- #31
Jonathan Scott
Gold Member
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Art said:
I started the thread because I was very upset about discovering that when Mensa (or whoever they get to do it) had assessed my IQ 20 years ago, they quoted a number without warning that this was only a catch-all "OK" value, and I had believed it. I can assure you there was nothing in the small print at the time (20 years ago) which suggested this, as I was particular interested at the time (for reasons which were probably somewhat naive) in determining the chances of finding people with similar intelligence. I only discovered this limit a couple of days ago, when looking around on the British Mensa web site.
I must admit that I chose PF forums to vent my feelings because I was assuming to some extent that the intelligence of PF readers would be high, and many (certainly most studying theoretical physics) would be more intelligent that the top 0.5% percentile where my Mensa score had placed me, so the implication that I think I'm "intelligent" wouldn't be an issue.
I felt that Mensa had misled me into thinking that I was less bright than I was, which affected to some extent the way I subsequently led my life, lowering my expectations of myself yet making me puzzled that it was so difficult to find others of similar intelligence. For example, I thought at the time "In that case, I guess I probably wouldn't have been bright enough to study theoretical physics at university anyway" and nearly gave up on it, but later I took a degree through the Open University consisting entirely of Physics and Maths courses and got first class honours.
Art said:Your complaint about the lack of shared interests between you and other Mensans demonstrates another gap in your knowledge re MENSA. I suggest you check out their SIGs, that is Special Interest Groups (just so you don't one day complain no-one told you what a SIG was)
Mensa is basically a social club for people who typically have a good university level education (at least back in the days when you had to be bright to go to university). There are plenty of good and interesting people there, but they are not very densely concentrated outside major population centres, and just being bright enough to do well at university isn't really a particularly strong shared interest.
I've been a member of the Space and Physics SIGs since I joined Mensa, and tried to participate actively for a while (for example defending SR against a supporter of "Autodynamics"), but I was already having better discussions on the Usenet science newsgroups at the time (before they became so overrun with rubbish as to become unusable by anyone who had a day job). I also participated in some local Mensa music activities, but found much better musical contacts elsewhere (which turned out to include some Mensa members and scientists).
(I'm still a paid-up member and still get the Mensa magazine, and my wife considers it amusing that almost every month the puzzles page or its answers column contains at least one silly error bad enough to invalidate the question or the answer).