Should I join Mensa?

Discussion in 'The Cesspool' started by Duke Whittaker, Jul 25, 2011.

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  1. Duke Whittaker Banned Banned

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    I've taken a variety of online IQ tests, and the results so far range from 150 to 170.
    I know that Mensa is an organization for people with a high IQ, and I'm thinking about joining.
    How do I contact them? Will I get paid for being a part of it?
    I've also been thinking about the fact that the IQ of Mensa members is about 140 on average, which is much less than mine. Should I join an organization with a lower average IQ? I mean, I don't want to be bored. Maybe they'll think of me as their leader lol.
    Let me know what you think.
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    If you don't want to be bored then attend college, there's always courses that are available that you can find even on line as well. You will find that there are many people that are very interesting that don't have high IQ's. I think that sometimes people over estimate what an IQ test is all about. It never asks to write a poem, draw a picture, weld or various other things that we need throughout our lives.
     
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  5. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    I've always wondered who writes the IQ tests and what they really are designed to identify.

    I rather doubt that by joining them that you would lower their average much, lol, and yes, I'm actually very good with simple math and I DID read what you have posted.

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    Heaven forbid that you should be bored.......

    By any chance could you possibly be the one contributing by being boring?

    It's rather like bad breath......the offender is always the last one to notice. :bugeye:

    I'm just being naughty here, and having a bit of fun at your expense as I'm rather curious as to what kind of sense of humor you 'gifted' people have.

    By all means, roast me in return......I've got my Kevlar on today.
     
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  7. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    An excellent response, cosmictraveler. You are correct that IQ tests do not at all determine how interesting people may be, and that many people tend to overestimate the results of IQ testing.

    The things that people create......now that's interesting......and how they resolve the challenges in their lives in positive ways.......

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  8. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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  9. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    IQ tests that you've tried online will be different from the actual entry level test that MENSA to my knowledge supplies, their initial test merely allows access to a monitored test prior to allowing a person to join. The monitored test is fundamentally challenging based upon the time period that is allotted, rather than the challenge of the test itself.

    IQ tests online do not necessarily generate an accurate reflection of IQ through their results, in fact it's proven that the more IQ tests a person does, the more likely they will appear to have a higher IQ. In reality it's much like a mouse being trained to escape a maze, the more attempts it tries at a maze, the better it becomes at assigning it's path finding routes for an expedient exit.

    Will you be bored with people of a supposed lesser IQ?
    Funnily enough you'll probably be seen as having a particular complex if you maintain such an attitude, you will likely find yourself better balanced if you realize that you might not be as smart as you think and that some people will be predominantly smarter than you without the attitude.

    An example of this is if you drove a car and it breaks down, if you have no more knowledge of how that particular model of car works than it uses a combustion engine and uses a particular type of fuel, then the dimmest lightbulb of a car mechanic will outshine your intellect and go back to practicing hog tying his pet pig after he's worked his magic on your car. You'll just have to learn to accept that sometimes even the "dummies" will prove to have been more useful in various situations, so treat them with a bit of respect and understand their intelligence can likely outweigh yours if the challenge is right.
     
  10. Duke Whittaker Banned Banned

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    "Success breeds jealousy" I've made peace with that and I won't exchange petty insults with you.
     
  11. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Applause.......:bravo:
     
  12. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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  13. Rhaedas Valued Senior Member

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    How an IQ test is written can determine who does well on them. They can be useful as a tool, but aren't the end all of measuring intelligence.
     
  14. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Hmmmmmm.......possibly no sense of humor........inconclusive determination.

    You did note that I was being playful, did you not?

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    That's okay. I was being a mischief and I observe that you have now been 'discovered' and are receiving some good advice from other forum members.
     
  15. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Too true. The definition of 'intelligence' is still being debated in many circles.

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  16. Duke Whittaker Banned Banned

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    As Gandhi once wisely said- "Haters make me famous!"
     
  17. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    I'll just quote a URL from wikipedia (although it's not the best source, it's the Free one)

    Illusory superiority

    Think very carefully about your egocentric perspective and how it appears to others, after all if you truly have the intellect you profess to have, then you'll understand to weigh the information up rather than just think it's some dig at you.
     
