> It’s also possible that people who join Mensa differ from other people in ways other than just IQ. For example, people preoccupied with intellectual pursuits may spend less time than the average person on physical exercise and social interaction, both of which have been shown to have broad benefits for psychological and physical health.
Is Mensa really an "intellectual pursuit"? I'm not sure exactly what Mensa does, but maybe people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club are more likely to be those who suffer from setbacks in other parts of their lives.
I'm indeed a bit insecure about my intelligence. But when I took the test I was actually surfing an overconfidence wave, getting extremely positive feedback on my first job and being considered a prodigy -- it turned out that I was suffering from a very bad case of illusion of competence and my coworkers weren't particularly strong on electronics. Well, but I didn't know that by then.
It turns out that, now looking back, I realize I sought Mensa because I was feeling extremely alone. I was always thinking or working on something alone, since my teenagehood, and I was getting tired, despite the admiration I sporadically sparked.
Unfortunately Mensa didn't help on that. I really disliked the experience. The people, its goals, everything. The only piece of advice I got regarding my loneliness issue happened right after I delivered my test to the psychotherapist. She only said that I should try to find friends regardless of their IQs, because life isn't only about that.
Update: I'm reading people with (more) negative experiences. I guess YMMV :) Still, I wouldn't draw absolute conclusions based on this.
I was a Mensa associate, and participated to evening meetings in two countries (evening meetings are only part of the activities).
You're assuming, with "people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club", that associates sit on a high horse due to their IQ. It was quite the opposite; the clubs are very friendly, and what I remember is actually, fun nights playing board and social games (it's amusing to think that a significant part of a "high IQ" club is games :)). Definitely, nobody would recognize it was a Mensa meeeting if they didn't know it already.
In my personal view, joining the club because of (relatively) high IQ was no different than joining, say, a chess club - meeting people who have something in common.
Needless to say, there were lots of programmers :)
I was in an ultra-high IQ society called The Thousand. Not because my IQ is in the 99.9%, but because they weren't smart enough to figure out how to password protect their Ning group.
There was very little content, and the average poster was probably less intelligent than the average HN poster.
I don't really care one way or the other, but my impression is the group offers a setting for like-minded (read 'higher-IQ') individuals to come talk about anything and not just the thing they are there for.
The irony is: by your own definition, what makes you like minded is that you are all in MENSA.
Hey, let's start a "people who wear blue shoes" society. We're all like minded, I bet the conversation will be fascinating.
Put another, less sarcastic way: there's no guarantee they will be interesting because there is literally nothing guranteed to be in common except we're smart. But a chess club will be, because everyone talks about chess. This is why I found MENSA dull.
But also, this isn't a subjective analysis: it is a logical deduction. I'm identifying sets and drawing conclusions. You know, rational Ayn Rand stuff.
I'd rather hang out with dumbasses who can woodwork, or dumbasses who can tune car engines, or dumbasses who can cook, or dumbasses who can run marathons, over smart people who have no other connection to me other than we all scored high on an arbitrary test.
But what topic are they of like mind about? "High IQ" individuals might be left-wing or right-wing, religious or secular, capitalist or communist, etc. The only theme likely to be in common among all Mensa members is a pride in their IQ.
I think most people in that category love having people to have intellectual conversations with. I've been in a space with people who are naturally incredibly high IQ, and there's a special kind of comraderie that comes from not having to go through the lonely exercise of scaffolding everything that you're deeply passionate about.
It's community. Pride in IQ != The main reason to be centric around an IQ.
I've tested well in that sphere. It's an incomplete measure, but it does measure something, and I like being around/with people at that caliber in the "IQ" arena.
I want to be challenged. I want to have community where my heart is in intellectual things. I don't want someone to just absorb my information-excited rants, I want someone to fight me on them and challenge me to grow.
Most of all, I don't want to feel isolated or lonely in my experiences. We all desire community around what makes us us. It's a fundamentally human thing, I think, and denying it because it's some measure that some people use to prop up their insecurity feels a bit hurtful and/or harmful to people really seeking community there.
Not currently a member of any sigma-type IQ-only organizations. Just my thoughts. I love other kinds of people too. But people who think in that level and way are my safe people, and I can feel seen and heard with them.
Note: there's EQ and a host of other things not mentioned here. I'm just talking about the above specific insight in general. :)
If it's a group in real life, then you also have the common factors that you wanted to join a social group and you live near each other.
That can mean a lot - it's why meetup.com has always worked for me when I've tried it, even if the group has no official topic. (Of course I stopped after I'd gotten enough out of it.)
