Joining MENSA - How to Become a Member

[honestrosewater]

Occultism, Demonology, Necromancy, ect. There's so much good fiction built up around this stuff, and it's really quite interesting because it all has backing in historical beliefs. Look, just go watch Constantine, read some Anne Rice books. It's all great stuff.

I saw Constantine and didn't like it. I think I liked The Omen (does someone get killed in the street by a big pane of glass?). Anyway, I said the angels were interesting. And Greeks believed their myths too.

Yeah if you just take it at face value, but Greek mythology is pretty boring too if you just list the deities, what they stand for and who's related to who isn't it! It's mythology, it's meant to be explored.

What, I was saying nice things. I give you the angels and demons, Good v. Evil fighting for men's souls, the story of Jesus, and redemption/salvation. But I can't think of any other stories or concepts that I like. Maybe the immaculate conception. (I heard a funny story, don't know if it's true, that someone mistranslated 'young girl' as 'virgin girl', and that's how the immaculate conception was born.) Maybe Catholicism has more interesting stories than the ones I'm familiar with.

My favorite stories are the ones I write myself

Cool. What do you write about? Do you stick with the existing myths or make up your own?

 

[Sir_Deenicus]

I'm sorry, but what does "higher frequencies" mean??

What is high&noble about the ability to solve silly, logical puzzles?
(I'm quite good at them myself, but I don't regard that as my best asset.)

I apologize for the late reply arildno, I have been a bit busy and have been unable to keep pace with this relatively fast moving thread. This post will likely be out of place but I feel obligated to explain myself.

What I mean rather, is that I feel IQ tests are as good a metric for intelligence as height is for the ability to dunk. One need not be tall to dunk nor does one need be intelligent - in the wholest sense - to be posessed of a high IQ. Sure many tall people will tend to be able to dunk but not all; nor in fact are all dunkers necessarily tall.

As for higher frequencies? I meant that those we place as Geniuses, the Einsteins and Galois, would likely not score phenemenomly high on an IQ test. Their mode and priority of thought would likely be quite different.. Enough so, that it seems silly to me to assume that a test made for and by people who think "normally" would be appropriate for a measure of their "intelligence".

This apple is the worst tasting orange I have ever eaten.

I feel intelligence to be an intangible concept, every bit so as love or wisdom; things whose quantification would result in an ambigous and very silly number. Of these, that we feel intelligence is a quantifiable concept whose measurement is not silly (say like an Goodness quotient?) is likely a reflection of our knowledge based society.

 

[arildno]

I feel intelligence to be an intangible concept, every bit so as love or wisdom; things whose quantification would result in an ambigous and very silly number.

To that, I whole-heartedly agree.
The quantifying process is very useful whenever it is meaningful to set it in motion..

 

[hitssquad]

Getting into Mensa when your true Wechsler IQ is below 130

I for one would Looooooove to be in MENSA. Just the chance to be able to analyze the atmosphere it creates, pick it apart, you know? but I'm sure I'll figure out a way to do it without actually joining (I'm very charismatic). Or who knows, I might actually get in.

You don't need to qualify for Mensa in terms of g in order to get in. All you need is a qualifying score. One can continuously repeat the Mensa exam indefinitely. One can take numerous other exams. Only one qualifying score is needed, no matter how many times one is tested.

 

[Smurf]

Cool. What do you write about?

Lots of things, I don't stick to mythology.

Do you stick with the existing myths or make up your own?

Why would I write stories someone has already written? Of course I make up my own stuff, but it's all based on this mythology and is entirely plausible (should you believe the mythology it would appear entirely plausible with your own beliefs) at least that's the goal.

You don't need to qualify for Mensa in terms of g in order to get in. All you need is a qualifying score. One can continuously repeat the Mensa exam indefinitely. One can take numerous other exams. Only one qualifying score is needed, no matter how many times one is tested.

Yeah I was thinking about that, after a little studying I'm sure I could fake a higher IQ.

 

[hitssquad]

How many unqualified Mensans are there

Yeah I was thinking about that, after a little studying I'm sure I could fake a higher IQ.

I meant that IQ scores are probabilistic. They naturally vary. Theoretically, any given person of any given IQ can get into Mensa. I don't imagine it would be too hard for a person with a +1.5σ g (.5σ short of the Mensa threshold) to obtain a Mensa-qualifying score by taking multiple tests. (If your SAT score doesn't qualify, then try the Mensa test, or vice-versa).

An alternative method of selection that might keep out many of the pseudo-qualifiers like the ones who are now members of Mensa would be to require multiple recent pre-registered testings (so that test scores can't be hand-selected) and an averaging of those scores.

