…and this is a 
My morning at Mensa
Category: Personal • Skepticism
Posted on: July 5, 2008 9:09 AM, by PZ Myers
Yesterday, I blitzed through a tiny slice of the Mensa meeting in Denver. My time was really tight, so after arriving on Thursday for a fabulous Pharyngufest, I only got to sit through two talks in the morning session before mine, and then whoosh, I was off to the airport and hurtling through the sky at 475mph to get back home.
I had time to look through the program at least, and I hate to say it, but Mensa meetings are better organized than the big meetings of most atheist groups I've been to (this is a peeve of mine — atheists give bad meetings, although I'm sure Margaret Downey will prove me wrong this fall). There were parallel sessions and a great deal of diversity in the subjects — which is especially good since there is a lot of credulous woo at Mensa, mixed in with the critical thinking — and plenty of time scheduled for socializing, which is the whole point of such events. The content was very mixed, however, and I sat through two talks that were not, I hope representative. I later realized I could have gone to the atheist meet-and-greet that was scheduled concurrently with the ID talk I saw, which probably would have been a much better use of my time.
The first talk I saw was "Is evolution incompatible with Intelligent Design?" by Edwin Chong. This was an attempt at a philosophical justification for regarding a weak form of ID as fully compatible with acceptance of a strong form of evolution. It was OK, not as horrible as it could have been, but the speakers motivation was transparent: it was a typical post hoc justification of a belief in god. I had a couple of major objections. One was his claim that ID is a legitimate scientific pursuit, made on the basis of the fact that they actually make epistemological claims, that is, that they express an intent to pursue a scientific line of investigation. Personally, I do not accept the fact that they have an honest intent; there's too much bad scholarship and far too much willingness to distort the truth at the Discovery Institute. I also don't think an intent to do research is sufficient to call it science. You also have to have some kind of evidential foundation, building on past observations — you have to be able to answer the questions "how do you know that?" or "why do you expect that result?" with something more than "because I wish it were so."
A good chunk of the end of his talk was a long discussion of the nature of a god who would be compatible with both ID and evolution, in which you could have an omnipotent, omniscient designer who interferes in an indetectable way by selecting probabilistic outcomes, but in which you also do not have a deterministic universe. It was overwrought, I thought, a lot of intellectual masturbation to justify the existence of something Chong wishes were there, but for which he has no evidence at all.
The second talk was pure crazy. James Carrion of MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, got up to tell us whose intelligence was controlling the craft. We got a short history of the UFO movement, from scattered reports of 'foo fighters' in WWII to the incident that started it all, the 1947 report of flying saucers in formation over Mt Rainier, to modern day accounts. He showed some of the McMinnville UFO photos, and seemed to think these were good examples of UFO evidence — they look like poorly photographed pie plates, if you ask me. Carrion thinks that UFOs are actually high tech craft built by our government that are being tested or used in secret missions. It was telling that when he said his reason for believing this was that it seemed much more likely than that aliens flew here that our government is lying to us, that there was much nodding of heads in the audience. Many of the questions revealed a weird conspiracy theorist mindset in the crowd. The best question was when one woman asked him to give the single most persuasive piece of evidence that UFOs exist…and Carrion couldn't do it. The best he could do is cite trace evidence. He thought that soil changes (which he did not or could not describe) at purported UFO landing sites were evidence that something unusual had happened there; people in the audience actually chimed in with crop circle stories. Who knew ropes and boards were our government's secret high technology?
What I find most damning about the whole UFO movement is that, as Carrion explained, they've got 60 years of history and absolutely nothing to show for it other than accumulated and often contradictory anecdotes. I say, cut through the crap: it's a testimony to the imperfection of human perception and the suggestibility of the human mind, nothing more.
Then I gave my talk, which went in the other direction. It was OK, but I'm still working on getting this message across, which is really difficult to do: that the important evidence for evolution is all molecular, and that we've got this incredible wealth of detail available. I think I went over the audience's heads in a few places. Oh, well — I'd rather credit my listener's with more knowledge than less, and challenge them a little bit to learn more, than to dumb it down. I still have to work at making the abstractions of the molecular evidence more entertaining, though.
And that was it. It would have been good to get a more representative sample of the talks that were going on, but time was short. At least the people I met were smart and fun, even if those talks were a little odd!
Comments
Posted by: Anon | July 5, 2008 9:25 AM
Hate to say it, but I never liked Mensa; the members I have known have tended to think that since they are so intelligent, they cannot be fooled into believing something (ESP, e.g.) that is not true. They also have been (again, this is only my experience) particularly susceptible to flattery ("well, most people don't have ESP, because they are not utilizing their brains as efficiently as you are...") as a means to fool them.