> The only theme likely to be in common among all Mensa members is a pride in their IQ.
This is wrong in two ways. 1) IQ is not among the most discussed topics, not even close; so presumably other themes are in common. 2) Pride is not the prevalent emotion, generally or specifically with regards to the own IQ.
I'm thinking about more typical clubs and interest groups. In a chess club, you can talk about chess without worrying about whether the person is interested in chess. In an underwater basket weaving club, you can talk about underwater basket weaving without worrying about whether the person is interested in underwater basket weaving.
Just like in a fraternity, you get connections. Mensa is basically a network of highly intelligent people (or at least people with high IQ) that help each other in different ways for further their education and career. Being part of Mensa can open doors that would otherwise be locked or very hard to open.
Many who join Mensa are/were developmentally gifted children/adults. For many such folks, finding a peer group with similar experiences (owing to them being precocious, not fitting in, not often meeting people with similar interests -- especially before the advent of the Internet) was/is generally harder (or at least low probability).
Mensa was one avenue where they could bond over those shared experiences with people of like-mind. It certainly wasn't perfect -- gifted children often struggle with loneliness and isolation, and don't have the easiest time with social interactions, hence the manifested social dysfunction in certain local chapters -- but sometimes it works out and they find a community of diverse individuals with whom they relate (as was my case).
It's disingenous, or, more precisely, rhetoric, to state that there are no correlations at all between people with certain IQ and traits/interests/likemindedness.
You've asked questions of whom you don't have interests in the answer (it's fairly easy to find correlations, in particular, reading the whole conversation), so this classifies as trolling in my opinion. If you had this attitude when you joined the club, I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't been treated friendly.
No idea and not vested.
I don’t see the difference between that and a group of friends, because not all groups of friends exist because of a shared activity, some exist because they like to be around each other
No need to walk back your comment! I'm glad you had a positive experience, and didn't mean the "insecure" thing as an attack.
I guess it feels weird to me because according to the scores page, I could join this club, but my brother would be excluded. We could both join a chess club.
I've indeed heard about many good experiences. In my country they weren't particularly active (maybe still aren't, it's been a long time I don't follow their news any more).
My experience wasn't good. I think it was the most heterogeneous group I've ever met. That's not bad by itself, but it was detrimental under the circumstances.
Besides, almost 100% of them were at least 20 years older than me, so our interests didn't match. I think that that might have played a role on my discomfort -- I had the high IQ but didn't had the repertoire and experience to hold constructive conversations with them. And being extremely socially awkward didn't help me either.
However, between them, there were many disputes over silly subjects, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, a constant, extensive and aggressive use of irony, and other "unanticipated" stuff.
I only paid the first annuity and didn't want to participate any more.
People curious about Mensa should check out Jamie Loftus's podcast My Year In Mensa[1]. She is a writer/journalist/comedian who wanted to investigate the organization. She passed the test, joined Mensa, and was immediately ostracized once she began reporting on her experience. I'll just charitably summarize it to say that there are a variety of reasons why people join Mensa and many join for reasons outside what we might consider traditional "intellectual pursuits". I don't think their members are truly representative of people with high IQs or I at least hope not.
Keep in mind that there is huge variety among the national Mensa groups, and presumably also within a country. I haven't gotten around to listening to that podcast, but from what I gather it is not representative of Mensa, either.
I tried not to paint with too broad a brush. There are clearly people who join for those "intellectual pursuit" reasons, but that doesn't negate the people who join for less noble reasons. I have no idea of the percentage breakdown in the two, but the second group clearly does exist and can be a real problem.
Yes, your comment seemed fair! I was referring to the podcast itself. However, instead of responding further, let me first listen to the podcast, rather than relying on second-hand assessments.
The podcast definitely focuses on those problem members more than the good because egotistical assholes make for a more interesting story than mild-mannered retired college professor types who certainly make up a sizable portion of Mensa. However I also think it is fair to criticize a group as a whole when they fail to do anything to even try to curtail their worst members.
And obviously don't feel like you owe me any response after you listen or to even listen at all, I just recommend it for those interested in what Mensa can be like and the whole series is a relatively quick listen coming in at under 3 hours.
I joined to have something to put on my otherwise bare resume coming out of university. Never renewed my membership. Their magazine was better than I expected but the local newsletter didn't inspire me to actually show up at any meetings. From the few other Mensa members I've met, it seemed like they were active members in order to be able to socialize with people who were of "birds of a feather" so to speak rather than out of an insecurity but this is from a rather small sample size of maybe seven or eight people.
