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...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Proof that Every Grammar for English has Self-Embedding to an Unbounded Depth

Authors: Daniel Pohl, Iakovos Koukas, Noam Chomsky Introduction The distinction between competence and performance has played a foundational role in the philosophy of linguistics. Competence is a grasp of the structural properties of all the sentences of a language. Performance involves actual real-time use and may diverge from the underlying competence. Idealizing away from psycholinguistically relevant factors like limits on memory and processing plays a significant role in various essential debates within the field of linguistics. Perhaps the most central and famous is the issue of whether English is a finite-state language. This article provides a proof of the relevant theorem, originally from Chomsky 1959. The claim that any finite-state automaton does not accept English is supported by showing that every grammar for English has self-embedding to an unbounded depth. Self-Embedding The economical production forms for context-free languages, especially the Chomsky normal-for
Read more

Symbiont Conversion Theory

Abstract Symbiont Conversion Theory is a new scientific theory, summarizing and generalizing efforts that have been made by various researchers in the past years; it could even be perceived as a new scientific paradigm. This theory states that microorganisms and cells which are commonly considered to display parasitic behaviour can be "educated" and transformed into symbionts. This is not just a hypothesis but a theory since there is already evidence that proves that this is possible. The primary motivation for developing this theory is the failure of classical approaches to therapy of cancer and infectious diseases that follow the paradigm "destroy and kill". It is common knowledge about medical doctors that chemotherapy and radiation therapy have detrimental side effects on healthy, functional tissue, and also that antibiotics can harm benevolent cells. These negative side effects can possibly be avoided by the new approach of treating parasitic diseases by conver
Read more

Optimal IQ: A Speculative Model

Image
How we profit from IQ is frequently talked about in IQ societies. And the foregone conclusion: the higher the better . However, turns out there’s a cost associated with higher IQ, one put forth in a recent paper[1] indicating the good of high intelligence; more opportunities, higher self–awareness, etc and the more elusive bad or dark side to higher IQ; imbalances (mental and physical), debilitation, etc. In other words, there is a cost associated with IQ increase beyond some as yet, unknown value. Now, optimality, as we all know, is not necessarily being on top of the heap or at a maximum. Take an aspirin, it will get rid of a headache. Take a bottle of aspirin and you’ll be in the ER getting your stomach pumped. Even money— turns out you don’t want to make too much —has an optimal value being about $95,000.00 US dollars per year in the long run, that is, if one wants to be happy— optimally of course. Too, to determine optimality, as we all have learned, requires in the simplest sense
Read more