
Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests - tablet
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-highly-intelligent/
======
TurkishPoptart
I went through a battery of IQ tests as a kid and got a _high_ score (139).
But that was when I was seven years old. I'm 30 now, have a master's degree
(which was pretty pointless) and make 25 bucks an hour as a temp (more money
than I've ever made in my life). I think my life and prospects have dimmed
because I haven't been able to get over the anxiety and the depression that
impact me every day. Interviewed for jobs for 14 months and didn't get a
single offer. Haven't had a girlfriend in 3 years, lazy as shit, can't even
look at myself in the mirror. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is IQ is
bullshit, and discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless.

But we grew up in the world told we could do anything we wanted! I think it's
that sort of expectation that is screwing with us (at least those of us that
didn't become comfy SWEs).

~~~
drcross
This may seem like an insensitive question and I don't mean it in that way but
why can't you "think your way out of those problems". For example when I
noticed myself being quiet as a teen I applied for a job in a shop to shore up
my social skills. I had the keen awareness that ultimately no one cares about
me having depression and only me alone can make efforts to treat it. How did
your analysis compare?

~~~
throwaway_bad
That's usually how smart people get depressed in the first place, by thinking
too much. You realize that there's no point to anything you do. You will die.
Humanity will die. The universe will die.

~~~
big_chungus
This is why people have religion. Regardless of your personal views on the
fact, it's a darn good way to avoid getting depressed by this sort of
nihilism. You believe the universe will go on; you'll see your family one day
and spend eternity in paradise. You may think it's BS, but have to admit it
doesn't really matter for most people, it still does the job.

~~~
phkahler
Another way to deal with nihilism is to embrace it. Once you accept that
nothing matters, you can stop beating yourself up for mistakes and failures.
You can strip the urgency from your goals. It allows you to proceed with
outcome independence. This needs to be paired with some form of motivation
too, but I think that's more up to the individual.

~~~
big_chungus
> strip the urgency from your goals

Exactly. I personally know people who have become despondent and given up on
life. Maybe a few people will take advantage of total freedom to learn and do,
but if we're being honest here, most will watch net flicks and eat potato
chips. It is still a net positive for _most_ people.

~~~
kharak
This is me, up to certain a point. I workout regularly, get slowly better at
my job, participate in social activities. Just focus on enjoying life and I
do. Still, it's all utterly meaningless. Funny thing is, I'm quit sure that
the lack of meaning is holding me back. Holding me back in the sense that my
satisfaction with life and success within it could be better with the feeling
of meaning in life.

There are people who proclaim that death gives everything meaning. Nonsense,
death neither gives nor takes meaning, it's as meaningless as eternal life.
I'm an atheist to every religion I've ever encountered and couldn't imagine
the existence of a god providing meaning, either. (I actually perceive that
idea, meaning by higher power, to be even more absurd).

I have the believe though, that the question for meaning is a side effect of
having a modern life. Did ancient tribes people think about meaning or did
they simply hunt, socialize and view the world as connected in everything (the
natural view of the world, as children have it) and never ever even thing
about the concept of meaning of life? There are still somewhat "natural"
living tribes out there, did someone ask them that question? I'm really
curious about their reaction and answer.

Really, to me it seems, that the answer to the question about the meaning of
life is to never ask it in the first place.

~~~
phkahler
If there is an answer, it is that you get to define your own meaning.

~~~
kharak
I read that often, also in this thread. But it isn't working for me. Meaning
is not a rational concept, I guess it is a feeling. I say guess, because I've
never experienced it. I only know, that the lack of meaning is a feeling.

One day, I might stumble into a life where everything clicks together and the
lack of meaning withers away. But that's not going to be a rational decision.
"I conclude that this way of life is meaningful. 5 minutes later, I feel
meaningful". Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

------
invalidOrTaken
Ugh, this study selected its "superior iq" group by surveying Mensa members.
Study
([https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616303324#!))
makes no mention of this selection bias, though even the _article_ does.

~~~
anewguy9000
any sampling method is 'biased', thats why its a 'sample'

~~~
bentona
This study not only selected for people who go out of their way to join a
society based on high IQ, it also selected for people who open & complete
email surveys.

Yes, many practical sampling methods are biased, but it is not difficult for
me to imagine that any result here is caused entirely by these biases.

~~~
anewguy9000
i agree with your criticism in general -- actually it applies to virtually
_all_ psychological and medical studies.

but if you think the physical disabilities are better explained by something
else to do with this population sample than their iq, you could very clearly
publish this theory

------
starpilot
> It turns out that the people who join Mensa and attend meetings are, on
> average, not successful titans of industry. They are instead – and I say
> this with great affection – huge losers. I was making $735 per month and I
> was like frickin’ Goldfinger in this crowd. We had a guy who was some sort
> of poet who hoped to one day start “writing some of them down.” We had
> people who were literally too smart to hold a job. The rest of the group
> dressed too much like street people to ever get past security for a job
> interview. And everyone was always available for meetings on weekend nights.

[https://woodrow.typepad.com/the_ponderings_of_woodrow/2006/1...](https://woodrow.typepad.com/the_ponderings_of_woodrow/2006/11/scott_adams_on_.html)

~~~
lliamander
So, I'm fairly sure I'm reasonably smart, and I am reasonably successful at
life.

But I am somewhat hesitant to take an actual proper IQ test. Partly because
I'm afraid I won't get a "good" score (given my expectations) and partly
because I'm worried I'll let my score (whatever it is) distract me from
actually achieving more things in life.

~~~
mantap
The highest score obtainable on an IQ test is achieved by realising it's
complete nonsense to project the entirety of human intelligence onto a one
dimensional value, and refusing to waste time on it.

~~~
LegitShady
no, the iq test is used by some groups as a diagnostic to rank order large
groups of people for research and other purposes.

IQ is itself a basically fluid intelligence - how quickly you learn something
compared to the average. In jobs were problems are novel this is an indicator
of success. In jobs where tasks are repetitive, it is not an indicator of
success.