Your commentary seems completely compatible with my observation. I'd like to think otherwise, but oh, well.
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | July 5, 2008 9:27 AM
Stand up proud, son. Our government has the highest tech pie plates in the world!Posted by: konrad_arflane | July 5, 2008 9:30 AM
All the other UFO nonsense aside, I'd say that's an accurate assessment of probabilities.
Posted by: Holbach | July 5, 2008 9:33 AM
Discussions of ID in terms of scientific discipline in a philosophical justification, UFOs, crop circles! Good grief, what could possibly come up next; mental telepathy to contact the tooth fairy and levitation? You would have done better by staying home and posting real stuff!
Posted by: Zeno | July 5, 2008 9:33 AM
A big problem with Mensa is that high-IQ alone doesn't necessarily make you that smart. Or, rather, you can end up using those smarts to promote stupid things. You just do it better than stupid people. Mensa has special interest groups devoted to 9/11 conspiracies, astrology, Christianity, alternative health remedies, and parapsychology. Isaac Asimov was a longtime leader in Mensa who used to lament that members would come up to him at meetings and try to persuade him that he should take astrology more seriously. [sigh]
On the other hand, I hear you usually don't have to explain your jokes to them.
Posted by: Michael Murray | July 5, 2008 9:42 AM
It always strikes me as strange that in modern times nearly everybody in the western world has a camera in their phone and hence a camera with them all the time but still there are no good UFO photo's.
Michael
Posted by: Kurt | July 5, 2008 9:45 AM
It's more than a little ironic that at a Mensa meeting, you first have to sit through two talks dealing with nothing but speculative nonsense, and then need to be concerned about your own talk going over the heads of the audience!
Maybe Mensa members suffer a bit from the same arrogance about the power of their intellects that the ID community likes to indulge in. Being bright does not make a person immune from sloppy thinking and unjustified beliefs. What's required is discipline in thought, just as natural ability is not going to guarantee an athlete success if they are not disciplined in their training regimen.
Posted by: James F | July 5, 2008 9:46 AM
Many of the questions revealed a weird conspiracy theorist mindset in the crowd.
It's a short hop from government cover-up to the Global Darwinist Conspiracy.
Posted by: Holbach | July 5, 2008 9:49 AM
Michael @ 6 If they could only get those pie plates and frisbees from coming out all blurred! No damned cooperation!
Posted by: ChemBob | July 5, 2008 9:51 AM
I used to be a Mensa member and was constantly frustrated by the amount of woo coming out of some of the members and the fact that they generally seemed to spend too much of their time playing intellectual games rather than applying their intellects to resolving serious problems of our country and the world. Perhaps I just didn't participate sufficiently long to discover such Mensans, but my impatience got the better of me. Perhaps I should try again; try to get a local atheist and scientist group going or something. Probably be a very small group.
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | July 5, 2008 9:54 AM
Our government has the highest tech pie plates in the world!
Then why can't I get anything with even heat distribution?
Posted by: Stagyar zil Doggo | July 5, 2008 9:55 AM
Absolutely not. Perfect compatibility is ensured by a small modification to ID theory - that 'the Designer'(TM) is Darwin's bitch.Posted by: Bob O'H | July 5, 2008 9:56 AM
Ha! Is that the best you can do? In Britain, we have the best crop circles. Including ones with π!Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | July 5, 2008 10:03 AM
I used to get invitations to join MENSA following my ACT's and SAT's. (Apparently they have low standards.) I could never really see the point of it, other than to network with people who liked to talk backwards and make jokes about improperly installed transistors, etc. As pointed out, high IQ (whatever that is) doesn't have a confident correlation with skepticality. We all know about Salem's hypothesis.
In a MENSA meeting, though, I would think that if you are afraid that your presentation may go over your audience's head many would take that as a challenge and want to find out how to learn more about what you are saying.
In your presentation last year on "God and the Brain" before the Minnesota Atheists, you tamped it down quite a bit, but I did follow up on key points that you made and it was fun to learn more about neurobiology.
I have an idea; perhaps you could perk up a bit of interest in your presentation by saying it's a conspiracy on the part of the Science Journal Cabal:
"Nature magazine thinks you should pay for this information and is on a mission to discredit Open-Access to scientific."
That'll get them diving into PLoS.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | July 5, 2008 10:08 AM
Crap. Two corrections (see what I mean about MENSA's low standards?)
s/b "No Ghosts in Your Brain." s/b "Nature magazine thinks you should pay for this information and is on a mission to discredit Open-Access to scientific studies."Posted by: JRQ | July 5, 2008 10:09 AM
The Mensa types tend to be very good at pattern recognition, and not so good at more analytic reasoning (e.g., hypothesis testing). Pattern recognition is a double-edged sword -- the better you are at extracting complex patterns and regularities from information, the more susceptible you are to overfitting.
