It’s tough having a high IQ. Most people don’t understand the world and the flaws of humans, at least at the level I do. As such, I find it hard to connect to other people. Most people are morons. I feel deep sorrow in knowing the direction the world is going and that the inhabitants of the world are mostly idiots.
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Why do so many people (in this thread) unironically feel this way? “Intelligence” is a socially constructed and often useless idea that includes and excludes many things seemingly at random. For example, chess is often thought of as something that’s very intelligent, but skill at chess is (just like nearly anything else) based on practice & experience. Just because you’re good at chess and did well in school doesn’t mean that you alone can understand the problems in the world at a deeper level than an average Jo.
Everyone should read “What Is Intelligence, Anyway?”, a short excerpt from Isaac Asimov.
I’ll paste the part I think is most important, but the whole thing is worth reading:
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
You don’t feel smart, but everyone else appears extremely dumb
Frustrating.
The rate at which I absorb information is disgusting. Yes please finish your sentence I already have a response why are you taking so long. How did I learn that? I picked up the manual and did it. Developing new skills? Learning Rust right now and its going well, failed out of highschool because I learned too easily and didn’t need the homework to learn (so it didn’t get done).
It comes with imposter syndrome: I knew the problem, I had the pattern figured out, why did I still fuck everything up (plot twist I probably didn’t).
It comes with a superiority complex: I learned this in 10 minutes from looking at a Sci Journal, why has it been hours and yallvstill don’t get it? 🙄
It comes with accidentally hurting people: frequently I say things thinking something hould be obvious when it is not, while unintended, it often hurts my partner who is usually in the line of fire when I let some dumb shit outta my mouth and insult someone’s intelligence.
Anyway I hate it I’d rather be dumbsauce ignorance is bliss
Awful. I wish for ignorance in a very “Flowers for Algernon” type way, and often dull my senses with intoxicants just to try and get my brain to cease.
Imagine looking at the world, seeing all of the evils and horrors that lie in the hearts of man, and knowing you are powerless to stop all the terribleness that is happening as just one person. You try to explain it to other people, you try to get them as impassioned as you are at fighting the awfulness of the world…and they look back at you blankly. They don’t understand the connections, they don’t think on a global scale, and they question why you do. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier not to worry about that? It’s not like it affects you personally, something like that could never happen here.” So you just get to live in a world that you know is fundamentally wrong, feeling like you are wrong for rejecting it.
That has been my experience having a 168 IQ, though it says nothing of the weight of expectations that were cast on me as a child or what all I missed out on by skipping past so many grades in school.
that’s one thing my mom did for me that I appreciate. When they asked her if she wanted me to skip grades she said no.
Very depressing. We’re social animals, and being highly literate and informed while also socially apt, you really realize just how far apart you are from others, which is alienating, frustrating, and tiresome.
I had my IQ tested when I was 12 and it was high, but alas, not high enough to understand Rick and Morty
Jokes aside, I’ve been told that I catch onto things quicker and I’m good at solving things in creative ways!
Probably the thing it’s get a little mad because you need to explain multiple times things you think are really easy or stop hearing some people when start explaining things because you know you can catch what they are saying anytime. It’s really shitty, I dont whant to be this way. Also people treat you different because “you can so it better”, no I can’t.
The details of my life are quite inconsequential, but since you asked…
Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it’s breathtaking, I suggest you try it.
It’s very tiring having to start off every conversation by letting people know that I’m more intelligent than them, but it is necessary.
I just laminated a bunch of cards that say Wile E. Coyote; Super Genius and hand them out. Saves time.
E: ducking autocorrupt
I’m 128, it’s up to you to decide whether it’s high enough or not.
Generally, I am successful in my studies and pursue career in science. I am not a high earner, and doing mental work still drains me heavily. I take a few hours of dumb physical work every week to reset. I am more or less satisfied with my life, I do have a romantic partner and generally find it easy to navigate social situations, but I’m introverted and need to recharge. So, you can say I have a high burst productivity all-round, but I’m not good at a long game.
