IQ Test

[7Wannabe5]

My point is that you are the alpha here and are largely responsible for modeling ideal sociocentric expectations for forum members.

Egads, there are a lot of assumptions packed into this statement.

[jacob]

My point is that you are the alpha here and are largely responsible for modeling ideal sociocentric expectations for forum members. You are also an outlier, even here. Others will follow because they want to be like you. But the model you have created is very unique to you. Maybe one or two others here on the forum could follow it and have similar success. Everyone else would be, to varying degrees, broken by it.

And my point is that the average forumite may be closer to me than the population norm. Heck, the average here probably skews closer to me (or each other) than they are to MMM (or MMM forumites). Otherwise, what are they doing here rather than there?

I don't think people randomly walk onto the forum. Usually it's because they're searching for something and have found other places or people wanting. If these seekers were talking normie advice dialed in for "regular folks", I think they could be broken by it. In fact, I think the reason people come here is because they're already somewhat unsatisfied with the sociocentric expectations of normie world.

Anyhoo, this is not a popularity contest. Or is it?

This whole debate spun off a tangent about how high intelligence leads to unhappiness. You ascribe it to how the highly intelligent has somehow lost touch with the wholesome entertainment of connecting with regular folks and all these unfortunate souls gotta do is to learn to enjoy it. (While they're at it, maybe they could also learn how to enjoy 40 years of 9-5 by finding a job they're passionate about? After all, not doing so is also pretty weird relative to normal societal expectations.) Whereas I ascribe the potential unhappiness to how the highly intelligent are a bad fit for the societal expectation that hanging out with the popular kids is fun for everyone involved. The advice would then be the opposite. Obviously the correct solution lies on a spectrum and depends on the person. By all means I invite people to try to find joy in hanging out with regular people. I've tried myself more than once and found the experience wanting every time. We can agree that people (here) could give it a try and see if it works for them. I'll never agree that it's great for everyone.

[jacob]

@AE - "All models are wrong, some are useful". There are three ways to go here. One is to pick one single model and believe fully in it. (I think this is Ego's concern that even insofar I'm not affected by that, then at least some starry-eyed forum member may be and proceed to adopt some model as the one true religion, because jacob mentioned it at some point. The typical cafeteria problem. This also describes the majority of modern society.) The second is to know several models and apply them situationally. The third is the construct-aware stage that uses all the models simultaneous to create an overall vision that is informed by many theories. The third is essentially a "multiple lines of evidence" meta-model. Also see vision-logic.

Another way of explaining this---see other threads---is that minds are hyperobjects. More complex (more intelligent?) minds have more dimensions. Without loss of generality, we can use the Flatland metaphor. A 3D mind can see 2D minds for what they are (again WLOG, the 2D space is a subspace of the 3D space), whether that's a circle or a square. Whereas the 2D mind will see the 3D mind (a cylinder) as either a circle or a square depending on their own viewpoint.

When you're walking around talking to people using these more complex models to determine how to talk to them, you're not really creating what I would consider a "meaningful" connection. Basically, "you can see all of them, but they can not see all of you" due to the dimensionality problem.

In other words, they're having a conversation, but you're collecting data. It is not a meeting of minds. It's one person observing the other while basically experimenting on them. Nothing wrong with collecting data, but a collaboration it is not. The source of potential [social] unhappiness in the highly complex or intelligent is that part of them (perhaps a great part) usually goes unseen.

One interesting observation I've had is how one's surroundings affect the complexity of one's own thoughts. This is quite evident in kindergarten teachers. Being surrounded by children all the time, their thoughts tend towards being very simple, naive, and innocent. Yet, after retiring and surrounding themselves with adults and perhaps taking on more responsibility as well, it's as if their mental complexity grows. They can suddenly have more interesting conversations and thoughts because their source material has shifted from mostly 4 year olds to mostly 60 year olds. Similar effect in the intelligent person who somehow got caught up with the popular kids talking about clothes and tribal politics ... but eventually escapes to become a nerd and finally get to let their mind "run free".