Posted by: S.Scott | July 5, 2008 10:09 AM
There were UFO's spotted in England over the past couple of weeks! :-)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2226748/UFOs-spotted-by-Navy-engineer-above-the-M5-motorway.html
Posted by: random guy | July 5, 2008 10:09 AM
In my experience Mensa is just a group for people who score high on IQ tests. Incidentally they also seem to preoccupy themselves with the exact same kind of logic questions that make up those tests. Which I'm sure that has nothing to do with why they score so well on them.
I once heard Mensa described as a place for people who have nothing greater to their name than a test score. All the other "smart people" are busy doing something else. I haven't seen much evidence to counter this theory.
Posted by: JeffreyD | July 5, 2008 10:09 AM
MAJeff at #11 - "Our government has the highest tech pie plates in the world!"
"Then why can't I get anything with even heat distribution?"
MaJeff, you need the special light and radar absorbing pie plates derived from the black helicopter (tm). I can possibly help you, just send me your bank info and the plates will arrive in a plain brown wrapper.
Ciao
Posted by: ChemBob | July 5, 2008 10:10 AM
Mike, the score delimiters for Mensa are supposed to restrict membership to the top two percent of IQ based on the testing.
Posted by: llewelly | July 5, 2008 10:12 AM
To me your experience argues that MENSA should replace their IQ tests with a roll of percentile dice - anyone who rolls 98 or better gets in.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | July 5, 2008 10:22 AM
ChemBob - at least in the 1970's 98%ile scores on ACT and SAT were sufficient for membership. I learned more in high school about gaming tests than anything else, which is how I fooled people into thinking that I am intelligent. SAT's and ACT's were then four-option multiple choice guess affairs, (eliminate the two answers that are obviously wrong and then re-read the question for clues to the answer) and I don't know that they have become more rigorous since then. I would think that if they truly wanted to attract the cream of the intelligent crop, then they would limit their invitations to those who reach 98%ile in GRE's and LSATs., and of course their own test.
Even with intense practice in study for LSAT, I only managed an 80%ile rank, because it is much more rigorous and involves building logic tables.
Posted by: Blogesque | July 5, 2008 10:22 AM
Honestly, PZ, where's the patient understanding? If you spent your existence being picked at by buzzards, hyenas and flies, you'd be a little crazy too.
What? It had to be said...
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 5, 2008 10:27 AM
It's interesting that it is on exactly the kinds of test MENSA glories in, that the Flynn effect shows up most strongly - in other words, whatever they measure, it's certainly not innate ability.
To me your experience argues that MENSA should replace their IQ tests with a roll of percentile dice - llewlly
Or a measure of smug self-satisfaction.
Posted by: ChemBob | July 5, 2008 10:34 AM
Mike, I remember the ACT; that was so long ago. I got in on my GRE scores, but generally I feel as dumb as a stump.
JRQ @ #16 re: your pattern recognition comment. Possibly this ties in with Kurt @ #7, who invokes the need for discipline in the application of thought irrespective of IQ. Perhaps one needs the ability to envision the emergent patterns and, concomitantly, both the intellectual discipline and education to test the hypotheses that might have resulted in said patterns to actually put the "Mensa Intellect" into play in a constructive manner.
Posted by: Betsy McCall | July 5, 2008 10:36 AM
Please, let's not turn this into a "MENSA sucks" fest. I joined Mensa when I was 15 and it was a great relief to know that I wasn't as much a freak as I felt like in school. It serves it's purpose for some and not for others. Not everyone has academia to fall back on for stimulating intellectual conversation. Most people I know (even in Mensa) can't keep up with me; the odds are just better.
And frankly, I was instrumental in getting PZ to this meeting: I suggested him and raised the money. And if those talks are any indication, it's that we need more people like PZ to go to these talks, not less, because for all a Mensan's in-born talent, they are just as susceptible to the woo coming out of the media and the churches and their parents and conspiracy theorists and all that other nonsense, and they are no more taught critical thinking than the man on the street. Yes, they are wasting their abilities. They need to be around people who can set them straight.
There is now a huge Atheists group in Mensa, over 600 strong on the Yahoo Group. A welcome relief.
So please, if you are going bash people, bash them for their specific beliefs. Don't bash Mensa. I'm sick of it. It's your own perceptions that smart people should be somehow more rational than the average man on the street that disappoints you. Unfortunately, they are all too human.
(And frankly, I would have thought math people would be decent rational thinkers, and there is still plenty of woo running around math circles, too. And on average, they are probably smarter than most Mensans.)
