direct yourself towards pursuits that come easily. The problem with this thing of course…

Adopting a sedentary lifestyle isn't very smart. You'd think a club of high-IQ folk would know better.

While I was still in school I joined an event for people that were really good at math, like 1-2 students per school could attend. I think it went for almost a week and then there were subsequent monthly lectures, unfortunately about discrete mathematics which I didn't enjoy that much.

In retrospect, you could definitely see that some people came from bad social backgrounds (and thus didn't wear the best clothes for instance) that were just there because they were so smart. But for instance there was also a guy from a very privileged background who went to private school (yes, clean clothes, confident and good at sports) who was actually a jerk. Anyways, there were also fairly average appearing people.

What I want to say is, I think the whole observation is very skewed. People from not so privileged backgrounds are usually not that visible, but just because of a high IQ might enter opportunities (university, job, social circles) that might be otherwise inaccessible und thus they get into the spotlight.

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