The question is whether complexity has value. It certainly has value in terms of doing real things with real consequences. Does it have value in terms of connecting with people? I'd say there's a difference between connecting up and connecting down. If you surround yourself with people of lesser intelligence or complexity, your own may start going down as well, but in turn the match will be more even and thus result in greater happiness(?) This is why one way of coping with having to connect that way is getting plastered as mentioned in the original link, thus creating an instant collapse of complexity. This has also been my experience.

Conversely, if you hang out with people who are mostly smarter than you, then other people increasingly note how you're making better decisions, etc. (An effect noticed in people if they change partners from a dull one to a significantly smarter one, etc.) What about the feeling of connecting upwards? It doesn't seem to create as much unhappiness to be "the relatively dumb one". Probably some variation on "ignorance is a bliss". In fact, people seem to not really care that much to the potential resentment of the smarter ones who have to do all the heavy lifting.

[black_son_of_gray]

The general source of frustration is strictly when people are compelled to engage in non-meaningful activities in order to conform to sociocentric expectations. In short, doing things they don't actually want to do in order to fit in. Whether that's a very intelligent person being forced to have a dull conversation because it's polite, or a number phobic person being forced to make a budget to get a car loan... It's fine to do it occasionally. The unhappiness comes when it happens ALL THE TIME AND EVERYWHERE. The reason why some people join high IQ societies is to escape that.

I will grant that possibly maybe a meaningless activity can somehow be turned into a meaningful one, perhaps by a change of perspective. But why?????? Like Schopenhauer said: "You can do what you want, but you can not want what you want". I certainly don't believe that some kind of conversion therapy can make people want to want something they don't want. I think such things only serve to screw them up or alienate them further.

Fascinating discussion.

I've bolded what, to my ear, seems to be the point, which I think is getting muddled by (maybe even conflated with?) "intelligence". Being "highly intelligent", which many on this forum no doubt are, may tend to correlate with the kinds of things that people value/find meaningful in social interactions, but that correlation is likely not that strong.

I've got relationships with very bright people, and most of our interactions are pretty silly. Basically, we talk like idiots to each other much of the time, and it's hilarious and fun. It's play and enjoyable. In some ways, it's a counterbalance to our hyper-intellectualized careers/lifestyles. We can have (and have had) deep, conceptual conversations, but we naturally just tend to joke around.

Meanwhile, I've had quite a few conversations with "normie" people who (probably high, but not always) reeeeally wanted to talk about ideas all night long. These ideas were sometimes clever and well developed, sometimes pretty dumb. But they were all serious and idea-driven discussion trying to suss out world problems or the meaning of life, etc.

The meaningfulness of these different interactions varies a lot for me, and along a lot of different dimensions. It could even be context specific, like how my day has been going, etc. Sometimes I try to cultivate meaningfulness by being mindful of a certain aspect of the interaction (e.g. I may just be talking about my day in a phone call with my mother, but I might focus on the limited number of times I might have left to have to conversations with her). But I don't always to do that.

Personally, I probably enjoy idea-focused, "intellectual" interactions more than a typical person, but I would really dislike having most of my interactions be idea-focused or at a certain "level" of mental processing power. If that was the only way I got anything out of an interaction, I agree it would be quite alienating and lonely.

I may be getting out in the weeds here, but I've come to see the ability to choose the paradigm or perspective you're operating with as a skill, and one that you cultivate with increased life experience.

That's my orientation as well. Over the last decade or so, my mindset has shifted towards leaning into deficits and embracing them as challenges I want to level up in rather than building up my strengths. I don't know if this is a good idea or not (vs the alternative), and it probably isn't for everyone, but I've found it to be a great launching pad for (often difficult) personal growth. YYMV. "Not all pain is gain."

[rref]

The question is whether complexity has value. It certainly has value in terms of doing real things with real consequences. Does it have value in terms of connecting with people? I'd say there's a difference between connecting up and connecting down. If you surround yourself with people of lesser intelligence or complexity, your own may start going down as well, but in turn the match will be more even and thus result in greater happiness(?) This is why one way of coping with having to connect that way is getting plastered as mentioned in the original link, thus creating an instant collapse of complexity. This has also been my experience.