Posted by: Betsy McCall | July 5, 2008 10:40 AM
Oh, and PZ, thank you for doing this for us. I wish I could have been there, but I had to cancel my trip out there for financial reasons. I really appreciate your effort, even if the woo people, or the other people reading this blog, don't. Thank you.
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 5, 2008 10:40 AM
Please, let's not turn this into a "MENSA sucks" fest. - Betsy McCall
Why not? It does.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 5, 2008 10:41 AM
Are they still using that idea, after modern math on deterministic chaos and uncomputable numbers shows that no one can be omniscient on the outcome of physics?
So what they are saying now is that their imaginary friends are illogical. Funny, that is what I've said all along.
Come on now, it's obvious; many joins social clubs to get laid. And intelligent, well educated persons have IIRC statistically the highest sexual drives. It's a sex club.
Posted by: Holbach | July 5, 2008 10:42 AM
Jeffrey D @ 19 What, I thought you can get anyone's bank info just by knowing their zodiac sign and then using mental telepathy to clean them out?
Posted by: Paul Lundgren | July 5, 2008 10:43 AM
Just like religion, only less "credible."
Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World," one of my favorite books, had an excellent analysis of the UFO abduction phenomenon. He basically called it not only mass hysteria, but likened it to the whole bit about seeing angels in the middle ages. What a bunch of woo.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 5, 2008 10:50 AM
And that, I believe, is one other major reason for Mensa.
The guy who (at least used to) heads the swedish club IIRC had an interview where he related a similar experience. If I remember correctly he mentions feeling stupid during all of school because he couldn't seem to fit in. Turned out later he was unusually intelligent (as measured by tests, of course).
Posted by: fardels bear | July 5, 2008 10:51 AM
Betsy, I think people would cut Mensa more slack if Mensans did not constantly, as you do in your post, conflate "test score" with "smart." I think it is abundantly clear that scoring well on an IQ test does very little to prove the test taker is "smart."
Posted by: Holbach | July 5, 2008 10:54 AM
Betsy McCall @ 26 Okay, no bashing Mensa. "Hi, I'm Jesse. I have an IQ of 350 and I believe in UFO's, god, crop circles and seances. Duh.
Posted by: ChemBob | July 5, 2008 10:56 AM
Nick @ #28: Mensa does not, imho, suck. It is a very useful social organization for many who feel somewhat "other" than the majority of those around them. A high IQ in this dumbed-down, everything based on the "lowest common denominator" of intellect and capability, society is not usually a blessing. It didn't work for me on the levels that I desired (but maybe that has changed), but it does work for a lot of people.
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 5, 2008 10:57 AM
If I remember correctly he mentions feeling stupid during all of school because he couldn't seem to fit in. Turned out later he was
unusually intelligent (as measured by tests, of course)stupid, but good at IQ tests. - Torbjörn Larsson, OMPosted by: Maakuz | July 5, 2008 10:59 AM
My experience with the finnish Mensa is that they are more
woo than average, based on what I read on members area. It really is strange when you´re talking to people who seem intelligent, civilized and funny, only to realize that people are suddenly talking about how cool horoscopes are.
Last meeting I participated had an all-woo-goes, a local hare krishna leader and the chairman of Skepsis, finnish sceptical society (the main reason I got there) as speakers.
The best laugh the audience got was when Pertti Laine, the sceptic, told the audience that love is really just brain chemistry. To me it was obvious, and I was really surprised at the crowd´s reaction.
In a few months, we are having a large Darwin-meeting panned over several days. I´ll SO be there, hopefully ready to counter the blatherings of "evolution critics". Man, I never get tired of that title. Classic!
Posted by: fardels bear | July 5, 2008 11:05 AM
If love is "really just" brain chemistry, is a dollar bill "really just" a piece of paper?
Posted by: Danley | July 5, 2008 11:07 AM
Wacky stuff. The law of diminishing return is applicable to Mensonians.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 5, 2008 11:11 AM
Medic!!Copy editor!!Posted by: Pablo | July 5, 2008 11:25 AM
Two comments:
1) "Is evolution incompatible with Intelligent Design?" -- I don't get it. How can this be a worthwhile talk? EVERYTHING is compatible with ID - that's the problem. Even if we had a perfectly natural explanation for every detail of every system, we couldn't rule out intelligent design. Any designer capable of creating a universe and making everything happen has the ability to make it look like it occured naturally. There, a two sentance treatment of what was, what, a 1 hour talk? What else is there to say?
2) We saw UFOs over Indiana last night. It was really weird, in fact, mixed in among the fireworks, there was an orange spot that moved across the sky before fading out. Three times it passed over, all on the same path. Then again, there is an Air Force base about 20 miles north, so who knows what is flying around (the first two were one right after the other; had I known the third one was coming later, I would have gotten the binos; darn UFOs, never tell you their plans). Nonetheless, definately unidentified, definately flying, although presumably an object.
