Thanks for asking this question. I have enjoyed reading the answers people gave you.
You wouldn’t understand.
Hahah! Living up to your aristocratic origins, I see.
I have a high IQ as well as ADHD and Autism.
Out of context, scoring as high as I did really meant next to nothing. In the context of the diagnoses I received later in life, definitely made sense, and helped color a picture painted in two solid days with a psychologist.
Somehow, I think it’s important that the IQ test I took was not called an IQ test to me until after. Like, I knew I was in for tests, but more broadly told what things were about.
As a student, I had a science teacher who had been teaching many years, tell my mother he had never seen a student think in the manner I did. I was doing exceptionally well in class, but did not exceed in the fashion that would get me into an ivy league school, which at the time was supposed to be a goal. My father graduated MIT.
There are times when it’s great. When I can focus on something, I can learn a lot and get very good at it. However, I spent decades with two obstacles I could never get myself past: the inability to keep that focus or control it, and the inability to even understand other people enough to try to get along with them long-term.
The result is I am just now, at 41, starting to figure out what I want to do with my life after way too long in a profession I should never have entered, and burned out of twice. And by burn out I do not mean tired and sad, I mean hospitalization.
In summary, it can be pretty great, but in my case it’s fraught with difficulty as well.
Thanks for your response.
It’s interesting to see your story in relation to other stories I’ve heard or people I’ve met.
Before I describe them, it’s important to say that you don’t strike me as unkind. I wouldn’t want you to compare yourself to the people I’ll mention and conclude that you’re somehow bad. I’m taking the time to say this because I don’t know if the difficulties you’ve mentioned are a sore spot.
Alright. The people I’ve met. I’ve met people whose identity was tied to their IQ and it became painful for me to wonder what I meant to them. For sure I was not close to their IQ; they needed to take multiple tests because they were off the charts. But I always wondered if they liked me as a person, based on my values and how I did things.
I’ve also met very relaxed and kind people who went on to study at the schools that were supposed to be a goal, people who made me realize it’s possible to be wicked smart and simultaneously kind.
When you mention that it was important that you weren’t told that the test you took was an IQ test, I think about teenage me. Back then, I learned that people could judge me based on my IQ. I made the mistake of reading white supremacist bigotry, and read that they evaluated whether people were worthy living based on things like IQ. I knew the whole white supremacy discourse was pseudoscience and bigotry, but I was scared of bigots in power evaluating my existence. I became terrified. I became very distrustful of people who I should’ve trusted, wonderful people who would’ve never had such narrow and mistaken views. That has changed, now that I have a clearer sense of self and more perspective. But I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if I wouldn’t have mistrusted wonderful people. I guess the discourse around IQ can really change the way you look at the world and what you do.
Is it too nosy to ask a couple of follow up questions? If not, here they are: you mentioned ADHD and the obstacle you could never get yourself past, the inability to keep your focus and control it. Is the diagnosis recent? Could medication help? Could any treatment help with the ADHD? As to difficulties understanding other people, do you know about relational frame theory, the self component of ACT, and the PEAK and AIM programs?
As far as medication, I have not decided yet. This is all recent, within the last year. Therapy has been helping a lot for my current state, but ADHD isn’t the focus. Recovering from burnout is.
I haven’t looked into anything you’ve mentioned.
I have been described as, and willing describe myself as, a good person with a capacity for kindness. I am not nice in much of what that means.
I think my political stances sometimes highlight that. I will willingly punch nazis given the chance. No, that’s not hyperbole. I have no tolerance for bigotry. I lost a good friend who became a cop, and then said some questionable but not outright hateful things in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
A flawed but not altogether useless analogy is I am not the guy who waves someone on at a stop sign when it is that person who is supposed to yield. I have no patience for it, nor do I have patience for it happening the other way around.
When I recognized that a now good friend wasn’t so harsh to me out of spite or hate but out of personal struggle, I wanted to know more, and now we not only became good friends, but we are to each other among the very few people we talk openly with about therapy and how it’s really going. We both understand and respect the need to break down the stigma of seeking help with mental health. We had both peered into the void.
But in public, I wind up ignoring a lot of people simply from wearing headphones and wanting nothing to do with any of it.
“How does this (dress, shirt, whatever) look on me?” My wife gets the truth, like it or not.
I could go on, and am willing to try to answer any questions.
Episodes of Rick and Morty really hit close to home in a way that normies couldn’t possibly fathom. It’s a blessing and a curse.
Genuine curiosity: I’ve seen many memes around Rick and Morty (‘my superior intellect’, ‘normies would never understand’), so I wanted to ask if your answer was sarcastic. If it isn’t, are you saying that you identify with Rick? Or something different?
