I wouldn't want to. I know it's entirely my own bias, based on no evidence of any kind, but I feel like MENSA is for people who don't want to let their intelligence speak for itself. Perhaps they are insecure about their intelligence, and feel like a membership card (something which holds no objective value of any kind) can prove their worth. I hope that doesn't sound too judgmental, and I'm sure my attitude towards MENSA says a lot more about me than it does about them, but that's how I instinctively feel.
Perhaps MENSA is for some people, but it isn't for me. IQ tests aren't for me either. Even though I'm occasionally tempted to take one, I know they mean nothing and no good can come of them.
I know that IQ tests are only useful for mesuring very specific areas of intelligence, but they aren't as ludicrous as some people think. Salary, life expetancy and number of children all strongly correlate with the results of these tests.
You will notice though that I only said that my IQ is above that of 99.5 percent of the population, and not that I'm a really smart guy. It's just a number really. Take it however you want.
I'm not sure that correlation with life expectancy, salary and number of children is good evidence to validate the efficacy of a measure. A lot of people think living a long life is prolonging your suffering, that providing children is detrimental to the life of the planet, and that salary-chasing is both dishonourable and prevents you from achieving the higher goal of contributing to society. IQ might correlate with those traits, but that doesn't mean those traits are indicative of intelligence or success.
IQ tests are typically designed by financially successful, Western academics. These sort of tests almost always include a self-selecting bias; that is, biases in the nature of the questions (stemming from the researcher's view of what "intelligence" means and how it should be measured) which lead to selection of people who are alike the designer of the measure, rather than those who are truly intelligent. In this case... self-selecting bias results in a semi-representative proxy, meaning it will probably select more intelligent people than a random sample but will still get a lot wrong.
Anyway, I think MENSA is pretty clearly an ego-boosting organisation rather than something that serves any purpose, and since I hate people who brag about their intelligence as if it's something they can control I don't have much time for it.
What do you think of Mensa (high IQ society)?
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I wouldn't want to. I know it's entirely my own bias, based on no evidence of any kind, but I feel like MENSA is for people who don't want to let their intelligence speak for itself. Perhaps they are insecure about their intelligence, and feel like a membership card (something which holds no objective value of any kind) can prove their worth. I hope that doesn't sound too judgmental, and I'm sure my attitude towards MENSA says a lot more about me than it does about them, but that's how I instinctively feel.
Perhaps MENSA is for some people, but it isn't for me. IQ tests aren't for me either. Even though I'm occasionally tempted to take one, I know they mean nothing and no good can come of them.
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Mister_Nobody
9 years ago
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I know that IQ tests are only useful for mesuring very specific areas of intelligence, but they aren't as ludicrous as some people think. Salary, life expetancy and number of children all strongly correlate with the results of these tests.
You will notice though that I only said that my IQ is above that of 99.5 percent of the population, and not that I'm a really smart guy. It's just a number really. Take it however you want.
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dom180
9 years ago
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I'm not sure that correlation with life expectancy, salary and number of children is good evidence to validate the efficacy of a measure. A lot of people think living a long life is prolonging your suffering, that providing children is detrimental to the life of the planet, and that salary-chasing is both dishonourable and prevents you from achieving the higher goal of contributing to society. IQ might correlate with those traits, but that doesn't mean those traits are indicative of intelligence or success.
IQ tests are typically designed by financially successful, Western academics. These sort of tests almost always include a self-selecting bias; that is, biases in the nature of the questions (stemming from the researcher's view of what "intelligence" means and how it should be measured) which lead to selection of people who are alike the designer of the measure, rather than those who are truly intelligent. In this case... self-selecting bias results in a semi-representative proxy, meaning it will probably select more intelligent people than a random sample but will still get a lot wrong.
Anyway, I think MENSA is pretty clearly an ego-boosting organisation rather than something that serves any purpose, and since I hate people who brag about their intelligence as if it's something they can control I don't have much time for it.