Posted by: Orac | July 5, 2008 11:46 AM
Vox Day is a member of MENSA. 'Nuff said.
Posted by: JeffreyD | July 5, 2008 11:55 AM
Holbach at #30, "What, I thought you can get anyone's bank info just by knowing their zodiac sign and then using mental telepathy to clean them out?"
Holbach, you know I cannot use my god given powers for evil. Of course I can read your mind, but if I try to do that for gain, my power vanishes. That is the only reason Randi still has his $1 million. Now, can I interest you in a pie plate? How about a set of Dead Sea Scrolls steak knives? They go well with the Last Supper bibs and placemats. And, if you order in the next five minutes, you will receive a genuine, autographed 3-d picture of jayzuz....the eyes follow you around the room. These items are all free, just need a free will love offering of $29.95 to handle postage and packing. No checks, money orders are fine, cash is better. JeffreyD's discount house of heavenly worshipful stuff, no better for the price.
Ciao
Posted by: JoJo | July 5, 2008 11:56 AM
Some years ago a friend recommended Mensa to me. I passed the Mensa test and went to a meeting. I was introduced some people who asked me what I did for a living. I explained that I was in the Navy serving in a nuclear submarine.
Most of the people didn't seem too interested. A couple of people denounced me for being an imperialistic, blood-thirsty warmonger who undoubtedly had shredded baby on my breakfast Cheerios. Another person told me about the horrors of nuclear power with the implication that I wouldn't need a night light since I'd soon glow in the dark. But there was one guy I found fascinating.
This guy wanted confirmation from me about the submarine base in Nevada. When I said I didn't know about this base, he told me all about the vast underground sea stretching from the continental shelf off California to the Rockies. This sea was being explored by the submarine USS Thresher which operated from the base in Nevada.
I'll spare you the rest of the details. This guy was intelligent, with an immense vocabulary, and obviously well read. He also believed in something so wacko that I was convinced that he was, to use the proper technical psychological term, stark-staring bonkers.
I had no particular problem with the pacifists. I could have probably given the anti-nuke woman more reasons to fear nuclear power. But the vast underground sea guy was too much for me. I did not return to Mensa and my membership has lapsed.
Posted by: Fred | July 5, 2008 11:58 AM
I don't get your statement that "the important evidence for evolution is all molecular". If that were true, The Origin would never have been so convincing. What about biogeography, developmental patterns, and of course the fossil record? In fact, we don't really NEED molecular evidence to accept the fact of evolution!
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 5, 2008 12:00 PM
Surprised nobody's quoted Groucho Marx here yet.
Posted by: ChemBob | July 5, 2008 12:01 PM
JoJo, I read your comment and couldn't help thinking that a person could have a top-notch state of the science computer and load it up with nothing but nonsensical crap. I have to wonder why people WANT to believe such foolishness. Why is woo so much more popular than science, which is infinitely more beautiful and explanatory?
Posted by: Mooser, Bummertown | July 5, 2008 12:10 PM
Mix in a little "because I wish it were so" with a whole lot of "everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and you got it made!
Panavision and Pangloss forever!
Posted by: xander | July 5, 2008 12:23 PM
JoJo: But we do have a naval base out here, a few hours south of Reno. They keep a submarine there for training. Unfortunately, there is no subterranean sea.
Posted by: Jason | July 5, 2008 12:31 PM
When is someone gonna say" "Mensa sucks, Go 999 Club!"
Posted by: Holbach | July 5, 2008 12:37 PM
JeffreyD @ 43 I'm hooked, er, convinced, and I'll take the whole crap, er, crop, as long as you throw in a lifetime subscription to MAD and REASON magazine!
Posted by: Holbach | July 5, 2008 12:46 PM
Jason @ 50 Okay: "Mensa sucks, Go 999 Club!"
Posted by: Soybomb | July 5, 2008 12:49 PM
One of my friends suggested I should join Mensa. He told me how great it was. After the talk of the meetings starting with a large group hug I decided it wasn't for me. It doesn't sound like I missed much.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | July 5, 2008 12:52 PM
Sorry, Betsy, I am happy for you that you find fulfillment in MENSA and I agree that contributions from people such as PZ are valuable. It doesn't appeal to me, even though I am qualified by their standards to join. I am sorry that I didn't communicate that well enough.
I prefer to belong to groups such as American Atheists/Minnesota Atheists because even though I know some atheists who are as dumb as stumps, it is a place where I am safe from preaching (even if I have to shoot down some 9/11 conspiracists occasionally.)
