My IQ is below the “gifted” cutoff but still in the 95.8th percentile. I do feel the absence of those additional 6 points keenly. Things would be easier if I had them. I need to explain things to myself in order to understand them. I don’t mean practical things of daily life but theory. It takes a lot of repetition for me to understand a text in philosophy or a new type of literary theory.
N doesn’t share my interest in IQ and hates it when I talk about it. Which probably means his IQ is higher than mine because nobody hates talk of IQ as much as people with the highest IQ. I believe they are mistaken. It gets easier to live in the world when you understand that, through absolutely no fault of their own, most people cannot carry out the same cognitive operations.
Instead of being ashamed of not having genius-level IQs, people should be proud. I overcome my sad lack of 8 additional IQ points every day by working like a bastard. I didn’t do anything to deserve the IQ but I did do all the work that went into my every publication and award. There’s honor in that.
Clarissa's Blog 
“It takes a lot of repetition for me to understand a text in philosophy …”
I have no idea what my IQ is but even a lot of repetition doesn’t seem to help me understand philosophy. I’m much better with the ‘hard’ sciences.
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Even with repetition… you still have to *want* to understand philosophy 😉
I uh… do the same thing with music. I am not talented at it. If I got through it without stumbling, it’s because I practiced it twenty times at home (I put tickmarks on the practice score). I sing with people who have actual native talent and it’s all I can do to keep up. Still well worth the effort.
-ethyl
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Well, I inherited my grandfather’s bagpipes, had it remedied in Scotland, and learned to play it. My long suffering wife claimed my efforts were so bad that it sounded like I had a cat under my arm while cranking its tail, but became adequate for our local militia. One of my nephews now has all the family regalia and is going the same route, we might save that kid yet ;-D
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I have heard *all* bagpipe, even well-played, described that way. The point was to put fear in the hearts of your enemies while still out of bowshot, right?
-ethyl
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methylethyl
LOL, now that was a little unkind ;-D
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Sorry, I’ll brag a bit, in a weird way.
I have never taken the proper IQ test. Curiously, a test clearly based on the western IQ tests has been administered to us in high school, courtesy of the Soviet Army, during the regular/obligatory military training lesson *. Next time the teacher got back to us, he told everybody the results (publicly, that was the way it those times, public shaming was encouraged)… except me. So I asked – “comrade colonel-lieutenant, what was my score”? And he responded with “the army will be extremely hard for you”. So I still do not know my score.
v07
*military education was an obligatory subject in regular high schools, and the teachers were retired officers
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😀
I was tested at age 5 or so. My parents were against IQ testing, but their friend was going through the training to become a certified test-giver and she needed guinea pigs. I remember it being a mildly amusing game I played at the library with “Miss B” and a bunch of picture-cards.
My parents never told me how I scored. They feel that telling kids stuff like that is bad for them– whether you score high, low, or average, it’s mean to pin a kid in a psychological box like that. Plus, they said, it wasn’t very accurate at that age, and Miss B was just learning to give the test anyway.
There is supposed to be a fair correlation between SAT scores and IQ (you can find charts online) but I’m skeptical. I grew up with a guy who was a certifiable genius, and I scored like fifty points higher than he did on the SAT. The best explanation I’ve run across is simply that for any IQ above… what? 135-ish? 140?… these tests aren’t very informative. If using the standard tests, there probably shouldn’t *be* any score above 130 or perhaps 135, because after that, all it can tell you with any accuracy is “135+” and isn’t capable of anything more granular after that. I think there might be a more specific testing regimen for the high end of the range, but I don’t know anybody who’s done it. Not sure it even matters other than for finding kids with disabilities who need special help. Once out of grade school, what matters is the work you do. Nobody gives a flip about how you scored. Plus, we get dumber with age, but make up for it by being more suspicious 😉
-ethyl
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