Overall, it one of the strongest if not the strongest statistically backed
concept in modern psychology, so if you don't believe IQ means something you
should also dismiss all of psychology as unscientific nonsense.

~~~
mantap
IQ is a model. Models never perfectly match the thing they are modelling. In
the case of IQ people seem to have forgotten whatever it was that they were
trying to model in the first place and it has been promoted way beyond its
station to the very definition of intelligence. The result of this is
organisations such as Mensa.

To me, _intelligence_ means one's capability to contribute to human endeavour,
whether it be in mathematics, music, art, writing, or anything else that you
can apply your mind to.

For example, most people agree that Mozart was a very intelligent individual
by virtue of his contributions to music.

Sure, IQ means _something_ , it's just that the thing it means is not
intelligence. It doesn't capture the amazing breadth of human capability, and
intelligence is not an objective measurable property.

~~~
oska
I agree with your contempt for IQ. On this matter:

> In the case of IQ people seem to have forgotten whatever it was that they
> were trying to model in the first place

IQ was originally designed to determine mental development issues, i.e. sub-
intelligence, so that those people could be helped. This is flagged by scores
below 80. Ranking intelligence by scores above 80 is bunk. Nassim Taleb has
written well on this subject [1], if you are interested.

[1] [https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
pseudoscientific-...](https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39)

~~~
LMYahooTFY
...so he's claiming people conducting statistical analysis for IQ tests don't
account for people dying or suffering traumatic brain injury?

~~~
lliamander
No. Taleb is saying that IQ is only useful for detecting mental deficiencies.
He claims that the while having a low IQ is generally predictive of low life
success (income, etc.) having a high IQ is not very predictive of having high
life success.

As others have pointed out, the same can be said of height and success in
professional basketball. If you come across a short person, you can
practically guarantee they cannot make it in the NBA (i.e. height is a strong
predictor). For someone who is very tall, You can't really know from that
whether they are a successful pro basketball player (i.e. it is not a strong
predictor).

This issue here, in both height and IQ, is that people who have more of some
capacity have more options. Someone who is smart enough to be a brain surgeon
still has the option to be a dish washer. Someone who is only smart enough to
be a dish washer does not have the option to be a brain surgeon.

~~~
oska
I understand the point you're making but you risk giving IQ credibility by
comparing it to height. Height is a real, physical uni-dimensional measure
that has a Gaussian distribution. IQ is a made-up measure that pretends to fit
a multi-dimensional, non-physical 'thing' (intelligence) that we have a lot of
trouble actually defining, onto a uni-dimensional scale with a modeled
Gaussian distribution. It's a fraud. Or at least, in this grossly extended use
it became a fraud. Testing people for falling _below_ a certain threshold on a
test was an ok diagnostic for mental deficiency. But even there it should have
just been one tool among many, not a final arbiter of "general intelligence".

~~~
lliamander
> IQ is a made-up measure that pretends to fit a multi-dimensional, non-
> physical 'thing' (intelligence) that we have a lot of trouble actually
> defining, onto a uni-dimensional scale with a modeled Gaussian distribution.

I think one of the points of intelligence research is that it seems to confirm
intelligence (whatever it is) is largely a unified by a single dimension, even
when that wasn't necessarily what was expected by the researchers.

> It's a fraud. Or at least, in this grossly extended use it became a fraud.

Hardly. IQ testing has been vigorously resisted for decades, and yet continues
because of it's utility.

But if you're going to take that stance, let me ask you: are you willing to
throw out the rest of the social sciences? Because that's the only logical
result. IQ research is the gold standard of the social sciences. IQ is
fraudulent, then so is the rest.

> Testing people for falling below a certain threshold on a test was an ok
> diagnostic for mental deficiency.

It is also useful at the higher end. Not all high IQ people are successfully
working in complex jobs, but I expect all people who are successfully working
in complex jobs are high IQ.

~~~
oska
> But if you're going to take that stance, let me ask you: are you willing to
> throw out the rest of the social sciences? Because that's the only logical
> result. IQ research is the gold standard of the social sciences. IQ is
> fraudulent, then so is the rest.

No, the 'logical result' is throwing out psychology, which I'm more than happy
to do. Would also throw out 90% of economics. Happy to keep descriptive
sociology, descriptive anthropology, descriptive human geography, descriptive
linguistics, etc.

~~~
lliamander
The parts you are keeping from sociology, anthropology, etc. aren't really
what I would call science.

I mean yes, it is knowledge about our world, and useful knowledge at that, but
it really doesn't fit into a Baconian framework.

I will admit that I'm bearish overall on the social sciences. In science you
want to be able to make statements that are both a) general, and b)
predictive. In the social sciences, generally what is predictive is not
general (i.e. "market research") and what is general is usually not in fact
predictive (i.e. "hogwash").

I guess I'm just curious why you think IQ is bunk. IQ researchers, perhaps
more than any other discipline, have had to endure a considerable degree of
scrutiny. Many objections have been raised, and over the decades they've put a
lot of work into empirically addressing those objections.

~~~
oska
> I guess I'm just curious why you think IQ is bunk.

I could not put it better or more rigorously than Nassim Taleb, so if you are
curious I really do recommend a good read of the piece I linked above (and the
technical paper he links at the top of that piece).

~~~
lliamander
> and the technical paper he links at the top of that piece

I haven't read that yet because the hosting entity wanted to download my
google contacts for the privilege of reading it. How despicable.

~~~
oska
Agree about the obnoxiousness of academia.edu. I used the 'download with
email' option with a throwaway email account from mailinator.

~~~
lliamander
Thanks!

------
zxcmx
Edit: Joining Mensa is associated with mental and physical disorders.

~~~
batoure
I was skimming for a response like this... in my head it was more like

"People who join Mensa are more likely to be part of socio-economic groups
that self select to have doctors diagnose physical and mental issues no matter
how minor"

------
underwater
Using Mensa members as the study group seems fatally flawed.

Mensa seems to attract people who define themselves by their intelligence,
instead of by their success. It wouldn't surprise me that they would be more
anxious and depressed than average.

Higher rates of allergies could be explained by socioeconomic, racial and
cultural biases in those who gravitate towards Mensa.

~~~
throwaway9i2wmP
I am a recruiting manager for a start-up.

I remember we received an application from a person whose resume promiscuously
explained that he was a Mensa members, "an association for superior IQ
people".

Their resume overall was not bad (not top-notch either for the position), but
the mention alone of Mensa drove me away from ever wanting to work with such
kind of persons that look so full of themselves.