There is something super grating about this line of thinking. As mathiverse mentioned earlier only an extreme minority of high iq people actually end up in mensa-like clubs because most high iq people must find abundant meaningful connections even among "average people". This is probably because most meaning-creating activitites are based on things that are iq-orthogonal (like the ability to be present in the world and in interactions - an ability that "low iq children" are probably better at than all people on this forum).

[guitarplayer]

I got my wife to do the Danish test as well, according to the quora article mentioned earlier it is not likely we will divorce

I am gonna be bold and say that IQ is too pre-ERE1 even and indeed we should move on and talk about the Model of Hierarchical Complexity linked before which is way more cool.

For IQ, maybe we can agree that for some people many situations are like a film that's been seen many times over.

[mathiverse]

As mathiverse mentioned earlier only an extreme minority of high iq people actually end up in mensa-like clubs because most high iq people must find abundant meaningful connections even among "average people".

From my remark on Mensa, I don't think you can conclude: "most high iq people must find abundant meaningful connections even among average people." My remark on Mensa was noting (mostly to Ego) that Mensans are a bad group from which to draw conclusions about most people with high intelligence given that they seem to be particularly poorly adjusted due to many people only seeking out Mensa when other options have failed for them.

"Abundant meaningful connections even among average people" might be overstating it. I'd guess that it IS overstating it. More like, many find high IQ niches (eg unis, grad school, academia, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, programmers, ERE, etc) and therefore become well adjusted because they are more frequently able to connect with others like them (not average people, but other high IQ people in their niche). If you read the article called "The Outsiders" (linked in the Quora post from before) it states that the best adjusted high IQ people tend to find these niches and also tend to grow up in environments where these niches are more easily accessible.

Also, I'd note in that article that there is a significant amount of maladjustment among high IQ people if you are willing to accept and extrapolate from the data from the Terman study mentioned in that article. That data also showed the maladjusted groups tended to have higher average IQs/(CMT-x scores) which would match the idea that the further away from average you are the harder things are. So, only an extreme minority end up in Mensa, but a decent sized minority (~1/3) end up maladjusted, in general, Mensa or not.

Again, there is a definite trend shown for the maladjusted to make higher scores than the satisfactorily adjusted. Again, women show symptoms of maladjustment at lower scores than men. But the most alarming thing of all is that the percentage of maladjustment shown for both sexes rose in the 12 years since the previous examination [when the subjects were around age 29]. The percentage of men showing maladjustment having risen from 21 percent to 29 percent, and the figure for women having risen from 18 percent to 33 percent! Nearly double what it was before!

[Henry]

Following the Schopenhauer quote, people have to find their non-essential wants through imitation because that's what people are - imitators. We search for value. If people come to this board, they are looking to imitate those are successful in ERE. The "leaders" of the board are not the high IQ's but the highly committed high IQ's. Subsequently, a low IQ person who is successful in ERE will be more valuable than a high IQ person who still lives with his mother because the former has imitative value where the latter does not.

[rref]

@mathiverse: I agree that having access to people on your own level and working on task with an adequate complexity is important to well being. But most people who work in the "niches" you mention rarely spend all or even most of their time in conversations or tasks that max out their capabilities and probably spend even more time with friends and family (many of average persuasion) and on leisure activities (again with lots of iq-average people) etc. That the meaningfulness of their lives primarely comes from the "niche" participation would be equally ovestating it in the opposite direction.

[mathiverse]

We are talking about meaningful social interactions not the meaningfulness of their entire lives. The social connections where meaningful communication occurs exists for people in the niche. I agree that those aren't the entirety of their lives. Someone who hasn't found a niche will have a significantly reduced number of meaningful social connections.

Additionally, friends and neighbors are likely to come from the niche or niche adjacent places (similar types of people cluster; people live in bubbles of people like them), so it's not a completely compartmentalized situation where your profession/uni/work is the only part of your life where you more frequently interact with people on your wavelength and then suddenly you go home and the level is completely different.