I’m neither a Rick nor a Morty, but I think you can look at the biographies of historical figures who’ve been considered “geniuses” and deduce that R&M isn’t too far off base. It may be a sort of survivor bias: it may be that only genius and successful people have had difficulties; or, maybe idiots have just as much depression only they don’t get famous. All we have are examples like DJT for the dumb-but-successful-and-not-struggling-with-depression category.
I really should have a statistic to back this up, but it seems common for “high IQ” people to have issues. My personnel theory is that we’re all on the spectrum: that humans have a band in which we can function normally, socially, but the higher you climb on the “intelligence” scale, the more you edge into what we’d diagnose as autism and start to struggle with issues resulting from either being unable to integrate with society, or being persecuted by it.
I have absolutely no evidence for this theory, of course. It’s just a theory formed after reading biographies of so many notable geniuses who’ve struggled with drug abuse and depression. Depression is the big one; it must get awfully tiresome being surrounded by (relative) idiots.
I don’t take the theory very seriously; however, among my high school close friend group, the unquestioned smartest one, who went on to get a doctorate in math, checked himself out with a shotgun in his early 30’s. He’s the only suicide we’ve had, and I’ve often wondered how much his intelligence factored into it.
Finally, I’ll end with this quote I one read, for which I can no longer find a source and which I have no reason for believing is based at all on any evidence; but which I’ve always found funny:
Philosophers look outside themselves for truth.
Mathematicians look inside themselves for truth.
Psychologists say philosophers tend to be more happy than mathematicians.I think it’s sarcasm.
I was being sarcastic, lol. It’s a play on the “you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty” gag.
The topics of the show tend to deal with fairly high level concepts. Mixed in the chaos of interpersonal relationships.
The show to me has been a more twisted version of the superman paradox. A god living amongst mortals.
IQ is skull measuring nonsense. how good you are at taking a standardised test is in fact not a remotely good “measure of intelligence”. if you care about education you should discard the notion of IQ.
how good you are at taking a standardised test
Not even that, how good you are at taking a standardised test on a given day. We also know people who are traumatised by poverty or individual adverse life events have lower success rates on these tests, making them even more useless at best and vicious at worst.
Scores are stable over time. This can be determined by statistics. It’s called test-retest reliability.
You can get better at IQ tests by doing more of them and learning the patterns, right? So it’s basically measuring how au fair you are with logic puzzles rather than anything particularly intrinsic.
You can get better at IQ tests by doing more of them and learning the patterns, right?
Yes. That is considered to “invalidate” an IQ test, but it’s not usually an issue since the tests are typically administered to children.
IQ tests are basically only used in the context of individualized education plans for young school children (or for MENSA membership).
So it’s basically measuring how au fair you are with logic puzzles rather than anything particularly intrinsic.
The fundamental issue of testing is that no test can objectively determine intrinsic properties.
But no, a full IQ test done by a psychologist tests a lot more than “puzzles”, including things like memory tests and even fine motor skills or hand eye coordination.
When I was tested they found I scored really high in the pattern recognition stuff and memory tests, but my writing was slow and sloppy and below average.
As part of my individualized education plan I was allowed extra time on tests as well as study aids such as text to speech tools because of this.
The ultimate purpose of the IQ tests is to get a general idea of the strengths and weaknesses in certain area.
Excellent memory, and quick intuitive problem solving, like in my case, can compensate and mask ADHD symptoms like trouble focusing. These tests helped reveal that at an early age.
I think a lot of people think of IQ tests like they’re “how objectively smart are you” when really they’re used to find out which areas you need help in with your education/life so we can provide kids with that support.
If you believe psychology and IQ are nonsense, here’s a comment I copied over from another thread:
IQ means intelligence quotient. A bunch of people take a test and they’re compared to each other. Your result is your intelligence quotient.
Its origins were noble, because it was designed to identify students who needed extra help in school. The creator of the test knew that people could change their results with good instruction.
However, that noble origin story was besmirched by what happened later. Eventually, IQ tests were used as a way to classify people in more brutal and rigid ways. The USA military used it as a cutoff for aspiring cadets. USA colleges use tests that effectively are IQ tests to let people in or not. The worst part is that bigots around the world injected pseudoscience into IQ and used it to decide who they think are worthy of life and who aren’t. It’s as awful as it sounds.
You may notice that helping struggling students sounds wonderful, and you may think that we should go back to that.
However, some people are deeply marked by the dark history of IQ. They have developed beliefs that protect them from the dangers of bigotry and reductionism. They believe that tests aren’t useful at all to tell us something about anything. They believe IQ tests should be banished and never used.
Others people believe IQ tests are a snapshot of how a person answered the questions to a test in a given day. Additionally, these people notice that, in research, IQ scores are robustly associated with other things, such as quality of relationships, happiness, income, and other measures. Finally, these people understand that having a good education teaches one how to solve problems and naturally increases the test result. A test result one day doesn’t doom you for life and doesn’t define you. A bad test result shows the gap that a good education would fill. These people know that a good education makes the mind curious, nimble, and open.