I finally declined to interview this person. The question "Is it
discrimination?" was always popping into my mind and I felt uneasy about it
for about a week or so.

~~~
chimi
It is legal to discriminate on IQ as long as you apply it to everyone equally.

[https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-court-ruled-you-can-be-
too-...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-court-ruled-you-can-be-too-smart-to-
be-a-cop/5420630)

~~~
batoure
Years ago I saw versions of this kind of test at retailers where one of the
going concerns is that people above a certain level of intelligence are
eliminated not because they are likely to steal but because if they decided to
steal from the company they would do so in a way that might not be as easily
detected.

------
uberduber
I have managed many people in industries that attract low IQ (70-90) workers.
I also know a lot of high IQ people since I went to a gifted high school.

I'm not a psychiatrist, but I believe the low IQ have WAY higher rates of
anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders, but almost none of them are
diagnosed. Their lives run without much thought or planning so they often end
up in very stressful situations. Sometimes they don't even realize that
something is wrong or not normal. Or even if they do manage to figure that
out, they cannot describe what they are feeling or communicate effectively
which can be stressful in itself.

I still think high IQ people have mild to moderately higher rates of mental
disorders than normal IQ people, but with low IQ I think it's massively
higher.

~~~
jotm
If one does not realize it and thinks it's normal, is that better or worse?
Maybe working a deadend job your whole life is easier when you don't realize
there's better stuff out there even for you.

"Ignorance is bliss" comes to mind.

------
DanielleMolloy
I’ve had this little pet theory about high achievers and depression for some
time. It boils down to:

They apply the same thinking patterns that make them excel at work (= very
controlled environments with binary answers, requiring perfectionism and
attention to detail - e.g. programming, maths, fact-checking, engineering,
arts) to every area in their far less binary lives.

If you have very high standards at work you likely apply very high standards
to yourself. How you view yourself is frequently how you view others, which
can be destructive for relationships.

If your job is searching for bugs 8h a day you likely develop the thinking
pattern to take even the smallest issue very seriously.

~~~
chubot
I agree, but I think sneaking the word "high achievers" into the conversation
is part of the problem.

"High achievers" shouldn't be people who scored well on tests (IQ tests, the
SATs, etc.)

They should be people who _achieved_ things in real life! For example,
building something people use (e.g. not "playing house" for investors),
reforming our legal system or government, excelling at sports, music, etc.

There's a certain part of the population that I'm familiar with where
achievement means "performs well on metrics that somebody else designed".

But I also think there is a large part of the population who "calls bullshit"
on that value system. And I would call that "common sense" more than anti-
intellectualism.

The former kind of "achiever" lacks agency in the world, and that's probably a
major reason why they're depressed (speaking from past experience). It's human
nature to be depressed when you're being judged and have to jump through hoops
set up by others. It's also natural to be depressed if everyone's telling you
that you achieved something, but yet nothing in your life is actually better.

I guess it goes back to the comment about passing the IQ test but failing the
intelligence test ...

------
RandomTisk
I have a theory about high IQ and anxiety:

The more intelligent and creative a person, the more sensitive to negative
emotion they're going to be, simply because their subconscious mind will see
more connections between their negative emotions and the things, people and
places the person has, sees or frequents. In other words, they'll naturally
realize the world is more inhospitable than the average intellect, so their
subconscious will have more negative data points to track. When something bad
happens, they'll need to work harder to convince their subconscious that it
won't happen again.

Anxiety itself is therefore because the subconscious currently sees familiar
patterns it saw before, during painful experiences, and it throws out feelings
of anxiety to slow down the conscious mind to force caution, as if the person
is looking at a minefield and may not know it.

Edit: And the key to living anxiety-free, at least for my own personal
experience, is understanding every negative emotion in my past, why it
happened (whether my fault or not), how I reacted, and how I would react today
In a way that would avoid the same terrible outcome. Usually it requires
forgiveness, either for something someone did to me or to forgive myself
because I was ignorant but no longer am and most importantly I/my subconscious
knows if my forgiveness is genuine, namely when I'm ready to sympathize with
someone else in the same situation. It's incredibly liberating.

~~~
colechristensen
I would guess it has something to do with not experiencing certain kinds of
difficulty and the reactions that come with it until a development window has
passed. Everyone expects good things from you and congratulates you for
achieving them without any effort during the years you are supposed to be
learning about things like difficulty and success and failure and life doesn't
ramp up in difficulty until well after some things are fairly set. Afterwords
when things go beyond "effortless" difficulty you start to get negative
feedback from people around you and yourself and this is a novel experience
outside of the period where negative novel experiences are internalized as
normal.

(Related: fairy tales and scary stories told to young children help them cope
with a dangerous and difficult world, "too scary for kids" attitudes build
adults who have trouble with the real world.)

------
DoreenMichele
When I was involved with The TAG Project, this was common knowledge in gifted
circles online. This is not limited to Mensa at all. Some fairly well-known
names in the gifted community referred to issues like OCD and ADHD as "co-
morbidities" for lack of a better word.

The higher the IQ, the more likely there are to be other issues and the more
likely they are to be severe.

Similarly, Ashkenazi Jews win some inordinately high number of Nobel Prizes
and happen to be a population with a high risk for genetic disorders, some of
which have been proven to have impact on cognition.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Jews-constitute-20-of-all-
Nobel...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Jews-constitute-20-of-all-Nobel-
laureates-despite-being-0-19-of-the-worlds-population-What-specific-
sociocultural-elements-are-the-root-cause-of-this-phenomenon)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligenc...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence)

~~~
gwern
> some of which have been proven to have impact on cognition.