I was happy I had a score, but like you, I let my membership lapse. I also remember magazine to be good.
It is nice to talk to people who think well, I had few friends who were also eligible and it was really nice to talk to them even if their interests didn't exactly match mine.
While the literature does seem to support the theory that SAT is a good measure of intelligence, I still find myself jumping to the defense of candidates who may have scored poorly on the SAT. I feel it’s unfair to judge someone’s qualifications for a specific job NOW, based on the score they received on a basic general knowledge test in high school. I don’t like this idea either, but why wouldn’t college gpa be an even better measure? It’s more recent, relevant to the job they’re applying for (in most cases), and achieved independently of parental control (in most cases).
I'm not exactly sure, I've just been told so by others. My guess is that since you take it as a teenager, it's considered strange to include it as an adult. But I haven't taken any standardized quasi-intelligence tests as an adult, so it still seems like a useful signal.
People could also just lie though. I can't imagine actually confirming an applicant's SAT score.
> people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club
I don't understand this sentiment. There are race/ethnicity-restricted clubs, men-only clubs, athletic clubs, equestrian clubs, farmers clubs, car ownership clubs. However, when it's about IQ (something which you say you hold in disdain), suddenly out come the insults. Insecure nerds, right? They only have their insignificant test scores, they must be a despicable lot!
Did you ever stop to consider that people might be seeking something different, that this is their attempt at finding other people with similar interests? There is nothing wrong with one valuing their own high IQ test score.
Disclaimer: I have never taken an IQ test, but if I did I probably wouldn't get into Mensa, extrapolating from previous test scores and grades.
A score on a test doesn't imply enough for you to actually have things in common. (However, just being in a secret club might motivate you enough to find some things to talk about.)
You can get the Mensa experience without joining by having a Quora account - their AI always picks the oddest topics to send to you. For the longest time it would send me all the "what's it like to have a high IQ?" questions and I noticed 1. it wasn't really like anything, and 2. I didn't want to hang out with the people answering them.
You could also read rationalist-associated blogs, several of which are written by people who if you leave them alone for ten minutes try to reinvent eugenics.
e.g. I was linked this one yesterday: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/03/23/two-paths-to-the...
and there is like no self-reflection on the concept that maybe optimizing babies for "IQ" will not get you what you want, and that maybe Singapore is not actually genetically better or worse than other places, and neither was John von Neumann.
Maybe this analogy will help: joining a high-IQ club is not like joining just any athletic club. It's like joining an athletic club that's restricted based on a metric. What if you wanted to join a hiking club in your area but found out the only way to join was to prove you hiked X mountains first? I could see why that would turn some people off. It's not the interests; it's the cutoff.
Huh? Plenty of clubs are like this, especially athletic clubs, but all sorts of clubs have cutoffs. E.g. improv clubs have auditions, chess clubs have ELO rankings, and so forth.
Sure. My point was only that Mensa is not _just_ a club about a shared interest, which was implied by the examples given by the person I responded to. I suspect it's the cutoff that people don't like.
I never said I hold IQ with disdain. It's just an attribute, not a hobby. Mensa is more like a tall-people's club (descriptive, generally regarded as positive, quantitative cutoff) than it is like an ethnic club (shared culture) or an equestrian or car owner's club (shared interest).
> There is nothing wrong with one valuing their own high IQ test score.
To me it suggests someone who's more concerned with being something special than doing something interesting. It seems like a kind of narcissism, and suggests that they're probably pretty boring.
I think LGBTQ-positive spaces are ideally supposed to operate as support groups for people at high risk of ostracism by conventional social groups. That's very different from a group celebrating possession of a marker of conventional success/moral value.
I was just about to make the exact same comment, but I think you articulated it perfectly. People are fine with literally every other type of neurodiversity but god help you if you so much as mention intelligence.
I mean just look at all the negative sentiment going on in the rest of these comments. Guys, there’s nothing wrong about seeking out people similar to yourself.
I've never seen that at Mensa in Germany, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Malaysia, UK, US, or elsewhere, really.
In fact, the matter of IQ has rarely if ever come up at all (except in abstract discussions of testing, factor analysis, operationalisation, objectivity/reliability/validity, etc.).
> but maybe people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club are more likely to be those who suffer from setbacks in other parts of their lives.
to me this reads similar to the old misconception that all bullies are insecure (it's often quite the opposite). what makes you think that people engaging in a group based on what they feel is a big part of their identity are insecure? Do you think gay people in pride parades, minorities in various race groups, etc are insecure? I'm not taking a position on mensa, gender, etc. I just don't agree with the idea that people joining mensa are necessarily insecure.