Its origins were noble
No they most certainly were not. It’s origins is in eugenics and white supremacist nonsense.
If we ignore Alfred Binet, then sure I can get onboard with you :) Indeed, the pre-IQ head-measuring stage of racism was filled with white supremacist nonsense. In that sense, it is a history filled with pseudoscience and pain.
Out of curiousity, would you classify Alfred Binet as an eugenicist and white supremacist?
As a maths person, I have scored high on IQ tests for years. There are plenty of topics I am not great at, but IQ tests typically focus maths topics like pattern recognition.
I like the acknowledgement of racism in IQ tests. There is a bias in the test for western maths education. Sadly, the results could be used for eugenics. Many great mathematicians I have met are neurodivergent, LGBTIA+, cis-women or other groups the eugenics crowd want culled.
My current politicical perpspective frames this as enforcement of heirarchy, legitimized “scientifically” by the IQ test. There are plenty of high IQ people, such as those in maths, that do not fit the eugenic vision. The heirarchy becomes self-fulfilling and “natural” by culling the non-comforming people. The “top” of the heirarchy must legitimize their position, so the bottom doesn’t resist doing all the work for little personal benefit.
IQ tests measure something. Don’t use that measurement to justify heirarchy. Eugenics is bad. A better future, built from the bottom, is possible. All power to all people.
It’s very tiring having to start off every conversation by letting people know that I’m more intelligent than them, but it is necessary.
I just laminated a bunch of cards that say Wile E. Coyote; Super Genius and hand them out. Saves time.
E: ducking autocorrupt
Lonely isn’t the right word, because I’m not upset about not having a large group of people I consider myself close to. It’s somewhat disappointing that I can’t deeply relate to more people, though. I’d like to meet more likeminded folks, but I’m also less and less willing to tolerate draining relationships as I get older. Being particular about where you invest your time and energy tends to be socially limiting.
I’m struggling to take a lot of these answers seriously. You really think that way about yourself?
The details of my life are quite inconsequential, but since you asked…
Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it’s breathtaking, I suggest you try it.
Probably the thing it’s get a little mad because you need to explain multiple times things you think are really easy or stop hearing some people when start explaining things because you know you can catch what they are saying anytime. It’s really shitty, I dont whant to be this way. Also people treat you different because “you can so it better”, no I can’t.
Awful. I wish for ignorance in a very “Flowers for Algernon” type way, and often dull my senses with intoxicants just to try and get my brain to cease.
Imagine looking at the world, seeing all of the evils and horrors that lie in the hearts of man, and knowing you are powerless to stop all the terribleness that is happening as just one person. You try to explain it to other people, you try to get them as impassioned as you are at fighting the awfulness of the world…and they look back at you blankly. They don’t understand the connections, they don’t think on a global scale, and they question why you do. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier not to worry about that? It’s not like it affects you personally, something like that could never happen here.” So you just get to live in a world that you know is fundamentally wrong, feeling like you are wrong for rejecting it.
That has been my experience having a 168 IQ, though it says nothing of the weight of expectations that were cast on me as a child or what all I missed out on by skipping past so many grades in school.
that’s one thing my mom did for me that I appreciate. When they asked her if she wanted me to skip grades she said no.
Frustrating.
The rate at which I absorb information is disgusting. Yes please finish your sentence I already have a response why are you taking so long. How did I learn that? I picked up the manual and did it. Developing new skills? Learning Rust right now and its going well, failed out of highschool because I learned too easily and didn’t need the homework to learn (so it didn’t get done).
It comes with imposter syndrome: I knew the problem, I had the pattern figured out, why did I still fuck everything up (plot twist I probably didn’t).
It comes with a superiority complex: I learned this in 10 minutes from looking at a Sci Journal, why has it been hours and yallvstill don’t get it? 🙄
It comes with accidentally hurting people: frequently I say things thinking something hould be obvious when it is not, while unintended, it often hurts my partner who is usually in the line of fire when I let some dumb shit outta my mouth and insult someone’s intelligence.
Anyway I hate it I’d rather be dumbsauce ignorance is bliss
You wouldn’t.
I’ve considered what it would be like to be more “normal”.
Even with all the issues that come with the extra abilities. They are the good kind of problems.
If you want to put a dent in your superiority complex. Go spend a day in a mechanical workshop, try to something that can only be learned by feel and sound…
Skimming through this post, people actually believe in IQ?
IQ is not a good measurement of intelligence. It is at best one single measurement of pattern recognition, and it is not set in stone either, as you can get better or worse at it.
There’s multiple types of intelligence it doesn’t measure and honestly, I don’t believe anyone should take it serious.
I feel like this is the best take. IQ is an antiquated and outmoded way of measuring specific standards like spatial aptitude and logic. They’re definitely things that can indicate a “smart person” but are only two out of dozens of aspects that make up human intelligence.