No, they haven't been. There are (still) no confirmed links between Tay-Sachs
etc and intelligence. (The most recent study on the genetics of Jewish
intelligence, in fact, suggests that any genetic advantage is purely on common
variants present in non-Jewish Caucasians as well.) For that matter, there are
zero confirmed genetic mutations, common or rare, which increase intelligence
by even a few points, and this is despite sample sizes now approaching
millions and use of exome sequencing to hunt for rare variants in extremely
intelligent cohorts.

~~~
DoreenMichele
If they are known to cause retardation, then they are known to _have impact on
cognition._ That statement was intentionally framed as neutrally as possible.

Are you telling me that brain differences can only ever lower IQ and never,
ever raise it (or, more accurately, raise the potential ceiling -- because
nutrition and a million other things will impact this)? There is a lot of
research out that says, basically, "genius" is, by its very nature, a brain
that thinks _differently_ from the norm. It isn't simply "more" of something.
It is _different_ and this is often a two-edged sword.

I'm currently failing to find the source I know I saw not terribly long ago
linking some genetic disorder to higher IQs and to altered brain stuff of some
sort. I don't have the time to keep digging for it.

But, here's a study of people with CF -- a common genetic disorder in the
Jewish community -- that says, in essence "Lower IQ scores in this population
can be linked to negative health impacts and other negative factors," yet
seems to list the average IQ for this group of 89 very, very, deathly ill
patients as 102.5. Which sort of implies to me that if they weren't basically
dying from their disorder, they would be far above average intelligence.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15173473](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15173473)

~~~
gwern
> If they are known to cause retardation, then they are known to have impact
> on cognition. That statement was intentionally framed as neutrally as
> possible.

And there is a difference between an allele present in the majority of the
population which lowers the IQ and one which is present in a minority and
raises IQ. A Mendelian mutation in <1% of the population which lowers your IQ
by 10 points is not the same thing as a mutation which raises your IQ by 10
points. The former certainly do exist. The latter currently do not.

> I'm currently failing to find the source I know I saw not terribly long ago
> linking some genetic disorder to higher IQs and to altered brain stuff of
> some sort. I don't have the time to keep digging for it.

I'll give you a hint, you won't find it, and if you do, it'll be a candidate-
gene paper from the '00s where the p-values are just barely south of 0.05, not
remotely close to genome-wide statistical-significance, and has never been
validated since _even in the exome GWASes which should have found it_.

> But, here's a study of people with CF -- a common genetic disorder in the
> Jewish community -- that says, in essence "Lower IQ scores in this
> population can be linked to negative health impacts and other negative
> factors," yet seems to list the average IQ for this group of 89 very, very,
> deathly ill patients as 102.5. Which sort of implies to me that if they
> weren't basically dying from their disorder, they would be far above average
> intelligence.

You know who else has above average intelligence? Ashkenazi Jews. Including
the ones without CF. And it's higher than 102.5.

------
freshhawk
This study shows that being in Mensa is associated with mental and physical
disorders - based on self-reporting.

I appreciate the irony of this study having been done by people who were being
very very dumb.

------
blablablerg
Saw an interesting talk on youtube about high IQ and underachievement, shame
it is in Belgian dutch
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFCLdJVoHVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFCLdJVoHVg)).

She states that an high IQ is most likely going to be an impediment to a
succesful career rather than an advantage if unmanaged, because education is
set up for the average kid. She makes an interesting car analogy: it doesn't
matter whether you are too long or too short, if you deviate too much from the
average length your seating is going to suck. Likewise, high IQ kids placed in
the average education environment are going to get bored quickly, which if not
overcome compounds over the years resulting in unsatisfying academic
achievement.

Another interesting analogy she makes is regarding athletes. When a recruiter
finds a kid with high athletic potential, they get special training to
transform that talent into superior skill. But children with a high IQ people
are stuck in the school system designed for the average IQ kid, because in
education they tend to think that "everything is so easy for them" instead of
"they require special attention to let that talent bloom".

So she claims that a high IQ warrants special attention to turn it into an
advantage, otherwise there is an considarable risk of an unsuccesful life,
which i personally can attest to.

I was tested with an IQ of 140, almost dropped out of college, still managed
to finish it at the age of 30, way too late. And while I have a decent job,
chances of promotion are low because employers tend prefer the candidates who
did finish their education in the avarage timespan. So now I am stuck in a
dead-end and that is very frustrating because I know I can do better than
most, and have gained the required displicine but get passed over because in
my professional area they prefer the kids who did everything the way society
set it up for them. My parents where even told that I needed special
attention, but they couldn't afford it, so now I have to deal with it. Sucks
but thats life for me I guess.

~~~
yoz-y
I think it is quite hard to separate the brats from the more intelligent kids
as from what I heard the "symptoms" are basically the same. I also think that
there is a big problem with special education since the differences tend to
either taper off or increase, and you can not really know if this is thanks to
the child or the program they are following.

------
keiferski
Isn't it a likely explanation that society is generally structured
(consciously and unconsciously) for the average person and therefore the
further you get away from the average, the less ability to have to connect
with the broad group/culture identity, ergo leading to isolation and thus more
social and psychological issues?

For example - imagine that you have an IQ of 150 in a society where the
average is 100. If suddenly everyone else's IQ jumped 50 points, the society
would then change to reflect this new increase in intelligence - jobs, social
roles, and other aspects of culture would be different than those from the 100
IQ culture.

~~~
jcadam
> If suddenly everyone else's IQ jumped 50 points, the society would then
> change to reflect this new increase in intelligence...

Nah, pretty sure you'd see a complete collapse of civilization if that were to
happen.

~~~
keiferski
Well, that's sort of my point. The current civilization is built upon the
average person's intelligence. If suddenly everyone became as intelligent as a
5-year old, current civilization would probably collapse. Ditto if everyone
became drastically smarter. The interesting part, however, is what would come
next.

------
Hitton
I always thought that high IQ is correlated with high anxiety, because the
smarter a person is, the better he can imagine all possible things to go
wrong. On the other end of spectrum are people with IQ comparable to children,
who presumably don't worry about too many things - ignorance is bliss.

~~~
anonuser123456
High IQ is also associated with higher executive function. This means higher
IQ people should be better able to control those worries.

------
zabzonk
Anecdote:

My Dad was a MENSA member for a couple of years, but he was mostly taking the
piss - he put down his "special interest" as "carved Dravidian lapis lazuli",
which is not as far as I know a thing. He was an RAF V-bomber captain and
never as far as I could see suffered from depression or other mental health
issues (which would have affected his security clearance) - much the reverse.

Edit: The lapis lazuli thing is (per Google) actually a thing, but in the
early 1960s I don't see how my Dad could have come across it, but obviously he
did.

I could have joined MENSA (had the IQ) but thought it was all too silly and
didn't. I've suffered a lot from depression.

Go figure.

