On High IQ Societies

In the World Genius Directory currently 157 high IQ societies are listed, and that list is not exhaustive – there are several more than these. At the same time communication via Internet resources is highly developed, and many high IQ people are connected to each other via Facebook. In the following essay I want to investigate whether high IQ societies make sense nowadays.

We all know the story of Mensa: two passengers in a train noticed that both of them enjoyed solving logical puzzles, and so they decided to found a club for people who enjoy solving logical puzzles. Now the question is why they made an IQ of 130 the requirement for joining this club. After all, enjoying logical puzzles does not necessarily require a particular IQ. So perhaps the basic idea of Mensa is wrong; instead of requiring a high IQ, they should select their members for whether they enjoy solving logical puzzles. Mensa might be based on a categorical mistake.

However, that does not mean that the idea of high IQ societies as such is nonsense. A high IQ society might also make sense if there is anything that connects people with a high IQ, if there is anything they share and have in common. With Prudentia, this particular thing is interest in science and philosophy. While Prudentia requires only evidence of an IQ of 140 to join, I have written at the website that "people with high education (university level) and/or interest in science and philosophy are especially welcome". That is a clear sign that Prudentia is trying to nurture people with these particular interests. People who are not interested in science and philosophy might not be satisfied with Prudentia, no matter what their IQ is.

Of course it is questionable whether Prudentia should have an IQ requirement at all. All I can tell you is that I know some very good computer programmers whose IQ is in the 120s, so it is not high enough to join Mensa or Prudentia. Indeed, I have been thinking about loosening the IQ requirement. Abandoning it completely is not possible as otherwise Prudentia would not be a high IQ society. But maybe 140 is too high an obstacle.

Another question is whether the multitude of high IQ societies makes sense. Why did I found Prudentia when there were already so many high IQ societies? In fact I did so originally because most high IQ societies are based on the Internet and do not have real-life, face-to-face meetings. I wanted to create a new high IQ society that would also have real-life meetings. However, I have not been able to live up to this goal as it turned out that people from many different places joined Prudentia and the distances are too large to be able to arrange real-life meetings on a regular basis (let alone the current situation with Covid). But of course I am happy that there is Prudentia and that we already have more than fifty members simply because it is my own high IQ society, I have control over it and am the editor of its publications, all these being privileges I would not have in any other high IQ society since I would not be the founder.

The next question is: Do high IQ societies make sense in the days of Facebook when it's easy to connect with each other online? I think they do, simply because they enable people to discover each other. If there were no high IQ societies, I would not be friends with many of the people with whom I am now connected via Facebook. I would have never met them. It is just debatable whether this multitude of high IQ societies we currently have is needed, especially as many societies are dormant and not much more than websites with member lists.

Claus Volko

Comments

  1. LarsNovember 13, 2023 at 3:05 PM

    And there are many still registered, but it seems they already do not exist. At least their homepages disappeared. I checked it yesterday. So I have chosen the societies of the list of the World Genius Directory, which requiere an IQ between 130 and 141. And I was surprised in a negative way to find very few active...

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