Posted by: michelle@michelle.org | July 5, 2008 12:56 PM
I used to be in Mensa and still have friends who are Mensans. Keep in mind that the audience in those talks you attended are self selected; they had a number of talks to choose from, or they could have chosen not to attend any. So the people who were in the audience were mostly those who were predisposed to agree with the speaker's viewpoint. Of the approximately 2000 people at the AG, how many were in each of those talks? 25? 50? 100?
Posted by: Sili | July 5, 2008 1:02 PM
Well, being told you're smart (for some value of 'smart') can easily lead to some degree of ... overconfidence, I'm sure.
Also, however trite it sounds, I'm sure there's a fine line between 'very clever' and 'mad'.
We all know of John Nash's schizophrenia, for instance.
Posted by: DanT | July 5, 2008 1:03 PM
fardels bear (#33) said:
Betsy, I think people would cut Mensa more slack if Mensans did not constantly, as you do in your post, conflate "test score" with "smart." I think it is abundantly clear that scoring well on an IQ test does very little to prove the test taker is "smart."
My experience is that it's most generally the non-Mensans doing the conflating. Most M's I know realize the vast difference. Keep in mind that the membership is a subset of society (and personalities) in general.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | July 5, 2008 1:26 PM
I remember IQ tests I've taken heavily rewarding pattern detection. Most of the kooky superstitions people have seem to be the human pattern recognition hardware finding patterns of cause and effect where there are none. If you're not trained to analyze data systematically, I don't really think that being able to detect complex patterns and unscramble scrambled words is likely to protect you from the human tendency to see false signals in the noise. It may even make things worse.
I don't know if I have a high IQ or not, but I've always been pretty good at seeing features in squiggly lines and scatter plots (which is useful as a signal processing guy). If you don't have a more experienced person who is willing to whack your hand with a ruler, there's a strong tendency to jump out ahead of the data instead of actually doing the calculations to see if what you're seeing is real. I know that I'm a more cautious person now that I've seen "obvious" patterns and been sure of my results, only to find out that they're really just a combination of noise and wishful thinking.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | July 5, 2008 1:39 PM
Zeno writes:
> Isaac Asimov ... used to lament that members would come up
> to him at meetings and try to persuade him that he should
> take astrology more seriously. [sigh]
>
> On the other hand, I hear you usually don't have to
> explain your jokes to them.
Er, do they understand what's funny about Asimov's lament?
Posted by: Holbach | July 5, 2008 1:40 PM
Oh, the group hug. It would be nice to see people at the verge of this silly debacle, look at the potential hugger and say, bug off. This is a ritual you see in religious circles with the "lord" touching everyone in an unbroken healing touch. An unbroken touching of wallets.
Posted by: Spinoza | July 5, 2008 1:42 PM
IQ tests correlate with how well one does in school, and that's about it.
They are the only well-established, somewhat useful metric we have for studying intelligence levels.
Of course there are a lot of variables that enter into any given IQ test score, but at least they're trying to measure... something... even if it's only ability to take IQ tests, and thus, ability to do well in school (probably because of low test-anxiety, at least, that's how it is with me).
In any case, IQ isn't everything, and there has been a trend amongst identified "Gifted" children to underachieve, including me. :)
Posted by: Anthony | July 5, 2008 2:15 PM
I'd love to see Dr Myer's latest version of his talk, especially the molecular evidence for evolution part (I agree that this is the best evidence for evolution).
Will there be a video coming??
Posted by: miller | July 5, 2008 2:15 PM
I myself have a really obscure reason for disliking Mensa. When I was younger, I was quite the puzzle enthusiast (still am), and people had a tendency to give me lots of puzzles on my birthdays. One time, I got a bunch of puzzles created by Mensa. I was very unimpressed by the puzzles they put out. It's not that they were poor quality. It was more like they had their puzzle design philosophy all wrong. (You can't just give two number pairs and expect the solver to guess a third pair!) Whoever wrote the stuff obviously had high intelligence but low wisdom.
This is probably a poor reason for disliking Mensa, but it still made me angry.
Posted by: Aurelio R. Ramos | July 5, 2008 2:16 PM
You do realize that all discussions about any subject for which there is little evidence (for or against) has no other purpose than appeasing one's own ego? When a subject has little evidence, it can be treated like a police investigation (in which case various leads are followed under various plausible assumptions) or, on the other hand, it can simply be ignored as chances are it makes no difference (by virtue of the fact that evidence is so sparse) But to go on and on trying to convince people one way or another only helps one feel superior, nothing more. Likewise, to pass judgment on groups of people because of their beliefs or lack thereof is only useful to feel superior than them. It is mental masturbation... all of this. Everything. Once we enter the realm of the unlikely (god, aliens, conspiracies, ideologies) we are probably ALL mistaken. If we could all understand that, the world would be a happier place.
Yes, I realize the irony of my comment.