 

[Entropy]

I got 122, but I was cooking diner while I took it.

 

[Art]

I meant that IQ scores are probabilistic. They naturally vary. Theoretically, any given person of any given IQ can get into Mensa. I don't imagine it would be too hard for a person with a +1.5σ g (.5σ short of the Mensa threshold) to obtain a Mensa-qualifying score by taking multiple tests. (If your SAT score doesn't qualify, then try the Mensa test, or vice-versa).

An alternative method of selection that might keep out many of the pseudo-qualifiers like the ones who are now members of Mensa would be to require multiple recent pre-registered testings (so that test scores can't be hand-selected) and an averaging of those scores.

The Mensa supervised test is nothing like the on-line tests. There are at least a couple of hundred questions broken into categories many of which are not multiple choice and so 'guessing' enough right answers to meaningfully change your score, although theoretically possible (as in enough monkeys with enough typewriters writing a classic) it is highly unlikely.

 

[hitssquad]

The origins of the probabilism inherent in IQ testing, and its implications

The Mensa supervised test is [...] not multiple choice and so 'guessing' enough right answers to meaningfully change your score [...] is highly unlikely.

Various Mensa chapters accept scores from tests other than Mensa supervised tests. All IQ tests are probabilistic. Even if Mensa has created one that is not probabilistic, a 120-something IQ person might take other tests and eventually get in by selecting his best score from among those.

Guessing is not the primary mechanism for IQ test score variance. People's g stengths actually go up and down from day to day and intraday. The tests are normed on populations whose members are scattered in respect to good-g moments and bad-g moments. Also, no IQ test is culture free. Some tests will give you unfair advantage because of your particular individual knowledge base, and some tests will give you unfair disadvantage. Finally, no IQ test is neutral in terms of the profile of mental abilities it taps. If a given test matches your profile better than it matches the profile of the average member of the normed population, you will be at an unfair advantage. The opposite holds as well where a given test might be an abnormally poor match for your ability profile.

For these three reasons, all IQ tests are probabilistic. If you take multiple IQ tests and hand-pick from the results your single best score, it will likely be overpredictive of your typical g-strength relative to that of any given normed population whose individual variations averaged out to a more reliable picture of that populations g-strength curve.

If, one the other hand, you average your results on multiple tests, you should improve the reliability of prediction of your typical g-strength over that provided by a single test.

 

[honestrosewater]

I don't remember much about my test, but it was only the test admistrator and me. It was all verbal; She would ask a question, I answered (or arranged cards in a certain order or such), and she would ask why I chose that answer; It felt more like a conversation than a test, and you had to explain your reasoning. If they actually take your explanations into account, it should be even more difficult to get false positives on such a test. If you did guess, you would have to lie about it.
The only question I remember was, 'Who discovered America?' I would have answered Christopher Columbus (it was first grade), but I couldn't remember his name for the life of me. I think I drove her crazy going through everything I knew about him and the voyage. She even asked me later in the test if could remember, but I couldn't - until after the test, of course. It really bothered me. I even asked my teacher to tell her that I had remembered. Eh, I guess it still bothers me. Stupid Christopher Columbus.

 

[hitssquad]

Technical issues in the administration of differential-psychological instruments

It was all verbal; She would ask a question, I answered (or arranged cards in a certain order or such), and she would ask why I chose that answer; It felt more like a conversation than a test, and you had to explain your reasoning. If they actually take your explanations into account, it should be even more difficult to get false positives on such a test.

The explanation might not have contributed to the test score. The intructions for the tester might have required asking the child to give some explanation for his particular ordering of the cards, without the particulars of the explanation being taken into account in the scoring.

By the way, card arranging is normally considered a performance item, not a verbal item.


I googled for the above IQ-test question and came up with this:
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/Articles/Using%20Test%20Results%20to%20Support%20Clinical%20Judgment.html

--
Some highly gifted children refuse to respond if a test question is too easy. They think it is a "trick question" and read many deeper meanings into the question than are helpful (Lovecky, 1994). They may get depressed IQ scores because of knowing too much about a subject rather than too little. For example, Melody Wood, who assesses highly gifted children in Maine, asked a girl who discovered America. The girl thought a long time and then said she didn’t know. When the test was over, Melody asked her the question again and she replied, "I know it wasn’t Christopher Columbus. That theory was disproven, but I just can’t remember who it was." We recommend that examiners explain to children that some of the questions were designed for much younger children and will be very, very easy [...]
--


I see at least two issues here. One is that of deciding what really constitutes legitimate common knowledge, and another is that of the testee's need to know at what ability level a given test item is aimed. These are issues that it may be productive to address in the science of ability testing.

