• Mikina@programming.dev
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    5 hours ago

    I don’t get why something like Mesa even exists. Like, what even is the moment where pulling out your Mensa card is a good idea?

    Assuming you are inteligent, you should know that flashing a card from a gatekept “clever people” club will probably not impress many people, just like you should recognize that the test you did doesn’t mean shit and IQ is not a good way how to measure people.

    • ProfessorPeregrine@reddthat.com
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      3 hours ago

      Yeah, no one “flashes a Mensa card” unless they are a jerk. We joined many years ago when we lived in Iowa for the social aspect. The parties are a lot of fun and the people are all fascinating. Not all people you want to spend time with, but fascinating. We let our memberships lapse when we moved back to Colorado.

      Nearly universally, Mensans recognized that IQ is only measure of how well you do on an IQ test (which, as you may know, was never intended as a test for the upper end, only to find students who needed intervention) or the other allowed tests.

      There were materially successful people and not, socially adept and not. People we learned to avoid and people who became friends. Cringe and connection.

      I suppose it is like any other social club where you have something in common with the additional kicker that people were not holding back in conversation. You had the chance to rapidly be humbled in that case if you went on at length about some favorite topic only to find out the person you were talking to was an expert in it.

      Plus there were cool speakers and field trips. “Dumb things smart people do” was one of our favorites.

    • 5too@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      At a guess? Smart people like validation too; and are just as vulnerable to manipulation that uses it. Potentially even more vulnerable, in fact.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    14 hours ago

    I wish I could remember the story but there was a guy that joined Mensa so he could con people. It worked too which rather seems to suggest that the entry requirements are not all that stringent.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      13 hours ago

      I think their entry requirements are doing exactly what they’re supposed to.

      The problem is that intelligence, even if we could measure it correctly, doesn’t and shouldn’t imply what a person knows, nor their experiences and the wisdom that they carry.

      Someone can be learned with a low IQ. Someone can be wise and similarly low IQ. In the same way, someone with a high IQ can be unwise.

      The problem with having only one individual metric for a group which believes themselves to compose the smartest people, is that they’re arrogant. I know plenty of people who are so extremely intelligent that I am certain that they could be a part of Mensa; yet, they are not. When they looked into it, they decided it would be unwise to become a member, given the requirements and the attitudes of, and about, the group.

      Hell, there’s a decent chance I could get in. I’ve never tried and I don’t care to, for all the same reasons, so I would never know if I could “make it” or not.

      Their arrogance and hubris is their undoing.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Mensa is for people who grew up in gifted programs being told that they will achieve greatness just because of the one test they scored hight on, and then they amounted to nothing, so they need a place where they can tell each other that they are unsuccessful only because they are so much smarter than everyone else around them.

        High IQ people who manage to do something with their life usually have more to be proud of than an IQ test they took decades ago.

  • Pudutr0ñ@feddit.cl
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    18 hours ago

    As a big booty latino I feel both interested and offended by this.

    Also, don’t take our big booty latinas pls. We need them for <reasons>.

  • dalekcaan@feddit.nl
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    22 hours ago

    A reddit mod for a mensa sub sounds like possible the most insufferable combination imaginable

    • quetzaldilla@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      If you happened to have an unusually high IQ, why you would you choose to join Mensa, or be a moderator on Reddit for that matter?

      The smartest thing you can do is obfuscate your level of intelligence, not brag about it. That’s just how you end up doing more work and getting blamed by everyone around you.

      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        Eh, intelligence is fluid and the whole concept of a single IQ score is broken. Someone with a high IQ can be real-world dumb and someone bad at school math can become a genious engineer. And both can be equally good or bad at politics. It’s all just skills. What matters is mental flexibility (how well you halves are connected) and a healthy image of self and others.

        As long as you try to keep a flexible viewpoint and to experience new things now and then, you’re doing more for your skull muscle than most.

        Edit: ok, training your visual-conceptual imaginative power seems to be beneficial overall.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 hours ago

        As far as I can tell, most people out there have expectations about high IQ people which are straight out of Hollywood films and wholly unrealistic, so best just leave then with whatever de facto impression of brightness they have about you than mention a number and trigger the “Mental Superman” expectations.

        Also going around parading your IQ falls straight into the rule “the more a person brags about some great personal quality, the less strong it is” - if you’re really that bright, brave, strong, beautiful, confident and so on, there is no need to mention it since it’s generally obvious to others.

        • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Also going around parading your IQ falls straight into the rule “the more a person brags about some great personal quality, the less strong it is”

          Or it’s your only quality. The main reason to join Mensa is that you haven’t accomplished anything better since the IQ test you took as a youth.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            13 minutes ago

            As I see it, that’s both a problem of low self-confidence and passiveness (or maybe underdeveloped values).

            For the first, we all have several qualities, but people often don’t recognize or value certain qualities, especially people driven mainly by what they think others value and hence who end up valuing pretty much just the qualities modern Society focuses on - namely Wealth, Beauty and Brains - which is a typical low self-confidence thing.

            For the rest, as I see it, having some inherent quality that one was born with isn’t exactly something deserving of much pride because it’s not something one did anything to achieve. If that much one’s parents deserve the recognition for the “achievement”, though they didn’t actually do it on purpose, so maybe not even them. Having pride in being born with a high IQ makes about as much sense as having pride in being born in a rich family: it’s masturbatory ego stroking about one’s luck rather than a celebration of one’s successes.

      • Tja@programming.dev
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        12 hours ago

        Obfuscate your intelligence? Being a reddit mod sounds like it’s part of the plan, then.

