Have you also come across these people that seem to have no common sense, but have a documented high IQ on paper? It's like they lack the ability to practically apply their intelligence to their everyday life. I'm not talking about autism or any other psychological disorder, but simply a lack of skills to use their intelligence practically. What is then the use of having a high IQ if you can't benefit from it? And how is it possible to be this way?

Yes, I have a young cousin who is apparently a genius, being considered for skipping a grade etc.
But he is a moron, like totally retarded, I mean a really dumb kid. I struggle to communicate with him because he just doesn't understand reality.
And then I have to listen to his parents brag about him to me, knowing I failed school miserably, almost winking like "OUR son turned out very intelligent" as though I didn't.
Very frustrating.

One of my oldest friends taught high school physics and math for 30+ years. He has often commented that many of his brightest students from all those years never really succeeded in life - being an ex-student of his myself, I of course am the glowing exception. :D

A long term study done some years ago by the Nuclear Power division of GE shows that on the average, at least within GE, B students tend to have the most successful careers in science and engineering.

... because they're more likely to comply when being asked to
stay in line. ;)

But seriously, a high IQ in no way guarantees success in any
endeavor (although it sure helps) so I'm not surprised to see
bright minds fail to meet expectations.

they lack the ability to practically apply their intelligence to their

In what way ? Very important to define because although you
may be the possessor of a very high IQ, you might not wish to
use any more than is needed for you to be happy. I'm assuming
you meant something along the lines of "they do extremely well
in any academic environment but fail to meet social expectations
and are too distracted to tend to other, perhaps more important
business." I too know many people who do well in school but
just don't have any real common sense: in their case, they don't
have a high IQ at all but are rather very studious and do every
work assignment given to them by the professor with the utmost
care and effort in the world...

Minor edit:

I've seen many of the abovementioned but never anyone
you would consider retarded until someone showed proof
of "high IQ" and academic achievement: perhaps a bit of an
excentric once in a while but no one you'd think was dumb
as bricks.

:D

Its a comon complaint you hear that graduates have no common sense, and dont know how to do anything. And to a large extent it is true. They can tell you what happens and how and why, but not how to do it. Intellectual as opposed to practial.
Then theres the people who are very intelligent but have retardesd emotional life etc, perhaps einstein might be an example. Obviously some of them would be autistic or suchlike, but others just arent necessarily totally there.

Its also worth pointing our that the kind of intelligence we're defining here is a rather narrow definition.

Everyone get your arses up to the the poll education and society thread in free thoughts, started by Dapthar. he posted this in reply to my words below:
-------------
Originally posted by guthrie
"Therefore you can be educated as much as you like, it still doesnt fix the fact that you arent very intelligent."

Dapthars reply:
"I really don't get this point. Perhaps you could clarify or give an example, since I see educated and intelligent as synonymous terms."
------------------------

Needless to say I dont see educated and intelligent as synonymous terms. I see that intelligence can govern how far you go in education to some extent, but you still arent necessarily intelligent when you get through the education, as one of the posters above points out.

Some IQ tests require nothing more than eidetic memory and a review of a dictionary... the SAT's are like that... knew one guy who wrote one for a laugh and got 1100-something, and he said he was skipping over the boring questions.

Many kids come off amazingly intelligent in school with their high grades because they have good memory and many times that is confused with intelligence. Infact when a kid is young and can memorize the whole alphabet and fair amount of numbers at a below average age his/her parents assume that the kid is a genius but that kid may have no clue how to apply those memorized symbols in practical situations...or even know their meaning.

Good memory does not promise above average cognitive perfomance. I wish the western education system would realize that so it doesn't only cater to those who memorize and get good grades throughout their life and let those who are sharp, but bored or indifferent to what is taught, slip through.

Originally posted by sargentlard
and let those who are sharp, but bored or indifferent to what is taught, slip through.

That struck a chord with me, Lard...

I never liked school: not because I hated learning, but rather
because it was compulsory and without explanation. Finding
out that the only reason you go to school is specialisation to
prepare you for an eventual career that will consume almost
all of your time for an extended period of your life isn't exactly
motivating, to say the least. I just "went through" the system
like everybody else but I didn't get competitive with marks or
extra work to please the educators. Besides, we all end up in
the same predicament anyway.

I do my learning in the real world ...

Finding out that the only reason you go to school is specialisation to prepare you for an eventual career

School isn't intended to teach you anything useful; it's a custodial measure to make sure that you don't kill yourself, have children or become a drug addict while you're still the responsibility of your parents.

That's why people hate school, because most of what you do is wait for it to be over... everyone else is waiting to get rid of you too.

Reminds me to myself........ I'm bad at real life even though I once excelled at school

IME, this is reffered to having "Book Smarts but no Life Smarts"

and lots of people are one way or the other. very few can read a book, or learn something new, then actually apply it to a real-life situation. me included :)

Originally posted by curioucity
Reminds me to myself........ I'm bad at real life even though I once excelled at school

It reminds every top 5% percentile student who is now a miserable accountant.

Thats the problem with schools. It's bland, repetitive and can be very frustrating if you don't get anything out of it. I've seen many good minds go to waste because they couldn't be bothered. If kids were encouraged from a very young age to go out and read the kinds of books that interest them, they'd have a much better education. They'd get a) common sense, b) writing/spelling skills c) knowledge about the real world.

Right now the goal of our indocrination facilities is to produce boring and unoriginal wastes of skin that get pleasure from monotonous academics. You'll notice that most of the original or revolutionary thinkers take control of their own educations, have street smarts and can't be bothered by the ordinary. They are also blessed with *true* intelligence.