  18. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    If you're so smart, why don't you figure out how to contact them yourself?
     
  19. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    So, a rather thick teenager, or a pretty damned amusing troll? Thoughts?
     
  20. Rhaedas Valued Senior Member

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    Intelligence and Wisdom are separate dice rolls in D&D for a reason.
     
  21. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Good for you. That probably makes you average on this website.
    They only accept the top two percent of the population. IIRC, that's 130.
    Wull geeze, I'm just a dummy with an IQ of only 140 (top one percent). I stupidly typed MENSA into the address bar on my browser, and it automatically filled that out to http://mensa.com, which was then converted automatically to http://mensa.org, which took me immediately to their home page. You're smarter than me so you can probably figure out a faster way. Mine took about four seconds because I managed to do that without making any typing errors.
    What kind of an organization do you think this is? It's a club! Their only regular income is membership dues, although I suppose they hold events and charge admission, and perhaps people like Marilyn Vos Savant make donations to keep them in business.
    The vast majority of the people you've known your whole life, including your teachers, have lower IQs than yours. Have they bored you?

    Once someone gets to be around 120, that's the level of an American university graduate. That means that even if they haven't actually attended a university, they have the mental capacity to analyze the events that occur around them, understand how things work, know how to find more information when they want it, and also that they have fairly good communication skills (although there are some really annoying exceptions to that generalization). This is all it takes to be interesting. The rest is up to the individual. Some really ordinary people care passionately about humanity and are both surprisingly well informed and surprisingly perceptive about what's wrong and what might be good ways to fix it. And surely you've met some exceptionally intelligent people who dismiss humanity as roadkill and don't care about anything but whatever they're majoring in.

    If you are, for example, a biologist and you expect the people in MENSA to understand the things you learned in your graduate program, you'll be disappointed. They'll be interested in what you have to say, assuming you are an engaging speaker, but they majored in something else in which you can't hold up your end of the conversation.

    I have several friends who are MENSA members and they assure me that when they get together they do not discuss the theory of relativity. They talk about music, art, their children, politics and the same things we all talk about. If there are three physicists in the room, then sure they might get into an animated discussion of Dark Matter, but more likely they're happy to leave their lab coats in the lab and have some fun. Obviously they're going to have the occasional chess or go tournament but they also play bridge and Scrabble.

    One of these people is from California like me and she has participated in events with one of the California chapters as well as one of the chapters here on the East Coast. She said the difference between those two groups was much greater than the difference between smart people and average people. Most of the Californians had attended public schools, so they were housebroken and easy to get along with. The Marylanders had attended private schools where they were insulated from reality and the people who inhabit it. They were a really bizarre combination of clueless and snooty.

    She much preferred the California group. Two or three times a year they rented a pool and had an all-night nude swimming party.

    Don't forget that spouses are automatically eligible for membership without having to take the test. So you have no way of knowing whether any particular person you meet there has a high IQ, and some of them don't know either. (They're welcome to take the test and one lady was pleased to discover that she passed, but it's not required.) Once you join MENSA, you're a member of MENSA. So even if you divorce your rocket-scientist husband or wife, you can still go to the meetings and the nude swimming parties. Considering what the divorce rate is in America I'd guess that quite a few of the people you'll meet in MENSA didn't get there because of 130+ IQs.

    No, I'm not a member. I don't have any trouble having a good time with the people I meet in the normal course of life. I'm sure the people whose company I would not enjoy wouldn't enjoy mine either, so I suppose this process is biased toward the brighter end of the spectrum. But I've had a couple of really dear friends about whom I can say with complete confidence that they'd never make it into MENSA, and we've had an awful lot of fun together.
     
  22. Aladdin Registered Senior Member

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    Any idea what the divorce rate is among those holding a MENSA membership? I'm kind of curious how it compares to the general population.
     
  23. Ellie Banned Banned

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    My IQ is over 150. You contact them with the phone.
     
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