Saturday, May 25, 2013

IQ is meaningless.

Here's an article which explains how IQ is a meaningless metric that serves little more than to be a point for bragging. 

http://listverse.com/2013/05/19/8-reasons-the-iq-is-meaningless/

And it pretty much covers everything I could say on the matter. Save two anecdotes on my experiences with IQ.

MENSA

I was interested and so I took the Stanford-Binet test and scored a 146. The minimum on that particular test is 132. So I went and took the actual admissions test and was accepted. I was told where the next meeting was to be, was handed my intro package and was told that they were looking forward to seeing me there.

I got there after reading the info pack and was excited as all hell. 
Mensa's constitution lists three purposes: "to identify and to foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity; to encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence; and to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members".
 Gee! Sounds like fun doesn't it?

Except when I got there...it was a bunch of people who in my honest opinion couldn't pour piss out of a boot if you printed the instructions on the heel. They were talking about the most mundane things and nit picking them apart and finding all the things that were idiotic about them...

But when I asked "Well then what should the solution be?" they stated that it wasn't their problem and that they didn't care.
Mensa's constitution lists three purposes: "to identify and to foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity; to encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence; and to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members".
Uhm...if we're not going to use our braininess for the benefit of humanity like it says in your constitution, then why in the name of Zeus's sweaty nutsack are we doing here?

I left shortly after the conversation started covering Star Trek. Not that I was being petty about anyone ripping into Star Trek, but when someone argues that Star Trek has no real point other than to be mindless entertainment for the masses, I'm going to make a counter point.

Those points being that:

  1. Star Trek (and Scotty in particular) inspired people to become engineers, many of them going to Engineering-course-heavy colleges. Which is why Milwaukee School Of Engineering gave James Doohan an honorary degree.
  2. Many of those engineers sit there and see the Star Trek fictional technology and do their damndest to make it a reality. The hypospray medicine injector became a reality when someone developed one for insulin. They sent a mock-up of it to the people in Star Trek TNG and they saw that it was only slightly bigger than the prop so they painted it and used it as an alien's injector. We discovered how to transport something. Granted it was only a single photon...but they fugging did it! We're currently sorting out how to warp space and by God if the mathematics are correct would allow us to someday travel faster than light. 
So I made these points and I was told that I was wrong. That Star Trek still was puerile and meaningless and that only degenerates like it. 

I got up, politely said that I had seen enough, walked out the door and never came back.

Now the anecdote that really proves the whole piss in a boot scenario. Don't drink anything from here on out. Your keyboard will thank you.

About a year after I was with some of my buddies in a diner enjoying some lunch and some...amusing conversations. Any of my friends know how strangely amusing our conversations can get. We happened to be next to a table with members of the local Mensa Chapter (not the same ones, I had moved to a different state at this time) and they noticed a problem that needed to be solved and had to be solved RIGHT NOW!

What was this Earth shattering problem that needed combined might of Mensa's greatest minds to sort out? Someone had filled the salt shaker with pepper and vice versa.

You may now facepalm.

So they put their heads together and came up with a plan involving the two confused shakers, a napkin, a straw, and a tea saucer. Sorry, I don't remember the details beyond that. But it was a convoluted plan worthy of Rube Goldberg.

They called the waitress over to show her that they were genetically superior to her and that they were capable of things that this poor diner waitress didn't have the mental capacity to dream of. 

Yes, they considered her that much of a troglodyte and said as much to themselves. 

Waitress came over and they explained the situation. The waitress replied "Oh, sorry hun." took the shakers and swapped the lids, put them down and toddled off. 

You see folks. The reason that the Mensa folks knew that the salt and pepper were in the wrong shakers? Because the caps were labeled with a big S and P. Someone had simply in their rush (this was a popular diner that made some damn tasty foods) put the wrong caps on. Mensa came up with a solution that was convoluted as all @#$% while the "dumb hash-slinger" came up with the real world, simple solution. 

So the article above describes how IQ is pointless and Those anecdotes were my addition to that. 

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