Letsrunners with high IQs, how do you manage to deal with average Joes?

No Name wrote:

...Making fun of people by pretending to be smart and not being able to pull it off is like leaving the house with your fly unzipped...

Really? In what way?

After a little thinking, I thought I should add that most of my inability to connect with most people probably stems from my personality rather than my intelligence. On the Myers-Briggs test, I typically score as an INTJ, which is the rarest (or second rarest?) personality type. Perhaps my personality is a product of my intelligence though, as I know I can be totally different people depending on who I'm with.

What I find interesting about a thread like this is there is NOT ONE post which is written in a manner which would comport with one who possesses an IQ above 120, which of course is not tantamount to establishing an irrebuttable presumption in favor of this notion, but it is clear that there must be IQ inflation walking in step with grade inflation to the point where it is all rendered meaningless. I guess the average IQ must be about 140 if one were to take this thread on its face.

Flagpole, I'm not lying. I took the test in Leeds, England in the late 1980s. You had to do 2 tests. I scored 160 and 161.

I had my doubts.

If my IQ really is 161 then I'm a classic under-achiever.

kent tekulve wrote:

What I find interesting about a thread like this is there is NOT ONE post which is written in a manner which would comport with one who possesses an IQ above 120, which of course is not tantamount to establishing an irrebuttable presumption in favor of this notion, but it is clear that there must be IQ inflation walking in step with grade inflation to the point where it is all rendered meaningless. I guess the average IQ must be about 140 if one were to take this thread on its face.

This thread is an example of selection bias. No one's going to post "my IQ is 105!"

NJcredible wrote:

kent tekulve wrote:

What I find interesting about a thread like this is there is NOT ONE post which is written in a manner which would comport with one who possesses an IQ above 120, which of course is not tantamount to establishing an irrebuttable presumption in favor of this notion, but it is clear that there must be IQ inflation walking in step with grade inflation to the point where it is all rendered meaningless. I guess the average IQ must be about 140 if one were to take this thread on its face.

This thread is an example of selection bias. No one's going to post "my IQ is 105!"

It is NOT selection bias. It is deception, both deception of self and others. Even if there is some selection bias, it does not account for that much of the deviation from average. Randy Oldman's IQ appears to be about 112, for example.

If I made a thread about left handed people, it would be full of southpaws. The same thing's happening here.

kent tekulve wrote:

NJcredible wrote:

This thread is an example of selection bias. No one's going to post "my IQ is 105!"

It is NOT selection bias. It is deception, both deception of self and others. Even if there is some selection bias, it does not account for that much of the deviation from average. Randy Oldman's IQ appears to be about 112, for example.

Wow, Kent, you must have amazing skills to be able to peg someone's IQ by reading some of his posts! I can only imagine how high your IQ is!

Well, I appreciate your admiration of my talent, but trust me, it is not that difficult and consequently, your awe is misplaced.

Flagpole wrote:

Average GI Joes wrote:

For anyone on here with an IQ of 126 or above (95th percentile) do you have any problems dealing with people? Have you found it difficult to find people you can have meaningful relationships with? I don't think I'm particularly intelligent and yet I still find myself thinking most people around me are complete idiots. I just wonder what it's like for the brilliant people out there.

I applaud you sir for starting a thread that will no doubt get 100% of Letsrun readers to respond. I'll let you Letsrun people decide what I mean by that.

I'll have you know I saw this when there were zero replies and I didn't take the bait this troll laid

Lemme be cleer - I is a IQ of 162. I knows dis cuz I jes got off da scale, and donchu be callin my scale no liar. Average Joes is dootsbag dummies, ever 1 of em. Now where die put my knowbell pries?

- Brick Obummer

I grew up in a wealthy suburb but now live and teach science in a small town. Most people have knowledge--people simply acquire knowledge that is useful for their surroundings.

The knowledge you ask about doesn't measure whether a person can repair their chainsaw or grow heirloom tomatoes well--both of which require knowledge. Put a country person into a bar in Manhattan and he'll sound like an idiot because he doesn't know how to criticize PIPA and SOPA in an upscale bar on Saturday night.

Put a Manhattanite in Bowling Green, Missouri and he'll look like an idiot for not knowing how to trim the maple in his front yard or clean a catfish on Saturday afternoons.

you meant ought, not aught.

Learn the art of "bullsh***ng. Or common socializing. People with low IQ's can come up with some pretty profound insights in their fractured grammatical way.

If you can't relate to people of all walks, you will miss out.

Average GI Joes wrote:

For anyone on here with an IQ of 126 or above (95th percentile) do you have any problems dealing with people?

Something tells me you're a shorts over tights kind of guy.