[rref]

I am also talking about meaningful social interactions? People constantly have meaningful social interactions with their "low iq" children for example. They might not have intellectually fulfilling conversations with them but reducing meaningful (and meaning-giving) social interactions to intellecutally fulfilling conversations is absurd.

[mathiverse]

That the meaningfulness of their lives primarely comes from the "niche" participation would be equally ovestating it in the opposite direction.

Bold added by me, but those are your words.

I wasn't making the claim that the meaningfulness of their lives comes from being in a niche which is what you said. I claimed the abundant meaningful social connections come from being in a niche where the proportion of high IQ people is higher than in the general population. The fact that most of the time in life doesn't consist of meaningful social connections (as you say) doesn't mean that being in the niche isn't the primary reason the person has a "normal" number of meaningful social connections.

[rref]

Can people have meaningful social interactions and connections with their children (as a prime example of no-niche people)?

[mathiverse]

Well, if you have smart children (and or siblings), then your family might certainly be the high IQ niche you are looking for. See 7Wannabe5's posts in this thread.

If your question is whether a meaningful social connection with a child substitutes for all possible meaningful social connections, I'm gonna go ahead and say no. Leaving IQ out of it, an example is some of the stay at home moms who long for an "adult connection" when they've spent a bit too long at home alone with their kid.

[rref]

My question was none of those. Of course no single social connection can provide all meaning-related needs of a person. I was asking because it seems like we use different definitions of 'social connection' or 'social interaction'.

[jacob]

I am also talking about meaningful social interactions?

Well, we definitely need to distinguish between the different kinds of interactions. For example, I can form a perfectly meaningful and reciprocal emotional relationship with a dog despite the substantial difference in intelligence. I love the dog and the dog loves me. I'm also able to care for certain relatives and even humans in general despite our mental differences. I can also go to a skate park and play hockey with people despite a difference in intelligence. Both of these social interactions can be very meaningful to me and indeed more meaningful than any other activity if I love dogs and hockey.

What's being debated here is whether one can make a meaningful mental connection over any range. In other words, to which degree one can enjoy a game of chess with one's dog. Ultimately this comes down to what people are looking for or defines as meaningful. For example, if you don't know chess, then playing fetch with the dog using the chess pieces is probably a fun game of chess for both of you. If you're into chess then playing chess with your dog will not be fun for either of you. You either have to accept the "fetch the pieces" version or stop playing because the dog is not interested in learning your game.

The frustrations of the "relatively too intelligent for their environment" therefore tend be along the lines of

• Often being interested in different things than the people in their environment, e.g. Roosevelt's "people, events, ideas" example.
• Seeing more variables and being better able to draw connections between those variables. In short they see a bigger and typically more abstract picture which is obvious to them as well as more interesting than a particular detail or concern.
• Being tired of continuously having explain, correct errors, and work around misunderstandings, when trying to get those who are not as able on the same page to see the big picture.

In other words, spontaneous communication or leadership or play doesn't form. Instead it requires effort on the part of the more intelligent person. Now, if you are an extroverted and agreeable person (which I think Ego is), this may not matter as much as if you're an introverted and increasingly disagreeable right bastard (who calls them as he sees them) like me. Not only does it require effort. It may require some sacrifices which typically requires meeting the lesser intelligence, not halfway, but all the way in terms of the list above.

For example, even if we all love hockey, then insofar I'm playing with a bunch of nitwits, I'll have to accept that we can never have coordination or a playbook. Because they would never understand. Is hockey under these conditions meaningful? Well, that depends what aspects of it you're interested in. If you just like to skate and hit the puck, it's still meaningful. If you're envisioning a team of Gretzkies getting better and better, it is not meaningful. The reason it is not meaningful is that you're interested in a different aspect of the game (coordination and winning) that you can never have with your lovable team mate goons. They simply do not care to learn all your ideas about what the game could be because they don't and can't see what you see. It would be more correct to say that while the game is 100% meaningful to the nitwits who get exactly what they want, it's only 30% or 70% meaningful to you because you're not getting everything you want out of it. Thus the percentage of the one who has to accept a suboptimal solution is between 0% and 100% and due to the effort, thus the number may become a net negative ... in which case some other activity like sailing, thinking about a book, or staring at a wall may offer more "spontaneous fun".

