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from the appealing-to-a-community-of-loners dept.
A story at Inverse, covers research that concludes that Evolution Made Really Smart People Long to Be Loners:
Psychologists have a pretty good idea of what typically makes a human happy. Dancing delights us. Being in nature brings us joy. And, for most people, frequent contact with good friends makes us feel content.
That is, unless you're really, really smart.
In a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology , researchers Norman Li and Satoshi Kanazawa report that highly intelligent people experience lower life satisfaction when they socialize with friends more frequently. These are the Sherlocks and the Newt Scamanders of the world — the very intelligent few who would be happier if they were left alone.
[...] To come to this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the survey responses of 15,197 individuals between the ages of 18 and 28. Their data was a part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health — a survey that measures life satisfaction, intelligence, and health...
Intelligence is believed to have evolved as a psychological mechanism to solve novel problems — the sort of challenges that weren't a regular part of life. For our ancestors, frequent contact with friends and allies was a necessity that allowed them to survive. Being highly intelligent, however, meant an individual was more likely to be able to solve problems without another person's help, which in turn diminished the importance of their friendships.
[...] That certainly doesn't mean that if you enjoy being around your friends that you're unintelligent. But it does mean that the really smart person you know who spends much of their time alone isn't a sad loner — they probably just like it that way.
In my estimation, the community here is above-average in intelligence so I am curious: How many of you are loners? Do you prefer the company of yourself to the company of others?
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday December 19 2016, @09:38PM
This is a serious question. Already I see lots of comments here quoting exact IQ thresholds -- "I only hang out with folks 130 IQ or over," etc., etc.
I've only taken two actual IQ tests in my life. One was in elementary school and given by a professional psychometrician, whom my school district brought in once a year to administer individual private tests to candidates for a "gifted" program. The other was a form of the Raven Advanced Matrices I took while in graduate school as part of a study. No one informed me of the exact results of the first test; I only knew I was selected for the gifted program. And I only found out the number because I once sneaked a peek at the files of my "gifted" program teacher -- it was general policy NOT to give out the actual scores to students, I think to avoid weird competitions or inaccurate assumptions (like the fact that a 5-point IQ difference is actually meaningful or that the tests are even that accurate in pinpointing general intelligence). Perhaps they told my parents... I don't know.
And when I participated in the latter study, I actually asked whether I would be informed of the results, and I was told (correctly so) that the particular subtest I took was not broad enough to give me a score on a general IQ battery, so telling me a number there would be potentially misleading.
Only a small subset (maybe ~5-7%) of students in my school district ever took a full IQ test, and nobody actually knew their results. I've rarely met people who actually have taken a standard normed test and actually knew their results. Most of the people I've ever heard talking about their "high IQ" seem to be talking about something some stupid online test told them.
How is it that everyone here seems to not only know their IQ but the IQs of a lot of people around them? Or are you all just referring to online test results? (which are pretty much known to be BS)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ayn Anonymous on Monday December 19 2016, @09:50PM
You know that you are smarter than most other people when you have almost always a solution for a problem that all other not ever have recognised as a problem.
That simple.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @11:04PM
If the others have not recognized a problem as a problem, then by fixing it, you just became the problem. Too smart for your own good, why you gotta change things when everyone else was perfectly happy with the way things were! You're on thin ice, stop making problems, or you're fired, smartass!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday December 19 2016, @11:50PM
You know that you are smarter than most other people when you have almost always a solution for a problem that all other not ever have recognised as a problem.
Yeah, I can understand that. But unless you're some sort of master demographer who does population sampling in your spare time, exactly how can you then extrapolate that to IQ = 130 or whatever? IQ of 130 implies two sigma above average, which puts you in the ~98th percentile. It takes quite a bit of data and observations for someone to personally identify yourself as the smarter than 49/50 people, rather than smarter than 40/50 or 45/50 or whatever. That's why we have normed tests that have data from tens of thousands of people.