------
yummypaint
Advice to parents: Don't tell your kids their IQ. There are good reasons not
to whether it is low or high, plus it doesnt mean that much. My parents
offered to tell me my first year of high school after a big science fair win,
but I didn't want to know. At the time I think I needed to believe I had the
hardware needed to keep chewing what I had bitten off. A few years later, I
had the luxury of still feeling like my achievements were born out of patience
and passion rather than talent. I didn't finally ask until I was in grad
school and knew myself well. Im grateful to have been given that choice.

------
Knufen
When I was 18 I tested 135 on a FRT based on Raven Matrices. I briefly joined
Mensa and what I saw was quite depressing. Dysfunction upon dysfunction and
wasted potential. Except for the dysfunction it reminded me too much of myself
and I had to quit. This is of course a limited data set so take it with a
grain of salt.

I would recommend [http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-
outsiders/](http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-outsiders/)

------
manjana
Even for those with a normal IQ range and properly more so for those with
better ability to recognize patterns - the world is a scary place sometimes.

Being able to predict mind games, deception, passive aggressiveness without
those at fault will admit to it can make you question your own sanity easily -
now what if you had sharpened senses that picked up on these things.

How I see it, the bottom line is this. If you are surrounded by a good and
suppprting tribe it can be a gift, but at the other end it can seem like a
mean curse.

------
a-dub
when i was in grade school, i was tested and put into the "gifted and
talented" program which was mostly just a one hour session once a week with
about eight kids. it was mostly just brain teasers but then they literally
spent an entire year explaining and stressing the importance of charisma. they
also told us that "this is easy for you now, and you may not have to work
hard, but you need to learn how to work hard because one day you'll be taking
classes that you can't just breeze through and if you don't know how to study
you will fail."

they were right on both counts. many times later in college and in working
life i've thought back to these moments.

also, "overexcitability", yup.

~~~
tracker1
I was in a similar situation... Though, really didn't get that type of advice,
we did spend a year when I was in 3rd grade learning German (of which I've
completely forgotten). In some ways it was interesting, in others it sucked. I
seem to be very lopsided in both how I learn, and what kinds of things I can
handle in abstract and concrete concepts.

I do really well with math, and can carry concepts well from reading... but
man, I hate reading fiction, I have way too much trouble remembering names vs.
events. For comparison 760 math, 580 verbal for my SAT scores, not bad, just
lopsided.

I can relate to the social issues many in this discussion have eluded to
though. Depression, anxiety, OCD and work really hard to not let myself fall
into my own traps.

------
losvedir
I hate when IQ comes up on Hacker News because it's a topic that everyone
feels like they have something to contribute on, and there's so many
misconceptions floating around it's hard to know what's "orthodox" so to
speak.

Does anyone have a good reference about what the current, academic general
understanding with regard to intelligence is? Are there any surveys of
practicing psychologists, etc?

The best I've found is the "Intelligence Knowns and Unknowns"[0] task force
report published by the American Psychological Association in 1995, but I'm
not aware of any such report since then.

My takeaways from that report, are that IQ does capture the concept of
"intelligence" that most people understand exists, that the tests aren't
biased or flawed anymore, that IQ can't really be changed with any known
interventions, and that it correlates well with success in school, jobs, and
life.

I'd love to know if that's still the academic consensus. You'd never know from
these threads where people chime in with their own anecdotes _what 's_ real.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unkno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns)

~~~
CaoCao
Those are still accurate. There's a short book by Stuart Ritchie called
"Intelligence: All That Matters" that is a good summary of contemporary
psychological understanding of IQ.

------
zw123456
The old trope is that there is a "fine line between genius and insanity". I
was testing with above average IQ at a young age (6th grade, 11yrs old) of 160
or in that range many times since. But I have noticed that many of my family
members, friends, associates and coworkers seem to look at my behavior with
skew towards that bias. In my view, I think this idea that genius and insanity
or abnormal behavior has been so ingrained in peoples minds that when they
meet someone with elevated IQ they look for indicators to support their bias
(bias confirmation). I think I am no weirder than other people, I know several
people who clearly do not have elevated IQ's and they seem to "get away with"
various strange behaviors but because they are "normal" it goes without
notice. In my experience, once you are labeled with the big brain you come
under more scrutiny than norms. Also, I don't think Mensa is a good sample, my
experience is that people who seek the big brain recognition through things
like Mensa may also have personality traits that trend towards those types of
disorders. A true double blind study would need to be peer reviewed before I
would lend any credence to this hypothesis.

------
icedchai
As a "gifted child" of the 80's, this is obvious to anyone who was identified
as one or had friends who were. Depression, OCD, anxiety, etc. are all very
common in that crowd.

------
lucas_membrane
I scored 166 when they gave us an IQ test in the 8th grade. Two years later I
gave myself an IQ test from a book in the local library, and I scored 149.
Following that trend line, my IQ is now approximately minus 300, but the
headline gives me some hope that my various disorders have slowed my rate of
IQ decline.

------
Madmallard
The kind of people that join a club to prove they are high IQ are likely
insecure and feel the need to peacock. No wonder there's a higher incidence.

Most high IQ people I know think Mensa is stupid and just want to have normal
lives and hate talking about intelligence and think it's irrelevant and a
cringe-worthy topic.

~~~
lonelappde
And yet here we are, on HN, keep coming back to talk about IQ.

~~~
Madmallard
Well regression to the mean is a thing. Even on Hacker News.

------
lallysingh
" example, people preoccupied with intellectual pursuits may spend less time
than the average person on physical exercise and social interaction"

...or Mensa members are more interested in analyzing themselves as a whole,
and will seek diagnosis more often than the general population.

------
acscott
Sampling the set of Mensa members is not the same as sampling "superior IQs".

digression: My personal preference is to call IQ a testing quotient and not
intelligence quotient--it's more specific and less qualitative, for
"intelligence" is overloaded.

------
raincom
Late Dr. Oliver Sacks, a famous neurologist, became a neurologist because his
brother had schizophrenia. Many of his books contains cases of people with
extraordinary abilities, but with mental disorders.

------
zamfi
"Mensa membership associated with mental and physical disorders, research
suggests" would be both a more accurate description of the results, as well as
perhaps a more believable correlation.

------
kumarvvr
Perhaps people with superior IQs think and stress a lot.

I recently came across the work of Dr. Robert Sapolsky and his research
highlights the long term effects of chronic stress.