Posted by: Holbach | July 5, 2008 2:34 PM
Aurelio @ 64 You mean to say that it is wrong to feel superior to people who think and try to convince you of their wacko beliefs in a way that is superior to your non-belief of bullshit insanity? Oh I see and understand. Since they believe all this crap, it must be true, and since you don't, your mind is lacking in cognitive abilities to understand the non-existent! Oh, I get it. It's not so much that I feel superior to these morons, it's that I think they are bat shit crazy.
Posted by: gaypaganunitarianagnostic | July 5, 2008 3:54 PM
I have seen it said that G W B has an IQ of 125. I could weep. Actually, I have a Mensa level IQ, and am what you could call 'book smart,' but am hopelessly stupid for anything practical. I have a notion that the founders of Mensa had a subversive eugenic motive - to get high IQ people together to possibly mate and 'improve the race.'
Posted by: Neil B. | July 5, 2008 4:00 PM
There's a lot of truth in what I saw above, but I've had lots of fun being in Mensa for the last 23 years (RAWphiles please note!) The conversation is very interesting, and there's a lot a playing with ideas because many of the us think that speculation is *fun* and exciting. We don't worry about the claim "it can't matter because there's no effect." (Like, a "God" that is existentially responsible for the way things are but can't affect anything - OK, maybe, but first: I can care about anything I want to and you don't have to bother. Second, I get sick of all the hypocrisy from those espousing what AFAWK, are also unmeasurable. That includes multiple worlds of quantum branching, or the idea that time doesn't really exist ("We live in a block world, there really is no flow of time" etc.) - so what e.g. is the operational definition of the latter being the case? They use arguments, I use arguments, and yes mine are based on something about the world and not any revelations or teachings or etc.)
Many of us like to "play with people's heads" and be a bit irritating, to the chagrin of many ferociously serious Atheists around here who can't stand the fun I have mulling that concept over and tweaking them about it. Really, many of you get so worked up about something that "can't have any effect" or whatever it is you're getting at. I also get a chuckle from the people here who think I'm just showing off when I try to argue about ultimate topics, even though I'm more often being sarcastic and having fun and they are dreadfully serious and scolding with their often clumsy rebuttals and air of superiority and disdain (oh the irony ...) Often the rebuttals aren't clumsy, but that just shows you can get some sort of handle and it's debatable, doesn't it? Yet Aurelio R. Ramos made a good point about all this, that most of this sort of speculation is indeed a form of mental masturbation. I don't fully agree since I (along with those critics who inadvertently support that when they disagree with me on track) think we can get some handle on such things with a reasoning process, but it's nothing to feel assured about. Aurelio's comment was completely and predictably misunderstood by the denizen right after. His critic didn't seem to get that Aurelio meant just the sort of things we can't effectively falsify like the anthropic designer God, other dimensions, and maybe even whether aliens visited.
Consider that the existence of beings evolved on other planets at least is something you folks should above all believe in, albeit perhaps sparsely sprinkled and not easily able to get here. But think of all the planets now discovered orbiting other stars. So, would any inhabitants sit around century after century not even trying to get on out? Have you heard of the Fermi Paradox, which is a statement of surprise that aliens *haven't* (supposedly) ever visited us, often stated as "the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations." There is a curious disconnect between the FP and skeptical denunciations of the UFO phenomenon. I know there's lots of silliness in what many people report, but my theory is that turning the nose up at the UFO phenomenon is more about psychological instincts and pecking-order aggression etc. than well-thought out rebuttal (of the general idea, not any specific case.)
Of course, the pinnacle of speculative bong-launched adventurism is (drum roll, please, and some of you need to avert your eyes ....) our old favorite overworked woological talisman, Modal Realism! You guys can look that up in Wikipedia, I don't need to spoon the definition to you like some wank in a previous thread bitched I should. Hey, maybe I should start a Modal Realism SIG in Mensa - we'll talk about how things work in the Bugs Bunny universe since of course there's no way to distinguish possible worlds from those that "exist" as David Lewis wrote. (If you can refute him, please try - I don't agree either, because I think logical descriptions aren't good enough to make a world. I'm not a cyberdork. But if you believe everything must be made a logical description, you'll have a hell of a time saying why "exist" really means anything outside of the mathematical meaning.)
PS: If you want to have fun seeing what fun a Mensa egghead with too much time on his hands can have on the Internet, look around for posts by and the website of "Uncle Al." He is a trip.
Posted by: JeffreyD | July 5, 2008 4:01 PM
Holback at #51, you get not just MAD and REASON magazine subscriptions, but also a "Get out of Frying In Hell Free Card". The GOOFI Hell card is guaranteed. If you die and go to hell your s&h money if fully refunded, just return from hell with your card in hand and show up at my office the first Monday of each month. Of course, this premium package is still free, but requires a free will love offering of only $39.99 for shipping and handling.