  • shneancy@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    as someone who qualifies for mensa but like, i ain’t paying a subscription fee to be in the smart people club, that sounds really dumb (and also IQ testing is sketchy at best to begin with)

    yes, i always appreciate a big booty, on any ethnicity or gender, so latinas are indeed included

    • voodooattack@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      I took their online test out of curiosity and it said I was qualified to join. It was interesting to figure out the mechanism of it though.

      From what I gathered, it seems what they’re really measuring is your capacity for pattern recognition and association or something along those lines.

      • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 hours ago

        I was curious too. I heard that online test didn’t mean shit, so I did an “official” Mensa Test and well, trust me, you don’t want to join.

        following is a summary of a real conversation that I witnessed:

        A parent sought advice, their child would fake being sick to avoid school within the first 2 weeks of the first school year. After some conversation, the parent expresses 2 opinions, 1. that they think their child gets bullied and 2. That the child couldn’t express themself well enough to communicate what the issue is. So they just assumed that their child gets bullied, because if my child would tell me that their classmates are mean, I would call that express themself quite well for that age. Then in the conversation, they talk about how they thought their child how to write and read. So they are wondering why their child doesn’t want to go to school after their child was forced to sit in a chair for hours, being taught the alphabet for hours that the child already knew. I wonder 🤔 can someone here tell us why the child doesn’t want to sit in a chair for hours, writing down the same letter again and again as practice for something that they are already able to do? Does someone know?

        They really couldn’t figure that one out.

      • ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org
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        14 hours ago

        Isn’t this what most of IQ tests do? I sometimes take them because it’s fun to solve the pattern tasks but I feel like it’s nearly impossible to test the really interesting things like transfer and problem solving capabilities in a reliable way at least in this kind of way.

    • Dawn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      22 hours ago

      Haha I always thought that people running mensa are the real geniuses for basically selling self-esteem

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Exactly! Mensa is essentially the filter for people who think they’re smart but actually aren’t.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 hours ago

        People at the peak Dunning-Kruger point of intelligence - just above average intelligent enough to feel they’re “above” most people but not enough to properly understand the full nature of intelligence and its limits.

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      IQ testing as many other things, has racist origins and is for all intents and purposes quite useless imo

      • mavu@discuss.tchncs.de
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        21 hours ago

        In the process of diagnosing ADHS (dyslexia, other) disabilities, a IQ test is used to establish a baseline of what other people with a similar result can and cannot do and this is compared to what you can and cannot do.

        IQ tests do have uses.

        • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          Yup, just like BMI. It’s useful for things and the doctors are aware it isn’t perfect but that’s not what the general population thinks.

        • shneancy@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          dang, i wish they did that for my adhd diagnosis, because i kept looking normal on my tests and had to go on a manhunt to find a doctor who has adhd as well, so they could just vibe check me (and i did, but before that i spent a lot of money on futile tests)

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 hours ago

      It’s my impression that people tend to be more attracted to the unusual, so if you’ve grown up surrounded by big booty latinas, they’re not as appealing as otherwise.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        When people tell me they like people with brown eyes (as someone with brown eyes) I have always presumed they are lying but just want to flatter me. It’s a stupid thing on my end I’m sure, but my brain still does it

  • Photuris@lemmy.ml
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    23 hours ago

    Ok, so there is a pattern to this, and it has nothing to do with IQ per se.

    It has everything to do with political alignment. And it’s a multi-variant association (1. booty v. boobs, and 2. race / ethnicity / religion).

    I’ll use US-centric political terminology here.

    Hear me out:

    1. Men who prefer big healthy asses tend to lean left/Democrat/liberal/progressive. Men who prefer big boobs tend to lean right/Republican/conservative/fash.

    2. Men who are willing to date outside their own race / ethnicity tend to be more progressive than those who prefer to stay within their own race / ethnicity (although progressives can happily find partners within their own ethnic group, too; whereas conservative almost always look within their own ethnicity first).

    So, an appreciation for big booty Latinas signifies a. someone who leans left (booty), and b. a progressive willing to date outside their own race (assuming he’s not also Latino).

    A progressive / Democrat / liberal / lefty can also date PAWGs, big booty Black women, etc. and be perfectly happy.

    A Republican will only date someone within their ethnicity 95%+ of the time (some exceptions exist, but it’s relatively rare), and they ALWAYS prefer big mommy milkers, caring very little, or naught at all, for booties.

    So there you go. This is 100% anecdote, but one day, I guarantee, the research and science will back me up on this, as soon as someone conducts it.

    In the meantime, think about all the straight men you know in your life, and think about their partners. You’ll begin to notice the pattern. Some exceptions, sure, but a pattern nonetheless.

    As of yet inconclusive: whether or not “horseshoe theory” applies to any of this. I’ll need more samplings from Leftist authoritarians to compare against Left-liberals, Left-libertarians, and Left-anarchists. More data needed.

    • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      whereas conservative almost always look within their own ethnicity first

      Funnily enough, I don’t really see that happen. At least in my group of friends, the ones with the Filipino wives (and other wives from far away) are usually very conservative. They are then also very happy to talk badly about her family, her relatives and people from her country in general, but “she’s one of the good ones”.

      Maybe it’s due to the fact that they can’t find a local woman who’d accept them, and that way they get a wife with very conservative values who’s also happy to talk badly about her family/relatives/people.

      (Also, the fact that it’s illegal for Filipinos to get a divorce, with the only exception being if they are married to a foreigner and that foreigner starts the divorce process outside of the Philippines might be seen as a bonus by these guys.)

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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      20 hours ago

      This is 100% anecdote, but one day, I guarantee, the research and science will back me up on this, as soon as someone conducts it.

      What’s stopping you? Haven’t you heard that the only difference between science and screwing around is writing things down? Start screwing around and writing down your findings!