Then you have the people who take millions of notes, memorize and lead boring ass lives. They're not necessarily dumb, just the average accountant that sarge was describing.

I used to be a really good example of that when I was younger but when I got a job, I quickly learned that no one gives a shit about how hard you work and I really began to learn how things work. I replaced some of my preprogrammed idealism and some of "my" more innocent qualities to making swimming easier in a new society. I still am more book smart than street smart, but I'm glad that I at least have a pretty good balance between the two because they can really complement each other.

There is a neurological condition called "Asperger's Syndrome" that may account for some people who seems exceptionally bright at schoolwork but inept at practically applying their knowledge.

The main deficit these people suffer is an inablity to understand social interactions. They don't "get" it. Male sufferers of Aspergers tend to withdraw from social contact the older they get. Females, for some reason, often teach themselves to mimic the social behaviours they see around them and can manage to stay in touch with people.

Asperger's people are excellent at memorization, music, language skills, and math. Often though as adults, they can't hold the simplest of jobs, due to the very specific and idiosynchratic way they must think through any task.

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
There is a neurological condition called "Asperger's Syndrome"

Originally posted by Yes
I'm not talking about autism or any other psychological disorder

So do you think all the people who are viewed as book smart and not street smart have Aspergers condition, or could it be a more "normal" condition?

How many % of the human population do think are both book and street smart?

Originally posted by Yes
So do you think all the people who are viewed as book smart and not street smart have Aspergers condition, or could it be a more "normal" condition?
Originally posted by zoobyshoe There is a neurological condition called "Asperger's Syndrome" that may account for some people who seems exceptionally bright at schoolwork but inept at practically applying their knowledge
How many % of the human population do think are both book and street smart?
I couldn't even venture a guestimate.


(I did observe that you said "not psychological". Neurologial problems are a different animal.)

Hmm from these links one (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001549.htm) two (http://info.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/autism/aspergers.html) it seems the Asperger's syndrome is similar to autism. So I doubt that this would be what most of the people on this thread are talking about, though it might have a related cause.

I think we notice when people that did well in school don't succeed in life more keenly than people that did well in other areas. All areas of development are factors that affect your chances of success in life. So it shouldn't be surprisingly that people that are talented in some areas, like education, mightn't have the range of skills needed to succeed in life.

Originally posted by skyederman
Hmm from these links one (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001549.htm) two (http://info.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/autism/aspergers.html) it seems the Asperger's syndrome is similar to autism.
High functioning autistic people stand out like a sore thumb. Think Rainman. Asperger's people take alot of getting to know before you realize there's anything off about them. If you read those two links carefully you see that the confusion between the two separate conditions comes from A) pure speculation that one is a mild form of the other, and B) a long history of doctors misapplying the diagnosis of Asperger's to people who are really high functioning autistic people.

Asperger, the doctor who first described the syndrome, happened to use the word "autistic" to describe the self-involved nature of these peoples outlook. He used this word with no knowledge that it was being used at nearly the same time somehere else to describe what we now call autism. This unfortunate coincidence has caused most of the confusion between the two conditions.

A person with an authentic case of Asperger's is one who would fit the bill of having a documented high I.Q. but no apparent common sence, and no obvious signs of a psychological disorder.

I just wanted to bring this up because it could account for some people who come off this way. Other possibilities had been mentioned already.

alot of people suffer from this problem I am one of them its more of an inferiority complex a fear of being judged and found lacking and then subconsciously try to suppress any unusually interesting comments to not attract attention.

one thing that bothers me a great deal is the seemingly consistant and continuose ravonouse behaviour to classify
people into certain conditions
i hold some small hope in the fact that neurological science is slowly getting to better understand these types of things

unfortunenately there are a few common situations that
curtail certain "high I.Q people

(i hate the word I.Q as it is a test developed for finding a good accountant or mathmatician)
the I.Q tests are total CRAP and astound me how insulting they can be to ask people to take them seriousely

a couple of thoughts .. try and think of what number of teachers you have come across that try to engage the class and inspire their students

then think of this often used and very REAL term
"it is not what-you-know, ... BUT ... WHO-you-know!"
that gets you the jobs and chances to realy excell in life work environment
with the exception of those who may be in the top 2% on a national scale
who are then touted as being amoung the top 10-15% and so the bullshit is spread and the figures adapted to suit the most comfortable picture

if you are not aware of this as a working fact of life then i would question you on what you consider to be real intellegence :D

That's true. So to measure a persons total intelligence( if that is even possible) there must be several test covering different areas of intelligence, emotional, social, maybe even physical and spiritual.

True. The IQ test measures skills that fall in a limited range. Doing well in that range is meaningless if you don't have all kinds of other life skills to support the ones in this range. A person can succeed exceptionally well in a large number of fields while, at the same time, not testing particularly well in the "IQ" range.

Yes
good point about the physical test
the one thing that is often over looked is the ability to deal with
situations that require a certain amount of spatial and interactive ability
while applying it inside a working example requiring other aspects like maths and reasoning powers
so far i have only met one or maybe two people who could do that

zoobyshoe
one thing that comes to mind from what you mention is the statistics regarding Entrapeneurs
i have heard that some where in the range of 60-70 % of the good ones never finnished highschool
(did not graduate)
and yet by most peoples interpretation of high I.Q.. they must have one because they have managed to make a great deal of money using what resources that have been avalible to them

what use to make me almost cry is the fact that most of the higher intellegence kids get missed in the schooling system and often end with a lesson of being another sheep in the dumb flock
is better than being a victim
now i am more inclined to beleive that most people are not ready for such things that can be achived through the greater intellegence if all the teaching methods were constructively designed around education rather than facilitation of intellectualy retarded working class job placement.