Now, I understand you may not be a believer, son. In that case, have some lovely UFO paraphernalia that is begging for a good home. We got crystals, we got tinfoil, we got anti-Xenu spray and purifier...
what? huh? Oh, OK nurse, will take my medication now.
Posted by: Cujo359 | July 5, 2008 4:02 PM
That UFO talk reminds me of a book I read many years ago when I was, shall we say, more credulous than I am now. It was called Intercept: UFO, by one Renato Vesco. Carrion's narrative is almost verbatim from this book. I don't know if Carrion was relating this book's story as part of his talk, but if he was claiming it as his own I think he's not even an honest bullshit artist.
Posted by: Neil B | July 5, 2008 4:02 PM
Heh, typing and posting too fast is perhaps a form of showing off that can go bad ...
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 5, 2008 4:04 PM
As if it weren't condemnation enough that Vox Day is a member of Mensa, we now learn Neil B. is as well.
Posted by: blake | July 5, 2008 4:32 PM
I used to get invitations to join MENSA following my ACT's and SAT's. (Apparently they have low standards.)
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD
well, i call bullshit. mensa doesn't send out 'invitations' no matter how fucking good your s.a.t.'s are. how are they gonna know?
i smell wannabe.
Come on now, it's obvious; many joins social clubs to get laid. And intelligent, well educated persons have IIRC statistically the highest sexual drives. It's a sex club.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson
you left out the beer-drinking part.
your pal,
blake
Posted by: Rey Fox | July 5, 2008 4:49 PM
"And intelligent, well educated persons have IIRC statistically the highest sexual drives. "
Are you sure? Is it possible that those surveys inadvertently measured sexual frustration?
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 5, 2008 4:55 PM
There is a curious disconnect between the FP and skeptical denunciations of the UFO phenomenon. - Neil B.
No, there isn't. The Fermi paradox is a good (though not conclusive) reason to believe that technological civilisations that get much further than our own are extremely rare. There are several reasons this might be so.
Posted by: Susan | July 5, 2008 5:18 PM
Come on now, it's obvious; many joins social clubs to get laid.
Worked for me. I met my husband at a Mensa party, 27 years ago. Of course, he was there with a friend who's a member. (He has always said he's far too smart to join.)
I've made some really interesting friends through the club, and attended events I'd probably never have known about otherwise, including a lecture by Buckminster Fuller shortly before he died, that I'll never forget. There are jerks, too, and the clueless-- at about the same percentage as in any other group of people, I'd imagine.
Posted by: themadlolscientist, FCD | July 5, 2008 5:29 PM
I used to get Mensa invitations too. I even seriously considered joining, but I got turned off by the alarmingly high proportion of members who thought their brains were so astronomically superior, they could teach themselves telepathy and levitation and build their own flying saucers in their basements.
Bah. Humbug.
And I wouldn't join any club that would have Marilyn vos Savant as a member. Stuck-up bitch.
Meow. =^.^=
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 5, 2008 5:34 PM
Good grief. vox Day, Neil B. and Marilyn vos Savant? It's enough to daze the mind with horror.
Posted by: thoffernifft | July 5, 2008 5:43 PM
My
Ego
Needs
Some
Attention
Posted by: Greg Reich | July 5, 2008 6:00 PM
Do you people honestly believe that Mensa members are simply idiot savants who can do well on tests and nothing else? You really, really don't know many Mensans.
Okay, so there were a couple of talks at the Annual Gathering that were weird. There are plenty of intelligent people--unfortunately--who believe weird things. In fact, intelligent people can rationalize their way around things more easily than people of average intelligence. There are also plenty of intellectually lazy people among the intelligencia. It's tragic, really, but it's true.
Do any of you know why Mensa is supposed to exist? Do any of you non-Mensans know the bylaws of Mensa? The purpose of the organization is to identify and foster intelligence. I don't find fault in that purpose. I think it's a good purpose. There are plenty of special interest groups inside of Mensa that have nothing to do with the actual purpose of the organization, and some of them are a little strange, but don't judge the entire organization based on its SIGs. No single SIG is representative of the entire group.
Perhaps there are better ways of measuring intelligence aside from administering a standardized test. It would certainly be an interesting area of research. In the meantime, I will say with certainty that Mensa isn't made up of a bunch of idiot savants who can only recognize patterns. I've never had deeper, more diverse, more well-rounded conversation than when I became a part of the organization a few years ago.
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 5, 2008 6:07 PM
I've never had deeper, more diverse, more well-rounded conversation than when I became a part of the organization a few years ago. - Greg Reich
I think I recall Tom Cruise saying something similar of the Scientologists.