This is just me though, and one thing to remember is that there is no objective metric for intelligence, and it can be divided in many different ways. Some people are great at solving math problems, but are dead stupid in social situations. Some go vice versa. Some have a gift for certain areas of knowledge or skills where they are way above average, while having underwhelming performance with the rest.
For example, I excel at disciplines that require me to connect many diverse data points (my area of interest is microbiology), but I’m not that good at following logic through many layers of calculations and linking it back to source (as in physics/math; I’m still able to carry out calculations I need for my work, but it’s exhausting). I acquire language skills quite readily, and have good auditory perception overall, but have high reaction time and struggle driving or doing competitive sports/gaming (no, higher intelligence doesn’t mean faster reaction).
Overall, I’m just a normal human, fairly smart, fairly capable, but nothing supernatural and sometimes straight up underwhelming.
It vastly depends on everything else.
You can be a dude with a normal life, who just makes conclusions faster and you’ve learned that everyone likes how smart you are and you enjoy this.
You can be a restless mess, because you’ve known all your life that there’s nothing to compete with and it’s difficult enough to find someone to even have a somewhat decent conversation on your level with. These people come with or without the arrogance you’re thinking of right now. Some are just genuinely kind and thoughtful, but always a step ahead without even really appreciating their ability much.
You can be an absolute underachiever, because being smart was never rewarded in your life. Maybe you even learned that “You’re not special” so much so, that you punished others for not being able to draw the same conclusions as you in the same time, because you always thought they were just being lazy on purpose.
You can be entirely unaware and may say funny things like “I don’t think we’re all that many really smart people in $techplacewithclearlysmartpeople. I talked to most of them and I don’t struggle at all”.
Source: High IQ myself, working with other people who increasingly talk to me openly about this and their overall situation. So much of who we become is about what our parents do to us and if there’s understanding and love and support on that end.
Obviously there’s the whole spectrum thing as well. I don’t think a higher IQ means “more autism”, as someone suggested. I think it increases your chances of struggling with a regular (neurotypical) kind of life, for example because you are supposed to be interested in 1 subject (to make a career), but - similar to people with ADHD - may care for all the subjects.
If you think about what is neurotypical though, you can classify people with a particularly high IQ or people with particularly high sensitivity as neurodiverse in just the same way you do that for people with Autism or ADHD. Now if you think about humanity as a whole, we may all to some degree be diverging from the norm in any or all of these ways, but still be more or less free of struggle, because it’s not by much, while for the more extreme cases, they stand out for better or worse.It’s being like you
I have a high IQ as well as ADHD and Autism.
Out of context, scoring as high as I did really meant next to nothing. In the context of the diagnoses I received later in life, definitely made sense, and helped color a picture painted in two solid days with a psychologist.
Somehow, I think it’s important that the IQ test I took was not called an IQ test to me until after. Like, I knew I was in for tests, but more broadly told what things were about.
As a student, I had a science teacher who had been teaching many years, tell my mother he had never seen a student think in the manner I did. I was doing exceptionally well in class, but did not exceed in the fashion that would get me into an ivy league school, which at the time was supposed to be a goal. My father graduated MIT.
There are times when it’s great. When I can focus on something, I can learn a lot and get very good at it. However, I spent decades with two obstacles I could never get myself past: the inability to keep that focus or control it, and the inability to even understand other people enough to try to get along with them long-term.
The result is I am just now, at 41, starting to figure out what I want to do with my life after way too long in a profession I should never have entered, and burned out of twice. And by burn out I do not mean tired and sad, I mean hospitalization.
In summary, it can be pretty great, but in my case it’s fraught with difficulty as well.
Thanks for your response.
It’s interesting to see your story in relation to other stories I’ve heard or people I’ve met.