> Do you think gay people in pride parades, minorities in various race groups, etc are insecure?
Well, uh, yeah, sort of.. I thought the whole point of gay/ethnic/etc pride events was to overcome the insecurity caused by marginalization in society. Is that not the case?
I don't know, I don't have insecurities relating to personal identity (despite being in various categories that some people would label marginalized, though I disagree with that worldview fundamentally) so I can't say how people who do have such insecurities think. If I joined a group about XYZ it would be because I want to engage in XYZ activity or discuss XYZ topic with others, just like religious people go to their various religious activities and so on. I'm not disagreeing that some of these people in Mensa, parades, etc may in fact feel insecure, but I do want to point out that engaging in a group about a topic doesn't mean you're insecure
I joined Mensa at age 12 on a whim just to check out what it was all about. I had mostly positive experiences -- Mensa gave me a peer-group of grown-ups (mostly professionals) from whom I learned a lot. As a kid, my development was a little out of sync with that of my peers, so I really appreciated having a venue for conversations with adults who weren't my parents. I think I grew up faster that way because Mensa folks interacted with me as though I was an adult (even though I wasn't yet) -- no one talked down to me. Folks also really took care of me (paid for my meals, gave me rides home because they knew I had to take 2 buses to get to the restaurants we usually met in). We had a lot of fun eating out together and talking about life.
There was also the monthly national newsletter, in which members wrote in about their varied interests, from computers to chess to philosophy (this back in the early 90s when the Internet wasn't yet a thing). So many of my interests of that era came about from learning about new stuff through the newsletter. I remember having great fun corresponding via snail mail with people of like mind.
I can't vouch for the experience in every Mensa chapter (I have been in meetings which were full of hyper-rationalist types who were low in emotional intelligence), but the chapter I was part of during my formative years really left a mark on me. (in a good way)
It'd be funny if the organization behind Mensa decided to re-test everybody on account of the COVID pandemic to ensure that their high standards are maintained and that members who drop below the required IQ for entry get culled accordingly. And of course ditto for those reaching a certain age, we would not want any accidental cases of Alzheimers posing as high IQ individuals now, would we?
Its popular to imagine that smart people have some pitiable deficits. I'm afraid that many, many smart people are doing just fine. If they join a club, its often for the same reason anyone else joins a club - to meet people with like interests.
I'm not drawing a distinction between smart and not-smart people here. I'm suggesting that perhaps the 99% of people qualified for Mensa who don't join are better-adjusted than the 1% who do join.
I've never joined Mensa but I very clearly see the thing about neglecting physical and social pursuits because they are harder than intellectual ones :) Makes sense to choose things you're naturally good in, it's not really a 'preoccupation' as such.
Someone who is great at sports will tend to focus on that. It's just natural to direct yourself towards pursuits that come easily.
The problem with this thing of course is that it's self-enforcing. Less experience with social interaction causes even less ability. In the end that can lead to psychological issues. It did for me too, but I was really helped by my therapists and put back on track <3
While I was still in school I joined an event for people that were really good at math, like 1-2 students per school could attend. I think it went for almost a week and then there were subsequent monthly lectures, unfortunately about discrete mathematics which I didn't enjoy that much.
In retrospect, you could definitely see that some people came from bad social backgrounds (and thus didn't wear the best clothes for instance) that were just there because they were so smart. But for instance there was also a guy from a very privileged background who went to private school (yes, clean clothes, confident and good at sports) who was actually a jerk. Anyways, there were also fairly average appearing people.
What I want to say is, I think the whole observation is very skewed. People from not so privileged backgrounds are usually not that visible, but just because of a high IQ might enter opportunities (university, job, social circles) that might be otherwise inaccessible und thus they get into the spotlight.
A good example is that world chess champions are actually very athletic, especially the Soviet ones in the past and Magnus Carlsen today.
My FAANG experience is that people like outdoor sports and going to the gym too, I wonder where all the Linux con t-shirts and drinking Jolt cola people went…
My limited experience with Mensa is that it's a social/dating club for high IQ people. It's been too long for me to remember the details, but I recall reading about studies that suggest relationships where IQs are too far apart (more than 5-10pts) have a high failure rate. If you're more than a standard deviation from the mean, it probably makes sense to have a special dating circle if you're looking for a long term partner.
