

Does Super-High IQ= Super-Low Common Sense? - amichail
http://www.scientificblogging.com/rogue_neuron/does_superhigh_iq_superlow_common_sense

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tokenadult
Original article:

[http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/09/clever-
sillies...](http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/09/clever-sillies-why-
high-iq-lack-common.html)

One problem with this source, another article from which I have studied with a
group of psychologists a few weeks ago,

[http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall09/mcguem/psy8935/defau...](http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall09/mcguem/psy8935/default.htm)

is that the source itself is notorious for lack of empirical back-up or peer
review for anything submitted to it. (The Medical Hypotheses blog is
associated with the journal Medical Hypotheses, edited by the same person who
posted the blog post I link above, and he runs the journal, and evidently the
blog as well, to post ideas of his own that cannot obtain peer-reviewed
publication elsewhere.) I have read several of the articles he cites in his
blog post, and most have nothing to do with what he is writing about in the
blog article, but are simply there to pad his reference list.

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smcq
Common sense is the beliefs held by common people, by definition common people
are much lower IQ than someone in the 170+ IQ range.

It would shock me if someone in the 170+ IQ range believed much of what
"common" people believe. If they did, it would imply we have an
extraordinarily well educated population and an extraordinarily boring genius
class.

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thwarted
This reads like it's supposed to be comforting to people who feel like they
have low IQs, "Well, I may not be smart, but at least I have common sense".

Is it really proper to equate social ineptness with lack of common sense.

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anigbrowl
If you look at the original article, it could also be interpreted as
rationalizing the reasons the author has difficulty getting laid (per the
conclusion). Weak though it is in scholarly terms, I found it quite thought-
provoking nevertheless - reasoning from general principles without correctly
weighting the desirability of likely social outcomes can create all sorts of
problems.

IQ (or abstract reasoning ability or whatever you'd like to call it) ain't
everything; there's a big difference between being clever and being cunning,
and I've often wished there were a way to rebalance the stats :)

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LucaDuval
I can name without any effort a few geniuses that didn't lack neither common
sense nor social skills (Feynman, Darwin, Newton, Da Vinci, Leibniz,
Pitagora). I'm sure that there are scores of them. I would say that the
equation "Super-High IQ = Super-Low Common Sense" is simply wrong.

~~~
jacquesm
Second that. They're orthogonal, to a certain extent. I find it hard to
imagine someone with an extremely low IQ to exhibit a lot of common sense, so
to my feeling the relationship is the reverse, but in potential.

I would define it as 'super high IQ' = 'potential to exhibit high degree of
common sense'.

Because people that have a super high IQ are not 'common' in their common
sense does not automatically mean they are not right. Common after all is used
here almost as a stand-in for average, but common sense means something else
entirely.

This interpretation of common sense will get you in to Asperger syndrome
territory when you look at individuals with a very high IQ, who can have a
serious problem communicating their ideas to people that can't follow their
train of thought.

~~~
dasil003
This closing line strikes me as complete unsupportable bullshit:

 _No, but the person with high IQ and high common sense, or Practical
Intelligence, is definitely a rarer breed of genius._

Did it occur to the author that there might be bias from both sides?

Many super intelligent people who are socially well-adapted probably conceal
their extraordinary intelligence because they are aware of how alienating it
would be to cognitively soar past every conversation partner. And from the
other side, someone of average intelligence who is more interested in arcane
ideas than other people probably puts a lot of time into pursuing those ideas,
leading other people to think they are geniuses just because they constantly
talk about esoteric things in a very deep manner.

~~~
elblanco
Many super smart people look at the social environment as simply another set
of problems to solve. If they turn their attention to it, and spend the same
effort studying socialization as they might study something more esoteric,
they can usually provide a good simulation of someone who is well socialized.

But it doesn't mean they don't think 90% of those kinds of activities are as
dull as any homework assignment.

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philwelch
I was kind of hoping this article would have some actual empirical evidence in
it rather than just some loose application of psychological theories.