I guess it still bothers me.

Performance variance on individual items usually contributes to very little variance in one's overall score. The test administrator gave you multiple chances likely because she simply wanted to make sure you had been assessed as accurately as possible. And as I implied in my previous message to this thread, your performance is being gauged against a normed population whose members are also are not going to have perfect memory recall. Thinking about that population of hundreds or thousands of kids that the test was normed on, it is perhaps easy to realize that probably many of those kids similarly knew the Chris Columbus answer but their memory failed them. Also your memory did not fail you on many other of the knowledge items, but undoubtedly there were kids in the normed population who knew the correct answers but whose memories did fail them. Every one of their long-term-memory-retrieval failures pushed your own (subtest and fullscale) scores up a little higher.

 

[honestrosewater]

By the way, card arranging is normally considered a performance item, not a verbal item.

Sorry, I meant it was administered orally, as opposed to in writing.

I googled for the above IQ-test question and came up with this:
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/Articles/Using%20Test%20Results%20to%20Support%20Clinical%20Judgment.html

I read that article yesterday, trying to find out which test I was given.

I see at least two issues here. One is that of deciding what really constitutes legitimate common knowledge, and another is that of the testee's need to know at what ability level a given test item is aimed. These are issues that it may be productive to address in the science of ability testing.

Looking back, I think my score may have been affected more by my not really taking the test 'seriously'. They tried to put me at ease, saying this lady is just going to talk to you, don't be nervous, just be yourself, etc. So I wasn't in test-taking mode or thinking about the consequences of the test. I don't think I even understood what an IQ test was. Well, I don't remember enough to say more, but I'm pretty sure I would approach the test differently now.

Performance variance on individual items usually contributes to very little variance in one's overall score. The test administrator gave you multiple chances likely because she simply wanted to make sure you had been assessed as accurately as possible. And as I implied in my previous message to this thread, your performance is being gauged against a normed population whose members are also are not going to have perfect memory recall. Thinking about that population of hundreds or thousands of kids that the test was normed on, it is perhaps easy to realize that probably many of those kids similarly knew the Chris Columbus answer but their memory failed them. Also your memory did not fail you on many other of the knowledge items, but undoubtedly there were kids in the normed population who knew the correct answers but whose memories did fail them. Every one of their long-term-memory-retrieval failures pushed your own (subtest and fullscale) scores up a little higher.

Right, I understand, that's not what bothers me. I don't care much about how I did compared to others; I mean, it tells me some things, but it's not how I normally judge myself. Not doing as well as I could have or as well as possible is what bothers me. But anyway, enough about me. The outsiders article just kind of rewoke something in me; I didn't mean to bore everyone with my life story.

 

[outsider]

140 and up is near-genius/genius level.
In some countries apearantly Mensa members can get special credit cards and insurance. A friend of mine suggests that to quell an ignorant population all Mensa members should be issued a firearm and a liscence to shoot people for being idiots.

i don't mean to take the previous post too literally, but some of those considered to be crazy were simply genius unrecognized... (and vice versa)

 

[Critical_Pedagogy]

Ok my first post.

So with all the "geniuses" we have in the world, we still can't protect ourselves from asteroids, our technology is still childish when measured against reality, we still live on the same planet for millions of years, we still use natural resources as our primary fuel, we still go to war against our own kind based on lies, we elect IDIOTs to power, ect. . . ect. . . .

I wonder what all these "geniuses" are doing for the rest of the idiot-humans. My guess is they are using their brains to get rich, and they don't care about improving the race. Humans, to me, are not intelligent lifeforms.

 

[Smurf]

Quit whining and get a job.

 

[Daminc]

Intelligence has nothing to do with 'morality', 'ethics' 'common sense' etc and that goes for 'geniuses' as well.

Consider the last 100 years or so and look at the advances we've made in science. Science has to develop progressively and we're bound to make mistakes along the way :)

 

[outsider]

Ok my first post.

So with all the "geniuses" we have in the world, we still can't protect ourselves from asteroids, our technology is still childish when measured against reality, we still live on the same planet for millions of years, we still use natural resources as our primary fuel, we still go to war against our own kind based on lies, we elect IDIOTs to power, ect. . . ect. . . .