I dumbs myselfs down to deal with all the white folks and jive turkeys on lets run.

Average GI Joes wrote:

For anyone on here with an IQ of 126 or above (95th percentile) do you have any problems dealing with people? Have you found it difficult to find people you can have meaningful relationships with? I don't think I'm particularly intelligent and yet I still find myself thinking most people around me are complete idiots. I just wonder what it's like for the brilliant people out there.

You guys also forget that running lends itself well to smarter, self-motivated people. All the guys on my team are well above the football team's players in terms of iq

A genius can convince others that running Boston with a tailwind slows you down.

I was amused by what people have been saying, especially the little side-debate about engineering vs. physics vs. mathematics. I am a professional mathematician. I don't have any stats like IQ or whatnot to boast about, but it is fair to say that I am better at analytical thinking than the average person.

I can't say I can speak for all my peers, but I think most of my peers (in professional academics, cutting-edge scientific/mathematical research, etc) would probably share some of the same views as me. So here are some thoughts I have about how I deal with people who are purportedly "more normal" or "less intelligent" than me:

1. Intelligent people can still have exactly the same interests as people who are supposedly "less intelligent". I talk to my friends (who are all researchers) about sports, especially track, as well as popular music, movies, etc. I really don't think there's anything that normal people like that very intelligent people can't like.

2. Literature is one of the most notable interests that normal people don't find as interesting, but which is of interest to a wide variety of intellectuals (as opposed to, say, physics, which is really only of interest to a very small subset of the population). I don't mean reading fiction - I think everybody is capable of enjoying that. But there are some forms of literature that are simply too abstract (20th century philosophy, for example) for the average person to enjoy. This is occasionally a downer for me. It's not that a "less intelligent" person can't appreciate these things, but I think it is certainly harder for very technical literature to be accessible. Occasionally I'll forget that this is the case, and when I bring it up during a party or something, nobody will be interested, so I drop it.

3. It is difficult to relate to how other people reason out something that requires weighing several factors. That doesn't mean that others are doing something wrong, but simply put, I have a completely different way of approaching most problems in life. The most basic example is financial problems. I'll admit that I can perform pretty large computations in my head. It's usually not a very useful skill, but it allows one to really quickly estimate quantities like "how much will it cost to do X?" When I discuss money issues with people, usually there'll be some problem that comes up that has a solution that seems very clear to me, but often it's simply because I run a bunch of numbers through my head very fast.

A mathematician is trained to work in generalities - to solve a whole range of problems by reducing everything down to a single problem that you can solve abstractly, and then "plugging in numbers" and whatever other specific conditions are needed in order to solve some specific problem. Most people work in the opposite way. They solve a lot of problems specifically, then build up some general experience or intuition about how to solve it, so that when they are faced with a similar problem but in a slightly different scenario, they have an idea of what approach to try.

4. It is frustrating to have arguments with people who aren't trained to make completely logical statements. That doesn't mean that I'm completely logical either - I definitely say stupid things or, in the heat of a debate, make a claim that I can't back up whatsoever. But the ubiquity with which people make arguments that do not obey the rules of logic can sometimes be very frustrating. Usually such problems stem from confusion over what directions logical implications go in. A basic example is if I write numbers on the back of my hand and on my palm. I tell you that if I have an even number number on my palm, then the back of my hand has an even number. I then show you that the back of my hand has an even number. Many people will incorrect deduce that my palm must also have an even number. Furthermore, if I show you that the back of my hand has an odd number, most people will not deduce that my palm must also have an odd number.

5. Memory - sometimes it's tough to talk to people who don't remember as much without putting extra effort into it. I know memorization isn't considered to be a part of intelligence, but I think it's worth discussing anyways. There are a lot of examples of little things where I have to do something a little bit unnatural in order to fit in with some people.

For example, sometimes I'll continue a conversation with somebody later, but I'll find that that person doesn't actually remember much of that conversation, whereas I will have remembered every last word spoken by both parties.

Or, I might go up to one of my runner friends and say "Remember that race in 2008 when person X ran a 4:06.23 mile and ran splits A B C D?" and usually my friends will just say "no", even if they were present at the race. I have to remind myself that usually people don't remember information in that way.

Another example is if I'm discussing a song or a movie with somebody, and they mis-remember a particular bit of dialogue or don't hum the right sequence of notes exactly. There's no reason why I should correct that person, but in my mind I have to stop myself from thinking, "Why can't he/she just do it the right way?"

So all these things may seem so petty, and they really are. I'm not constantly thinking ridiculous things like "Why is he so stupid?" or whatnot, but it's rather that my whole way of recalling and processing information is so different from many that it is hard to coordinate with people when such information is to be shared.