It is possible that higher IQs lead to a lot of thinking and stressing out.

I can safely consider myself in the above average IQ bracket and I tend to
stress a lot about things as obscure as the world's oceans, climate, politics,
science, the Arctic ice, etc.

My brother is less inclined academically, is of a very easy going nature and
always seems to be happy, with the exception being during difficult times in
his business.

------
jowday
Is it possible that the study shows that high IQ people who bother to join a
"high IQ society" tend towards higher mental and physical disorders, rather
than high IQ people in general?

------
nopinsight
This paper made some news before and was also debunked back then. Note that
(2017) should be added.

Here is a quote from Neuroskeptic:

“The ‘national average’ data in the mood disorders category, for instance, are
taken from the NCS-R survey (data collected 2001-2003.) The NCS-R survey did
not ask people whether they’d been diagnosed with a mood disorder. Instead,
trained interviewers asked participants a series of questions about their
mood, emotions, sleep, and other symptoms, and made diagnoses based on strict
criteria.

Doctors in the real world don’t diagnose depression the NCS-R way, so we can’t
compare the NCS-R estimate of mood disorder prevalence to the estimate of
diagnosed prevalence from Karpinski et al.’s survey. It’s comparing Malus and
Citrus.

Secondly, I have concerns about the sample. This wasn’t a study of high-IQ
people. It was a study of Mensans, a self-selected subgroup of high-IQ people.
6.5 million Americans fall in the top 2% of IQ, and only 55,000 of them are
members of American Mensa.

In other words, Mensans make up about 0.8% of high-IQs, and Karpinski et al.
have data from less than 10% of Mensans, so the sample is seriously
unrepresentative.“

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/10/22/in...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/10/22/intelligence-
risk-illness/#.XaU5MowxVvI)

------
geoelectric
It's unclear to me that they've controlled for "people who join Mensa."

To be clear, I'm not throwing shade, and I was a member for awhile before I
got sick of paying dues, getting spammed, and not going to meetings. They're a
fine organization, spam aside.

But in general, people who join clubs based on personal qualities do so
because they put some level of value and identity in that quality. _Some_
people who tend that way do so because they have an emotional hole to fill,
and _some_ people who tend that way do so because it's their dominant positive
quality (in their own perception).

So, neither of those speak to Mensa's core message of joining so you have
people as smart as you to converse with. But both of those suggest a higher
potential for Mensa members in general to have life issues they're
compensating for by joining intelligence clubs.

I do believe the basic trend that very smart people have more mental
disorders, at least. I think our knowledge of twice-exceptional people has
grown a lot over time, and I think there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that
quirks come with the intelligence territory. Get quirky enough and a quirk is
a diagnosis. But I'm not convinced that particular skew starts at the 95%
percentile.

------
breadandcrumbel
Could this be caused by people with higher IQ being more honest and
knowledgeable about things?

The average person has undiagnosed issues. They may have a mood disorder, but
either deny that they have something wrong with them or have never bothered to
have it checked out?

Compared to people who care enough to officially test their IQ. I argue that
more people in a group like Mensa are more aware of their diagnosis' than the
average person.

------
johngrefe
While this is a neat surface level study, there's a few issues I see with it.

>No separation of Full Intellectual Assessment or another re-test, simply self
reporting the averaged figure. We lack resolution in results.(ex: were people
with high verbal IQ more prone to schizophrenia?)

>Subjects were those concerned with their own mental status. All respondents
were MENSA members. While I could test into MENSA, I simply don't care. I have
a friend who is in MENSA, they are quite proud of this over dinner
conversation, but they are also quite neurotic. This observation is anecdotal,
but I'd think you're going to get more people who live a lot of time "in their
heads" in MENSA. I would love to have another control group to compare results
over.

>They understand that self reporting is ripe for error. An online survey is
difficult to accurately administer, people will misrepresent things about
them, especially if they think it is a reflection of their own personal value.

It's neat, but I don't think it's reliable enough to make any declarative
statements about a linear progression of IQ and health disorders.

------
NicoJuicy
There's a quote I have and that is that smart people have a harder time being
happy, because they worry too much.

I've never put it to test with others though.

The reasoning is that you see some sort of pattern always and you believe it's
the end of the world.

Eg. China, climate change, ...

So you believe you need to earn as much as possible, so your odds for survival
are better ( as an example).

Narcissists don't have this problem, as they are focused on themselves.

------
_bxg1
Anecdotally, I know a lot of very smart people and many of them have
combinations of anxiety/depression/chronic pain/etc.

------
tim333
There's an interesting if not politically correct theory that

>Jews as a group inherit significantly higher verbal and mathematical
intelligence and somewhat lower spatial intelligence than other ethnic groups,
on the basis of inherited diseases and the peculiar economic situation of
Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages.

as

>During the [...] period, laws barred Ashkenazi Jews from most jobs, including
farming and crafts, and forced them into finance, management, and
international trade. Wealthy Jews had several more children per family than
poor Jews.

I'm half jewish genetically myself and there do seem to be differences between
the jewish and non jewish relatives kind of along those lines.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence))

------
dcanelhas
I think a flaw in this study is looking at people who joined a club for smart
people rather than just smart people.

------
c3534l
So to be clear, this wasn't a study of people with high IQs, it was a study of
people who signed up for a high IQ club that wasn't, say, academic research.
Sounds like you're looking at people where the biggest thing going for them is
not their accomplishments, but their IQ score.

------
mongeese
Reading the study, it's more like, people whose identity is tied up with being
smart, (members of Mensa) spend a lot of time thinking about their mental
health and are likely to think that they are not normal and are also like to
respond to questionnaires about their mental health.

------
phkahler
>> This theory holds that, for all of its advantages, being highly intelligent
is associated with psychological and physiological “overexcitabilities,” or
OEs.

On a speculative note, maybe those OEs are a result of maltreatment of some
sort (there are many).

------
misev
The study was only done on members of American Mensa, I wonder if there would
be any difference across countries.

I'm from a poor European country; in high school (~15 years ago) I measured
156 in a Mensa IQ test, a friend had 168, and a third friend 172. We were top
students in the generation, going to programming and math competitions.
Definitely not in the popular kids club, but otherwise perfectly normal as far
as I can tell. In the couple of Mensa meetings I've been to back then I have
not really seen any of the mental or physical disorders considered in the
study either.