[black_son_of_gray]

"Abundant meaningful connections even among average people" might be overstating it. I'd guess that it IS overstating it. More like, many find high IQ niches (eg unis, grad school, academia, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, programmers, ERE, etc) and therefore become well adjusted because they are more frequently able to connect with others like them (not average people, but other high IQ people in their niche). If you read the article called "The Outsiders" (linked in the Quora post from before) it states that the best adjusted high IQ people tend to find these niches and also tend to grow up in environments where these niches are more easily accessible.

Ok, that "Outsiders" article gave me some mini-revelations about my own childhood! From it's description, I was lucky enough to dodge some bullets.

Interesting to think about environments/niches and what can or cannot be controlled in that respect. Academia, medicine, law, etc. have greater concentrations of higher IQ people, but each has a certain, say, flavor of high IQ people. You can give it a 4 letter acronym if you want. The article mentions how, because there are so few super high-IQ people, it is difficult to really study them in a satisfying way. Well, imagine not a super high-IQ person, but someone who is merely high-IQ (so, much more of them, but still infrequent), but doesn't stay in just one niche. A polymath. So, rarer in multidisciplinary terms. Potentially very rare. I know a half dozen MD/PhDs, but I've met only one JD/PhD, and no JD/PhD/MBAs. (Of course, it doesn't haven't to be viewed through a degree lens, but it does a decent job of selecting for above average IQ) Presumably, this polymath rarity dimension is something that applies more to ERErs than the general population. And also presumably, the makeup of the polymath components can be controlled by the polymath to some degree.

Now, does the rareness of people who are polymaths (and along those lines, involved in different combinations of niches) make things even harder, or does the association with multiple IQ-enriched areas make the overall pool bigger?

Related note: I feel like, for purposes of this discussion, sometimes "expertise" can be meaningfully substituted for "intelligence" to similar effect. The importance of this distinction is that it may be easier/faster to increase expertise.

[jacob]

Ok, that "Outsiders" article gave me some mini-revelations about my own childhood! From it's description, I was lucky enough to dodge some bullets.

Sokath, his eyes uncovered.

Would it surprise you to learn that I fall under the marginal strategy in that article?

[mathiverse]

When I was saying meaningful social connection, for the most part, I meant meaningful intellectual/mental connection as explained in the Quora post posted previously which was among the links that started off this line of discussion. So I guess I was saying the niche is what enables the high IQ person to have a "normal" number of meaningful social, [intellectual/mental] connections.

The only place I didn't mean that type of social connection was in this quote:

If your question is whether a meaningful social connection with a child substitutes for all possible meaningful social connections, I'm gonna go ahead and say no. Leaving IQ out of it, an example is some of the stay at home moms who long for an "adult connection" when they've spent a bit too long at home alone with their kid.

where "meaningful social connection with a child" wasn't referring to an intellectual/mental connection.

And now I'm guessing that you must have been speaking more generally about social connections when you wrote "most high iq people must find abundant meaningful connections even among average people." Although that doesn't change my remark about that:

From my remark on Mensa, I don't think you can conclude: "most high iq people must find abundant meaningful connections even among average people."

And I guess I'd add that the abundant non-intellectual/non-mental connections don't always make up for the lack of intellectual/mental connection. Maybe something like Liebig's Law of the Minimum would apply?

[7Wannabe5]

This is why I think it is a terrible idea to encourage the high IQ kids who land here to “just get a job in the trades” instead of going to college. I kind of did that with my son, and I deeply regret it. So, I’ve kind of made it my mission to help him at this juncture, because his current marginal Blue Collar Philosopher lifestyle involves way too much alcohol and cigarettes.

My father helped me out of a similar rut when I was around the same age, by forcing me to overcome my anxiety and finally get my driver’s license. It’s super easy for very intelligent people to rationalize their lifestyle limiting behaviors.

A more positive note would be that because the psychological trait of “openness “ is most associated with high IQ, change remains possible throughout life.