That's interesting. Similar to how many people rely on university networks to segregate their dating pool roughly by IQ (although more informally). Is the gender ratio reasonable for straight couples? My imagined version of Mensa is a club that mostly attracts men.
IQ is not distributed equally among men and women. The median is the same, but there are more men at the extremes for IQ (both high and low). Mensa membership is 66% male. https://www.us.mensa.org/learn/about/demographics/
This is a weird one. There does seem to be evidence in support of the variation hypothesis, but merely mentioning its existence while not being a woman is enough to get you sacked.
The thing I don't get about that, or at least I obviously do get it but it lead to think, surely if you were hiring in volume you might be better off hiring women anyway since you can more precisely know what kind of candidates you want to hire?
For diversity and inclusion in AI papers, they bring up facts like "All of the top 10 most-cited AI researchers are men" and then posit this as bad, and in support of a 50%-50% gender representation in AI. Like in: The field still has a long way to go. Not: we judged these extremely rare geniuses on their gender, and when you do this, you get bad diversity-and-inclusion optics.
And how to solve that perceived problem? Judge other academics on their gender, place them in a victimized group, and then compose your reference list with that in mind? The top 10 starts doing exactly that, because the guilt they feel is real. So they say nothing when privileged researchers can use the LatinX-in-AI, Women-in-AI, Black-in-AI, Gay-in-AI, Jewish-in-AI backdoors to get in a prestigious AI conference publication.
Variation hypothesis actually makes sense from evolutionary point of view: you need as many women as you can get to produce offsprings, but only small number of men suffices to impregnate them all. So men are disposable, therefore they are where the mother nature does its risky experiments.
"I decided to take an I.Q. test administered by Mensa, the organization of geniuses. If you score in the top 2% of people who take that same test, you get to call yourself a “genius” and optionally join the group. I squeaked in and immediately joined so I could hang out with the other geniuses and do genius things. I even volunteered to host some meetings at my apartment.
Then, the horror.
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."
Gives a mermbership certificate and a number that they think they brag about to socially naive, gullible and arrogant (but otherwise smart), people (I say "think they can brag about" because nobody will actually be impressed by it, and it just makes them appear as crude idiots - IQ is not an accomplishment by itself, and the proof of genius is in genius work).
It’s your requirement though, not theirs. I’m not part of Mensa and have no chance neither will to join, but this attitude “do some genius work then we’ll talk” really annoys me. It’s unlikely that I will do, but if I did, we wouldn’t talk, cause who cares. Like they need to work hard to prove something to a stranger (I’d make it invalidate membership). Some people can beat that score, some cannot, that’s it. Social people do things to feel accepted and loved (or feared, or hated). Unsocial may do that for themselves, out of curiosity, for an idea, to fight with reality, because they can. But not to impress some guy out there. It doesn’t have to be utilitarian; analyzing sudoku solving methods with 4 digits or playing other hard “games” is as intellectual as creating a cure for cancer. The only difference is how some Joe judges or benefits from it, which is irrelevant.
If this reads harsh, I did not mean it, but you social guys think you understand better, but often you do not.
I never announced my iq because I’ve seen that the answer other people usually get is either “ooh that’s high” or “what are you bragging about, it’s a number” or “mine is N”. Never heard the one that I find actually interesting: “which test it was, and oh, how did you analyze Nth, because it has three patterns with similar fitness, but only two were available as an answer”. Never once.
>I’m not part of Mensa and have no chance neither will to join, but this attitude “do some genius work then we’ll talk” really annoys me
It's not "do some genius work then we’ll talk" though.
It's more "Until you do some genius work don't brag to me about how smart you are in IQ points".
>It’s unlikely that I will do, but if I did, we wouldn’t talk, cause who cares.
It's actually the opposite: people do care about genius work others do, as it can be touching (e.g. in art), evolutionary (e.g. in science), impactful (in tech, etc).
Whereas people don't care for others' IQ scores or MENSA membership.
>Unsocial may do that for themselves, out of curiosity, for an idea, to fight with reality, because they can. But not to impress some guy out there.
Well, that's another thing, and we can respect that.
But MENSA members ofter are more annoying braggards than even vegans...
The "My Year in Mensa" podcast is a good (and entertaining) way to understand some of what really goes on in Mensa, and what type of people are likely to join.
Yeah, it's kinda embarrassing and funny at the same time how this study is likely saying more about Mensa members than about high IQ people in general.
Is Mensa really an "intellectual pursuit"? I'm not sure exactly what Mensa does, but maybe people insecure enough to join an IQ-restricted club are more likely to be those who suffer from setbacks in other parts of their lives.