------
gojomo
I suspect a form of survivorship bias is contributing to these results.

Less-high-IQ people with the same disorders may never be diagnosed with these
sorts of (often subtle & subjective) mood/anxiety/learning/chronic-immune
disorders.

Perhaps, even, less-high-IQ people are more likely to literally perish before
such diagnoses show up in national averages.

(And that's before considering the filter that many others have already
mentioned: that only some, potentially-unrepresentative high-IQ people find
the idea of joining MENSA appealing.)

------
harry8
IQ is bullshit. Children surrounded by adults who believe that bullshit
correlate highly with adults who maybe aren't doing the best job caring - and
possibly nobody is at fault there. IQ is literally another example of the
abject failure of psychology as an intellectual discipline. May it one day be
rectified because the subject matter is fascinating and obviously deeply
important.

Choosing to not let children in your care do IQ tests is correlated with
sensible, caring, intelligent adulting. No really. Really.

------
lawlorino
Unsurprised that most of the comments on this post are just people number
dropping their IQ and anecdotes about their mental health problems and minimal
discussion of the article itself.

~~~
friendlybus
Not reading the article is somewhat common. Some people come here just to
socialize I guess.

------
Tomminn
Mensa members are an extremely biased sample of high IQ individuals.

------
todaysAI
This article sort-of falls in line with my theories on non-local
consciousness. Intelligence could be just a particular manner in which that
person's brain is accessing the consciousness dimension, and these mental
disorders are just side-effects of this access. For example, I feel that the
autistic can be more 'in-tune' with the non-local consciousness, which is why
they have (generally) a different thought process. (I have ASD)

------
NohatCoder
Look at it like this: If high intelligence didn't come with some pretty
serious drawbacks, evolution would have made short work of dumb people long
ago.

~~~
FabHK
The hilarious (and somewhat scary) introduction to _Idiocracy_ comes to mind:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzbWXgM0ygU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzbWXgM0ygU)

------
KhanMahGretsch
>From a practical standpoint, this research may ultimately lead to insights
about how to improve people’s psychological and physical well-being. If
overexcitabilities turn out to be the mechanism underlying the IQ-health
relationship, then interventions aimed at curbing these sometimes maladaptive
responses may help people lead happier, healthier lives.

Reading between the lines, in these cooling months, sent a chill up my spine.

------
didibus
Reading some of the other comments got me wondering, it seems most people had
their IQ test when young, and were told their scores by their parents. I
wonder two things, what would happen if they took that test again, would they
score similarly now? And what if their parents told them a higher score then
they actually did, I can imagine most parents don't want to have the you
scored low conversation...

------
ilaksh
They compared it to the national average but they didn't actually give the
same survey to people who weren't in Mensa at the same time.

------
elif
Since disorders were self-reported, I wonder if capacity or willingness to
understand complex disorders was controlled.

For instance, a low intelligence person might consider autism to be "bad" and
avoid considering it, or unable to afford doctors to tell him.

While a high intelligence person would recognize that the autistic spectrum
has advantages and disadvantages, and would be more likely to accept it.

------
sajid
This article should be more accurately titled "Mensa membership associated
with mental and physical disorders, research suggests"

------
rf15
I think Mensa is not a good frame of reference for intelligent people: You
have to actively work towards getting into Mensa, which limits the target
group to people who are willing to do that work, pay membership and possibly
desire the prestige associated with it. Therefore it is very possible that
some people with mental issues use it as a gateway to self-validation.

------
czbond
Startups and continually "trying to improve the world" are where my mental
health was severely impacted. That can be toxic ...

------
hoffrocket
All this study says is that there's a correlation of Mensa membership to a
higher likelihood of certain disorders. It does _NOT_ establish any causal
links, or even that Mensa membership is representative of the much much larger
population of people who can get a 98th percentile score on an IQ test.
Perhaps disorders cause people to join Mensa? Who knows.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Just because correlation doesn't imply causation doesn't mean you should
negate it causation. You need correlation to exist to even have causation so
correlation is evidence for causation.

------
iamgopal
We are living in a more and more defined, secure, safe world ( and part of the
world where this is not the case, they are getting there sooner or later ). In
defined world, characteristics other than intelligence play a much heavier
role and since intelligence doesn't rewarded enough becomes secondary. I hope
it's cycle that comes and goes.

------
euske
What's more interesting to me is the fact that people are still sticking to
this idea of expressing one's intelligence with one number. Just one. Using IQ
as the degree of intelligence is like using one's weight or blood pressure as
the degree of healthiness. It may be an important metrics, but only one of
million variables.

~~~
haihaibye
It's not one of a million metrics, it's the best possible summary of all the
metrics:

* There is very high correlation between different cognitive tests (people who are good at one test tend to be good at others)

* If you perform factor anaylsis, you can compute a common factor that can be regarded as a summary variable for the correlations between all the different tests.

* This is the g-factor, or the single number produced from IQ tests.

------
KurtMueller
As I've gotten older, my desire to be more intelligent has gone down while my
desire to be more charismatic has gone up. It seems to me the ability to
create and grow the social connections I desire is the key to happiness. With
that ability comes to the necessary intelligence(s) to navigate through other
parts of life as well.

------
_the_inflator
Have a look at this IQ critic: [https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
pseudoscientific-...](https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39)

Nassim Taleb has got some very valid points. Forget about IQ, it is not worth
the time you focus on it.

------
bitL
Highly intelligent people should be pushed to physical exercise and forced to
avoid sugary/processed food. I knew one girl with BPD and PhD and those two
things helped her tremendously; every time she slipped her state rapidly
deteriorated and it was hell for everyone around.

~~~
insulanus
Did you mean a PhD, like a doctorate?

