Anyone else substantially smarter than everyone else in their family?

Same here. Only different.

All my siblings (9 of us in all) have IQs between 120 and 140. Mine is 180. As a result I am a total outsider. Within the family it is generally believed (but unspoken) that I do not have the same biological father as my brothers and sisters. Maybe the same is true of you.

Well Now That You Mention It wrote:

Same here. Only different.

All my siblings (9 of us in all) have IQs between 120 and 140. Mine is 180. As a result I am a total outsider. Within the family it is generally believed (but unspoken) that I do not have the same biological father as my brothers and sisters. Maybe the same is true of you.

1/10, but no one on letsrun is that smart.

I am of average intelligence; everyone else in my family is below-average. My only sibling is bordering on retarded. In my family, I'm like the "missing link" who made the evolutionary leap from ape to human.

Yes, but I have no need to qualify it with "in my family."

Bad Wigins wrote:

Yes, but I have no need to qualify it with "in my family."

This is coming from the same guy that thinks leg length matters in stride length?

Me too. My mom is dumb as rocks as well as my sister and brother. My Dad is average.

I noticed a LOT of people on this site are Civil Engineers from the How Many Hours A Week Do You Work thread and it made me think about how my Dad is a Civil Engineer and how he wanted me to become one as well and how I decided not to because I like my free time so in that sense, Yes, I am probably the smartest in my family.

6 kids, I'm the youngest. The two youngest boys are the smartest by a great deal. But my family isn't really smart, most of my siblings scored 20-22 on the ACT, my brother and I scored 30s or above and have IQs in the 125-135 range.

Parents are averageish.

yahhh right wrote:

1/10, but no one on letsrun is that smart.

I don't think he's trolling. I think he's 15.

I suppose it depends on how you measure smartness. In terms of actual IQ, I'm probably not the smartest person in my family. In terms of ability to use my brain to accomplish tasks, I might be.

My sister and my father are both bright people, but they lack the emotional intelligence to accomplish anything. My sister subscribes to the "if I don't try, I can't fail" mentality. My father is one of these eternal victim types. To him, working hard on a project is tantamount to being taken advantage of by some big bad employer who just wants to crush the little guy and laugh all the way to the bank. The irony is that if he'd spent his life worrying about accomplishing things instead of obsessing over whether or not he was being treated fairly, he'd probably be the "big bad employer" himself today. Instead, he is the little guy because he's always been too busy worrying about fairness to put his mind to doing great things.

My mother and I are the only people in my family who possess both the mental and emotional intelligence to actually do anything important.

i had the best SAT's, and ended up at the "more prestigious school",,,,

but,

i am the dumbest of my siblings - i have made the worst life / financial decisions. so i am the dumbest in the group.

i can do maths and reading and stuff

To elaborate, I'm a pretty smart guy... I'm in a Ph.D. program in a hard science. Neither of my parents are college educated. My brother was pretty smart at one time but has destroyed his brain through long term substance abuse and is now about as smart as a 10 year old. My sister has always been a bit of an airhead but has to be on prescription meds that have rendered her borderline retarded. My dad was probably pretty smart in his youth, but he's getting a bit older now and has let his brain whither away as he has done nothing but work the last 40 years (literally; he has no hobbies, hates music, movies, people, refuses to read anything more than he absolutely has to, etc) and his job isn't very intellectually demanding. He's the type of guy who thinks he has the answer to every problem in the world despite being embarrassingly ignorant and naive. My mom is probably a bit above average, but she's extremely close-minded, and I think this inhibits her quite a bit.

I guess looking at them each individually, it seems they all had potential but chose to lifestyles that made them stupid. Even with my sister's condition, she has always hated anything educational and only cares about very shallow stuff (think Kim Kardashian and talking about herself). I am most certainly the offspring of both my parents as I look quite a bit like both of them. It's still strange to me that I'm so unlike them though.

my dad once counted past 1 million beat that

This wiki article talks about illusory superiority and why self-analysis is often inaccurate with specific biases

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

janaku wrote:

This wiki article talks about illusory superiority and why self-analysis is often inaccurate with specific biases

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

Definitely legitimate, but score in the 97th and above percentiles on a dozen standardized tests throughout your life and you get a bit of an idea in where you stand relative to the general population.

alien rubicon wrote:

Definitely legitimate, but score in the 97th and above percentiles on a dozen standardized tests throughout your life and you get a bit of an idea in where you stand relative to the general population.

That's true, if you think standarized tests are really an accurate measure of intelligence.

I'm really good at taking standarized tests and always do well, but I'm dumb as hell. Standardized tests are only good at measuring how good you are taking standardized tests.

But, whatever helps you sleep at night.

Both of my parents are heroin addicts, so yea

I think the negative effects of high-intelligence can outweigh the advantages. Depression, anxiety, social ineptitude, insomnia, under-performance, obsessive behavior, addiction.

I'm pretty glad I'm not in the 97th percentile. Oh sh*t, I am and I suffer from all the above.

People with high IQs need to find the right obsession in order to make an impact on the world. Look at Einstein as the classic example.