Before I describe them, it’s important to say that you don’t strike me as unkind. I wouldn’t want you to compare yourself to the people I’ll mention and conclude that you’re somehow bad. I’m taking the time to say this because I don’t know if the difficulties you’ve mentioned are a sore spot.
Alright. The people I’ve met. I’ve met people whose identity was tied to their IQ and it became painful for me to wonder what I meant to them. For sure I was not close to their IQ; they needed to take multiple tests because they were off the charts. But I always wondered if they liked me as a person, based on my values and how I did things.
I’ve also met very relaxed and kind people who went on to study at the schools that were supposed to be a goal, people who made me realize it’s possible to be wicked smart and simultaneously kind.
When you mention that it was important that you weren’t told that the test you took was an IQ test, I think about teenage me. Back then, I learned that people could judge me based on my IQ. I made the mistake of reading white supremacist bigotry, and read that they evaluated whether people were worthy of living based on things like IQ. I knew the whole white supremacy discourse was pseudoscience and bigotry, but I was scared of bigots in power evaluating my existence. I became terrified. I became very distrustful of people who I should’ve trusted, wonderful people who would’ve never had such narrow and mistaken views. That has changed, now that I have a clearer sense of self and more perspective. But I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if I wouldn’t have mistrusted wonderful people. I guess the discourse around IQ can really change the way you look at the world and what you do.
Is it too nosy to ask a couple of follow up questions? If not, here they are: you mentioned ADHD and the obstacle you could never get yourself past, the inability to keep your focus and control it. Is the diagnosis recent? Could medication help? Could any treatment help with the ADHD? As to difficulties understanding other people, do you know about relational frame theory, the self component of ACT, and the PEAK and AIM programs?
As far as medication, I have not decided yet. This is all recent, within the last year. Therapy has been helping a lot for my current state, but ADHD isn’t the focus. Recovering from burnout is.
I haven’t looked into anything you’ve mentioned.
I have been described as, and willing describe myself as, a good person with a capacity for kindness. I am not nice in much of what that means.
I think my political stances sometimes highlight that. I will willingly punch nazis given the chance. No, that’s not hyperbole. I have no tolerance for bigotry. I lost a good friend who became a cop, and then said some questionable but not outright hateful things in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
A flawed but not altogether useless analogy is I am not the guy who waves someone on at a stop sign when it is that person who is supposed to yield. I have no patience for it, nor do I have patience for it happening the other way around.
When I recognized that a now good friend wasn’t so harsh to me out of spite or hate but out of personal struggle, I wanted to know more, and now we not only became good friends, but we are to each other among the very few people we talk openly with about therapy and how it’s really going. We both understand and respect the need to break down the stigma of seeking help with mental health. We had both peered into the void.
But in public, I wind up ignoring a lot of people simply from wearing headphones and wanting nothing to do with any of it.
“How does this (dress, shirt, whatever) look on me?” My wife gets the truth, like it or not.
I could go on, and am willing to try to answer any questions.
Episodes of Rick and Morty really hit close to home in a way that normies couldn’t possibly fathom. It’s a blessing and a curse.
Genuine curiosity: I’ve seen piles of “my superior intellect” and “normies would never understand”, so I wanted to ask if your answer was sarcastic. If it isn’t, are you saying that you identify with Rick? Or something different?
I was being sarcastic, lol. It’s a play on the “you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty” gag.
I think it’s sarcasm.
I’m neither a Rick nor a Morty, but I think you can look at the biographies of historical figures who’ve been considered “geniuses” and deduce that R&M isn’t too far off base. It may be a sort of survivor bias: it may be that only genius and successful people have had difficulties; or, maybe idiots have just as much depression only they don’t get famous. All we have are examples like DJT for the dumb-but-successful-and-not-struggling-with-depression category.
I really should have a statistic to back this up, but it seems common for “high IQ” people to have issues. My personnel theory is that we’re all on the spectrum: that humans have a band in which we can function normally, socially, but the higher you climb on the “intelligence” scale, the more you edge into what we’d diagnose as autism and start to struggle with issues resulting from either being unable to integrate with society, or being persecuted by it.