And by BPD, do you mean Bipolor, or Borderline personality Disorder?

~~~
bitL
PhD = doctorate, BPD = borderline according to older DSM-IV. PhD was in
cognitive neurosciences, likely with silent goal for her to figure out what
was wrong with her.

------
meow_mix
Be careful gleaning anything with email surveys like one. There could be
confounders. E.g.

High IQ -> More $ -> More likely to see Dr for diagnosis

I didn't read the whole thing though--did anyone w/ the time decide to do a
deep dive on the study and see how they controlled?

------
hardlianotion
If the study is based on a comparisons between mensans and the general
population, I can think of confounding factors that should make it impossible
to draw these conclusions.

------
cwmma
the thing about an IQ is that all it measures is the ability to take an IQ
test, and ability to take an IQ test is thought to correlate with some sort of
thing called intelligence, but nobody is quite sure how it relates to
intelligence, what intelligence even is, or if intelligence is a single thing.

Which is why the vast majority of the people who talk about IQ tests and IQ
scores are people that scored highly on it and very much want it to mean
something important.

------
kordlessagain
Maybe people who feel the need to be in an exclusive group based on arbitrary
test data are associated with mental and physical disorders, logic suggests.

------
FillardMillmore
I have often wondered if there's any correlation between higher IQs and
addiction rates, whether a positive correlation or a negative one.

------
FabHK
(2017)

Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886128)

------
scott00
The result here is from a survey of Mensa members. I'm skeptical Mensa members
are representative of the high IQ population as a whole.

------
alestainer
The study did not add income as a control variable, so the article is
basically about how rich people go to the therapist more often.

------
fortran77
I'm as dumb as a rock, but perfectly happy, healthy, athletic, and gainfully
employed as a PHP programmer.

------
GarrisonPrime
Recommended book: The Curse of the High IQ

Its points are debatable, but at the very least it offers some comfortable
thoughts.

------
bashwizard
I'm clearly retarded since I'm happy all the time and I have no physical
disorder!

------
nkingsy
What if mensa members seek more healthcare than an average person?

------
buboard
Give it ~ nine months before it 's refuted.

------
AtlasLion
Sounds true to me (though based on a sample of one), My daughter of 16 with an
IQ of 152 was diagnosed with autism and social anxiety.

------
solidsnack9000
Mutation-selection balance.

~~~
gwern
Mutation-selection balance predicts the _opposite_ , that more intelligent
people would be healthier and saner due to a lower mutation load. (Which, as
it happens, is the correct prediction, and why most researchers now think
intelligence is under mutation-selection balance.)

~~~
solidsnack9000
How does it predict the opposite for extreme intelligence, or any other
extreme trait? It's not always the case; but sometimes what we think of as a
single quality is actually the result of several genetic factors.

When you say intelligence is "under mutation-selection balance", how does that
relate to extreme intelligence?

~~~
gwern
To be under mutation- _selection_ balance, mutations affecting a trait must be
selected at a sufficient rate to maintain the trait, because it affects
fitness. Those with the highest number of mutations affecting the trait must
be selected against. The easiest way to affect fitness is to damage health. As
it happens, mental illnesses damage fitness enormously. So, for a mutation-
selection balance trait, those with the least mutations damaging health and
fitness will have the highest trait values ie. extreme intelligence.

~~~
solidsnack9000
In the long run, yes. But it doesn’t mean that on a case-by-case basis we
won’t see people with trait enhancing mutations that are maladaptive in other
ways — like high intelligence in combination with mental illness.

~~~
gwern
But the theory does not predict those should be common, and predicts they
should be rare or nonexistent. So you can't invoke it as support for these
findings: it is in fact a bullet which must be bitten (similar to the bullet
they must bite when they admit that yes, IQ does correlate with mental health
up to the Mensa level in ordinary samples like Swedish population registry or
the Scottish population sample, but then postulate that it magically
mysteriously reverses abruptly and mental illness rates shoot up orders of
magnitude somewhere within the top percentile where conveniently those
ordinary samples just can't spot any reversal).

~~~
solidsnack9000
It does predict they should be rare but extremes are rare.

What is your theory for how to understand these results?

~~~
gwern
Mensa-level extremes are not rare at all. They're something like 2% of the
population (probably even more when you consider they allow multiple retests
and other non-IQ tests).

> What is your theory for how to understand these results?

There is nothing to understand. It is purely an artifact of their sampling
process. There is no reversal and no mystery. IQ simply correlates with better
performance and health as far up as we can measure it into samples like TIP or
SMPY, period, and 100% consistent with mutation-selection balance. Mensa
attracts losers, and those losers self-select even further into a survey
asking about self-diagnosed problems, and these researchers were too lazy to
do a good study and too dishonest to discuss forthrightly all the reasons why
one knows a priori their results only demonstrate that sampling from Mensa is
a really bad idea (I say 'dishonest' because they do not mention any of the
very well known contrary results and I am also told these points were all
brought up to them before publication and they refused to address any of
them).

------
foobar_
And low IQ is consistent with right-wing barbarians.

~~~
dang
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait, so we
don't have to ban you? I don't want to ban you, but you've been breaking the
site guidelines repeatedly, and we've asked you multiple times already (e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20900523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20900523)).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
gafferongames
Can confirm.

~~~
anonytrary
This comment traditionally gets down-voted, however, I think it would be
poetic as the top comment in this case, since I'd imagine most people who
consume HN have above average intelligence. Personal problems lurk in every
corner of the world, and no one is immune to them.

------
KorematsuFred
I request everyone to read Nissim Nicholas Taleb's criticism of this IQ BS.
Now, I do not buy all his arguments but I do think his broader point is pretty
much valid. At their core IQ tests measure how to answer exams designed by
people like them.

I was born dirt poor in a remote godforesaken village in India. Today I work
for one of the FANG in bay area.

The most depressing thing about working for this employer is howe dimwitted
majority of their tech employees are beyond the core tech skills. Many of them
can write complex code with ease and yet they do not understand simple sarcasm
or hyperbole.

~~~
guessmyname

      *** | Company  | Employees
      ----|----------|---------------
      [F] | Facebook |   39,651 (2019)
      [A] | Amazon   |  647,500 (2018)
      [A] | Apple    |  132,000 (2018)
      [N] | Netflix  |    5,400 (2017)
      [G] | Google   |  103,459 (2019)
      ---------------|---------------
      Total          | ±928,010 (2019)
    

With all due respect, you are only one in ±1M people working in this group of
companies, not very representative.

I also work at a FAANG and many of my colleagues have excellent interpersonal
skills, you cannot disregard that.

~~~
smm2000
Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook has huge number of non corporate employees
- if you exclude them the FANG club is more exclusive. Nobody boasts that they
work as a picker at Amazon or content reviewer at FB.