I wonder what all these "geniuses" are doing for the rest of the idiot-humans. My guess is they are using their brains to get rich, and they don't care about improving the race. Humans, to me, are not intelligent lifeforms.

i believe the C students are the ones who hire the A students to do their bidding... but they get paid really well, so I guess you are right... they are using their brains to make money just like most people, it's just that they have more brain capacity so probably get paid more... if only there were a study that compared earnings & iq...

 

[hitssquad]

if only there were a study that compared earnings & iq...

"[...]the correlation between IQ and earnings is approximately 0.35[...]"
google.com/search?q=earnings+iq

 

[honestrosewater]

if only there were a study that compared earnings & iq...

If there is, I'm sure hitssquad will post it shortly.

 

[honestrosewater]

I swear I didn't see his post first! Wow, that is too funny.

 

[Pengwuino]

Ok my first post.

So with all the "geniuses" we have in the world, we still can't protect ourselves from asteroids, our technology is still childish when measured against reality, we still live on the same planet for millions of years, we still use natural resources as our primary fuel, we still go to war against our own kind based on lies, we elect IDIOTs to power, ect. . . ect. . . .

I wonder what all these "geniuses" are doing for the rest of the idiot-humans. My guess is they are using their brains to get rich, and they don't care about improving the race. Humans, to me, are not intelligent lifeforms.

Get a job...

Wait wait, no, better idea. Grow up, stop reading comic books. If your beef with mankind is that we are not able to stop million mile per hour projectiles being emitted from god knows where or that we haven't found a magical (also, since all matter is natural, there is no such thing as an "un-natural" resource) source of unlimited energy or that we have not settled planets thousands of lightyears away and made it our home, then i think that you calling another human being an idiot is rather hypocritical.

If you are so mad, go figure out a way to go to the nearest solar system, go figure out a magical end-all solution to the Earth's human population's energy need, and go figure out how to stop comets with a can of soda by yourself. If your so smart that you just know all their intelligence is somehow going into making themselves richer, it sounds like your smart enough to do all that.

 

[Critical_Pedagogy]

Get a job...

Wait wait, no, better idea. Grow up, stop reading comic books. If your beef with mankind is that we are not able to stop million mile per hour projectiles being emitted from god knows where or that we haven't found a magical (also, since all matter is natural, there is no such thing as an "un-natural" resource) source of unlimited energy or that we have not settled planets thousands of lightyears away and made it our home, then i think that you calling another human being an idiot is rather hypocritical.

If you are so mad, go figure out a way to go to the nearest solar system, go figure out a magical end-all solution to the Earth's human population's energy need, and go figure out how to stop comets with a can of soda by yourself. If your so smart that you just know all their intelligence is somehow going into making themselves richer, it sounds like your smart enough to do all that.

what I'm saying is that we shouldn't call these Mensa people "GENIUSES". Just because they can memorize more words, read faster, multiply faster, reason better, play chess better, and do all these nerdy things better than the rest of us, doesn't mean crap when they don't use their brains for the good of mankind.

Our technology is pathetic. Nice job GENIUSES.



=============


How many times does it take to get a spaceship into space? Ask the "GENIUSES"at NASA.

 

[Pengwuino]

what I'm saying is that we shouldn't call these Mensa people "GENIUSES". Just because they can memorize more words, read faster, multiply faster, reason better, play chess better, and do all these nerdy things better than the rest of us, doesn't mean crap when they don't use their brains for the good of mankind.

Our technology is pathetic. Nice job GENIUSES.



=============


How many times does it take to get a spaceship into space? Ask the "GENIUSES"at NASA.

Pathetic compared to what? The Outer Limits? Orson Welles? SCIENCE FICTION? Ivan said it best one day... its called Science Fiction for a reason.

I mean i can't even understand how you think. Do you really think its a simple task to solve all the problems that face mankind? I mean the complexity of hte world is astounding and these geniuses do not claim to know everything about anything. I mean if you could create a book with all the knowledge in the world about science, the average human being could probably only read and understand 1% of it in their lifetimes.

 

[Janus]

what I'm saying is that we shouldn't call these Mensa people "GENIUSES". Just because they can memorize more words, read faster, multiply faster, reason better, play chess better, and do all these nerdy things better than the rest of us, doesn't mean crap when they don't use their brains for the good of mankind.

What makes you think many of them don't?

Our technology is pathetic. Nice job GENIUSES.

Using what as a yardstick? Without someone else's technology to compare it to, how do we know?

=============


How many times does it take to get a spaceship into space? Ask the "GENIUSES"at NASA.

How many times have you tried?

 

[JamesU]

all very nice points

 

[honestrosewater]

all very nice points

You really want that most annoying award, don't you?