I have absolutely no evidence for this theory, of course. It’s just a theory formed after reading biographies of so many notable geniuses who’ve struggled with drug abuse and depression. Depression is the big one; it must get awfully tiresome being surrounded by (relative) idiots.
I don’t take the theory very seriously; however, among my high school close friend group, the unquestioned smartest one, who went on to get a doctorate in math, checked himself out with a shotgun in his early 30’s. He’s the only suicide we’ve had, and I’ve often wondered how much his intelligence factored into it.
Finally, I’ll end with this quote I one read, for which I can no longer find a source and which I have no reason for believing is based at all on any evidence; but which I’ve always found funny:
Philosophers look outside themselves for truth.
Mathematicians look inside themselves for truth.
Psychologists say philosophers tend to be more happy than mathematicians.The topics of the show tend to deal with fairly high level concepts. Mixed in the chaos of interpersonal relationships.
The show to me has been a more twisted version of the superman paradox. A god living amongst mortals.
I have a high IQ and diagnosed as “gifted” by psy at nearly 40.
I won’t argue about IQ and Giftedness having scientific base or not. All I can do is a professional clinical psy told me I am gifted. And what I’ll say is just my way of thinking.
I have a systemic brain. I have very poor memory concerning names, date, etc… but I can remember complex system (basically, what cause create which consequence) really easily. I also understand problem, and find solutions much faster than most of peoples, I have strong Intuition of things, but I have difficulties explaining how I’ve found the solution. Scientists think it may be related to Myelin. That stuff increase connection speed between neurons, so it makes you think “faster”, but sometime faster than you conscience.
I also wants to give meaning to anything. If I take a nap and hear the wind in the trees, I immediately imagine air molecules traveling and hitting leaves, sound wave propagating and hitting my ears. Wind also blowing the small layer of hotter air near my skin, explaining why it feel cold, etc…
I see object through their functioning, not their usefulness. When I see any new machine, I don’t really care what it does, but more how it does it.
I’m constantly flooded by information, and I’m constantly analyzing everything. Being in a crowed area is exhausting for me, because there are too many stimulus. I’m not going to faint or something, but I think being in a crowd for me is like being in a kindergarten class full of screaming children.
I don’t talk a lot because I’m easily bored by small-talks. I don’t see the point of speaking about what I’ve done this week end, or the weather, or anything. I prefer staying in my own bubble speaking to myself.
I don’t feel part of this world, I more feel like an observer watching some weird TV show. I don’t understand most of human reaction.
If you are French speaking, I strongly encourage you to read the comics Comme oiseau dans bocal. It’s based on serious research and is a very good popular science story about IQ, giftedness, etc…
Since you’ve been to a psychologist for your assessment (is that what you mean by “psy”?) have you asked or considered the possibility of neurodivergence? I have suspected autism in myself for a while, and I resonate with much of what you said in regards to stimulus overwhelm, staying in your bubble, disdain for small talk etc. That’s pretty common in many autistic people.
Yeah, I and some other psychologists had suspected high level autism, like Asperger, but it doesn’t seems to be this. I have a mix of social anxiety linked to my childhood (also called over-adaptation), probably neurodivergence like giftedness, and Endogenous depression. Fuck my brain :D. The good side is that I’m extremely resilient to stress, pressure, or emergency situations.
My last psy (who is excellent) told me that “Autistic people are always autistic”. It’s really a missing social-related circuits in their brain. On my side, I’m “autistic like” most of the time, but I manage to build close relationship with good friends. So I have this “social circuit”, but it switch on only when I feel really secure.
It feel really strange to re-analyse all my life and childhood with this new perspective.
Well fuck me damn. Do you experience anger?
Just wanted to say wow, so much of that sounds familiar!
thanks :)