At least a couple of posts here were mentioning IQ of 145 or above, that's 3 sigma above mean, nearly 1 in 1000. Is everyone here a high school valedictorian? (Actually, given the size of most high schools, 3 sigma probably means you aren't just the smartest person in your class, but probably smarter than the valedictorians of classes around you.)
Believe me -- back when I was in my early 20s I spent a while thinking about how awesome my own intelligence must be, and I started thinking, "Hey, maybe I should use my test scores to get into some of those high IQ societies." Then I actually met some people from some of those societies. I never wanted to be associated with high IQ folks again....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:02AM
I was in education for some time and I took a few SBs and was able to see the results. I also went back to my high school and got my SB results from when I was 16. When I was 16, my results were 127. After 7 years of college and spending a lot of time studying music composition, arranging, and performance, my SB was 142. I haven't taken one in 30 years, but I assume it would be around the same place now. (I want to point out that, to my memory, many of the items on the SB are arbitrary and a bit capricious.) I do believe that just using a number is bullshit; you need some practical life experience to back it up. I also believe that I had much better reasoning skills after grad school than in high school and that may have accounted for the increase in the numbers. The bottom line is, I am a fairly smart fellow. I do not tolerate fools. I do enjoy being alone rather than in a group or crowd. OTOH, I have a few friends with about the same mental/emotional capacity, and we get together occasionally and have a good time. I also enjoy playing competition bridge, chess and jazz performance. At this moment, my wife and I are sitting on the couch, a fire in the fireplace, Christmas jazz playing on the stereo, and would not want to be anyplace else. We have few friends; of those, most (if not all) would be considered acquaintances. We are quite happy with this lifestyle. Neighbors pick up on that pretty fast.
This entire conversation reminds me of a great story; one day I was watching a "biography" of a famous(?) porn star, no recollection of her name. In any case, she was sitting on a stool, starkers, while answering questions. When asked what her favorite hobby was, she responded "on-line IO tests"! When pressed for her "IO", she shyly said "170"! I could not catch my breath for laughing. The internet. And anyone wonders how we ended up with Trump as president. It's an amazing world...
(Score: 1) by Demena on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:50AM
And you know she was wrong, how? There does seem to be a correlation between intelligence and distain for societies sexual mores. I cannot provide a reference to that but I have heard it many times and seen much apocryphal 'evidence'. Seeing as it fits my model I give some limited credence.
(Score: 2) by Ayn Anonymous on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:34AM
The number does not really matter.
Because this number does not measure accompanying skills like:
- Quick and efficient learning
- Resistance to social engineering / peer pressure
- Non verbal language understanding
- Observation skills
- etc.
That accompanying skills are a large part of the 'package' that make the difference between a "useless" intelligent person and someone who can actually successful
apply his IQ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @09:54PM
A lot of people will trust any random online IQ test when it gives them an answer they like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @10:02PM
I took the standard IQ tests of the time back in the 1960's in school. Yes, they told us the results. I guess the politically correct police have put a stop to this nowadays.
(Score: 1) by Ayn Anonymous on Monday December 19 2016, @10:08PM
Look around. The world full of idiots.
The lambs are silent.
They let the self-proclaimed Sheppard push them into the slaughter houses without recognising that they are stupid sheep.
Let alone seeing the problem of being "lead".
And not even scratching the solution to it.
No hope for 75% - 95% of the sheep. They will die.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @11:12PM
Find a MENSA chapter near you and sign up for the next entrance exam - which is an IQ test.
(Score: 1) by Demena on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:40AM
Personally? Through MENSA testing. Cattell III test I believe.
(Score: 1) by helel on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:59AM
My school district was different, or rather the culture was different then you describe. Everyone gets tested for the gifted program unless their parents specifically requests they not be and most parents share the results with their offspring. It was pretty much our alternative to dick length growing up.
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:17PM
Without failure every person who has ever made a big deal about IQ was not as smart as they thought. Even those who supposedly took accurate IQ tests.
People who are actually smart have better things to be proud of.