Take pity on the man who thinks he’s “superior” to you. He needs pats on the back to feel good about himself and is damaged enough emotionally to think that by putting you down, it makes him seem better than you. Of course we know that opposite is true.

As for taking the test – why not do it just as a brain teaser challenge? Stephen Hawking took it after his ALS really started to affect him, just to see if he was losing any of his logic and reasoning skills. You don’t need a piece of paper to tell you you’re smart and that is not what the organization is supposed to be about anyway. If you take it, just take it as as series of puzzles and stumpers – nothing more, nothing less. If your grade is in the top 2% of test takers, fine. If not, so what?

Just please stop grouping everyone with a high I.Q. as some snobbish prat with no social decorum or people skills.

A friend of mine took this MENSA test and got accepted. She did boast about it quite a bit. I have NEVER been the studious type. Back at school she was crazy about Maths and top of the class. Once-just once- I actually studied for a maths exam, I didn’t kill myself…And I got a near perfect score. She didn’t do very well although she was very confident about it.

During the year, while I was getting Cs and Ds, she continued to get A*s… One parents meeting my mother came home to tell me that the teacher told her he was positive that I was just as ‘clever’ as my friend, but that she studied more than I did. I took it to heart, and started to study. We both graduated with As

Recently I met a man who rejected me because of his supposed intellectual superiority. I won’t deny he is a master of the English language and is quite an intellectual. But once again someone has managed to make me feel stupid. Because he (like my friend) parades his smarts on others. He openly tells people (in so many words) that he is extremely intelligent and is looking for somebody as bright as he is.

I know that I will probably get into Mensa, I do well in IQ quizzes and I have a passion for number puzzles, Maths and Logic in general. But what I keep coming back to is the point that you just made… (I will stop blabbing and get to the point)..:

Does “knowing” you are smart justify your so-called intelligence, or is it the contrary: realizing your own limitations, and stupidity. There is hardly a good reason to parade about your own intelligence just because you believe it can be measured and ranked. As you mentioned: “the shortcomings of all existing measures of intelligence” should be taken into consideration.

I wonder sometimes how smart I am. It would be nice to have a little piece of paper to tell me i am part of an elite group of highly intelligent people. But judging from the uninteresting, egoistic types I have interacted with, it is hardly a compliment.

Being convinced of your own intelligence is the first sign of stupidity. Socrates, I think, said something along the lines of “true wisdom is realizing you have no real knowledge”.

That said, I read in an article one time that Mensa is more or less a place for underachievers to hang out. The people who may be smart, but have nothing better to do with their smarts than hang around at Mensa. The really smart people, the article reasoned, are too busy to waste their time swapping puns and bon mots.

That said, I’m sure it’s a wonderful group. Also, this blog is by far the best I’ve read all week. Byfield is also a very cool name. Please don’t flame me.

Do I win???

Now here’s something to think about. So you met some obnoxious people who couldn’t get through a sentence without mentioning a mensa affiliation 600 times. For this reason you think all mensa people are obnoxious. What if you actually HAVE met other mensa members…who weren’t obnoxious…but you didn’t know they were in mensa because they weren’t shoving it down your throat.

Maybe it’s only the obnoxious ones who go around telling you about it.

And while I strongly believe that enthusiasm and imagination are key to hiring people in certain jobs, if I come across someone with these traits who is also very intelligent, I will hire that person over someone who cannot understand, think, and/or reason as quickly.

I don’t recall Mensa ever projecting itself to be a group of wildly creative or interesting people. It’s initial purpose was to have smart people on hand to help Great Britain get stability back after WWII. That said, I have yet to find a Special Interest Group that is tackling the issues like universal healthcare, the homeless situation or the failure of not only public schools, but the millions of dollars that go into special needs kids programs that are also a failure. These kids need help that works. I found one that told me they did tackle issues such as these, but in the 13 years of this group’s existence, they have not once taken any of their ideas beyond group discussion. While there is nothing saying that all SIGs must be socially relevant and try take action – it would be nice if one was.