 

[JamesU]

mmmmmmmmaybe

 

[Critical_Pedagogy]

1-What makes you think many of them don't?
2-Using what as a yardstick?
3-Without someone else's technology to compare it to, how do we know?
4-How many times have you tried?

1 - Science enrollment at universities is way down. Kids aren't interested in that stuff. Statistically this should imply that a proportional amount of America's elite students aren't interested either. Unless you want to believe that all who sign up for science are geniuses, and the ones who aren't interested are the average students.
2 - Just look at how pathetic we are. We're sitting duck in space. No protection whatsoever from anything coming our way. We're no different from Chimps in the jungle.
3 - See above statement.
4 - None. More proof that humans (including me) aren't intelligent life forms. Earth should be called Planet of the Apes. That's really what's going on here. 2 billion people living off $1 or less. Wealthy nations polluting the planet for profit. It's a discusting filthy world we live in.

 

[Pengwuino]

1 - Science enrollment at universities is way down. Kids aren't interested in that stuff. Reasons: it's too hard, not interesting, blah blah blah. I believe the ones at fault are the schools and teachers. It's their job to make science fun and easy.

How bout we just "make" uranium safe to eat? Wrong. Science can't just be "made fun and easy". Its hard, its not all that comic books want to tell you it is, and there's nothing that can change that. Its not the teachers fault that enrollment its down, its societies fault. We can't just re-write formulas to make them fun and easy and pretty for children.

2 - Just look at how pathetic we are. We're sitting duck in space. No protection whatsoever from anything coming our way. We're no different from Chimps in the jungle.

You seem to be wholly obsessed with being hit by a meteor. Yes, we're no different from chimps except for basically we've created everything you interact with on a daily basis. Chimps do not create particle accelerators, chimps do not create space stations, and chimps do not study quantum physics. I cannot believe you would compare us to chimps in as far as knowledge is concerned.

3 - See above statement.

You didn't answer his quesitn. What is our yardstick? Who has better technology? Just because your personal opinion is that we're ape-like, doesn't exactly mean we're low on the technological scale. PLease provide examples of where we SHOULD be.

4 - None. More proof that humans (including me) aren't intelligent life forms. Earth should be called Planet of the Apes. That's really what's going on here. 2 billion people living off $1 or less. Wealthy nations polluting the planet for profit. It's a discusting filthy world we live in.

No, just more proof that you have no idea what your talking about. You are simply saying that you are unintelligent while the rest of world does indeed have highly intelligent people. Just because a bunch of people are poor for various reasons does not mean people are stupid. Chimps live off $0 a day, how about that, see how stupid you sound? Science and technology do not strive to spread wealth. Its goal, and the goal of most "geniuses" working in science, is to learn more about the universe... not learn economics.

 

[Critical_Pedagogy]

I cannot believe you would compare us to chimps in as far as knowledge is concerned.

===============

All the Knowledge we have can't save us from inevitable doom. So what does that say about our "Great Knowledge"?




You didn't answer his quesitn. What is our yardstick? Who has better technology? Just because your personal opinion is that we're ape-like, doesn't exactly mean we're low on the technological scale. PLease provide examples of where we SHOULD be.

================

If we were intelligent we would realize the we need all the efforts of the world's people to save ourselves. That means the rich countries should be helping poor countries with education so that we all can contribute to solving our huge problems. We should not oppress little countries and give token handouts to show we care. Humans should have 1 official language, and we should all get along. Nuclear weapons should be banned, and war as well. This great civilization that we are is a lie. We are savages and murderers just like the beasts on the savanah. The only difference is that we can talk to each other and write down our thoughts. Big whoopie.



The rest of world does indeed have highly intelligent people. Just because a bunch of people are poor for various reasons does not mean people are stupid. Chimps live off $0 a day, how about that, see how stupid you sound? Science and technology do not strive to spread wealth. Its goal, and the goal of most "geniuses" working in science, is to learn more about the universe... not learn economics.
=================
Geniuses would realize that those 2 billion people would serve the world better if they could go to school and have food on their plate. While the rich "intelligent" nations have too much food, the rest of the world cries out for handouts. It doesn't take a genius to realize that greed and unfair politics is what's killing those other countries. But of course, the geniuses in the rich lands don't care about dark skinned people dying. Somehow you want to separate the Geniuses in science from the Geniuses in other fields like politics, economics, ect. . . I'm talking about all geniuses in all fields, what have they done for the world? Greed Greed Greed Greed Greed Greed Greed. I have no respect for any of them.