Mensa

[Pancakes]

your not the sharpest tool in the box are you..?

Heard of MENSA boom boom? I'm just a lazy genius, have the paperwork to prove it.


Starts with an A and ends with an A...

:bash:

i just remembered why you're on my ignore list

Aw bro, I'm on dial-up, sheesh, never read that post until mine went up, and watching TV ATM too. If I'm on your ignore list how come you could read it eow? I won't add you to my ignore list, with a mum like yours you can't be all bad!?


hehehehe

[Cr1MiNaL]

hahahah good response Pangoof.

[limbimtimwim]

Heard of MENSA boom boom? I'm just a lazy genius, have the paperwork to prove it.Ha ha, Mensa! That's a dating club for people who think they are clever.

[Pancakes]

Ha ha, Mensa! That's a dating club for people who think they are clever.

Hehehehe!

They test your percentile etc, pity they don't test for looks cos it's not really worth taking your eyes off the lessons if ya know what I mean... but then again... I wouldn't have got in either then.

[jrandom]

They test your percentile etc...

Seriously, this interests me.

What motivated you to take the Mensa test and join the society?

[Pancakes]

My kindergarten teacher was also a gifted childrens specialist from the UK and noticed I had high aptitude early on. Being a member as a child helps kids stay interested in learning by presenting challenges and also helping them learn how to learn by being challenged. Picking things up easily can be a curse because once you get to topics that take study you haven't developed systems for study because you haven't had to before. You also notice pretty fast that other kids are different and aren't picking things up the same or thinking about thinks to the same extent.

In regards to percentile etc there is a misconception that a high IQ is about what you know (memory) or your level of achievement in one or more areas (motivation and concentration). Percentile ranks where you are (roughly) in the population. Interestingly the highest acheivers are normally in a mid-high percentile range. Maybe 70-85%. Above that there is typically more personal learing and lateral thought but sometimes not the challenge to create someone who desires academic results.

Bit of a ramble but kinda answers your question I hope?

[jrandom]

Bit of a ramble but kinda answers your question I hope?

So you were a 'gifted' child who was put into the 'look at me' class and have been a Mensa member ever since?

Gotcha.

Agreed re. people with very high percentile IQs often not being high achievers in life. They tend to settle into a rather isolated and static existence, in my experience. Then again, a lot of what people think of as 'achievement' is just shit that keeps you awake at night.

[Str8 Jacket]

I remember being classed as extremely bright..... about 22 years ago. My how things have changed. I blame Uncle Helen.

[jrandom]

I've never met someone who thought they were particularly clever that wasn't an annoying cunt.

[Finn]

I've never met someone who thought they were particularly clever that wasn't an annoying cunt.

How true. You're very clever aren't you?

[jrandom]

How true. You're very clever aren't you?

It had to be you, didn't it?

I actually wrote 'myself included', but deleted it, so that someone's day could be brightened by the pleasure of working with my setup line.

:)

[vifferman]

I've never met someone who thought they were particularly clever that wasn't an annoying cunt.
What about people like me that are just annoying cunts and not particularly clever? :spudwhat:

Mind you, I used to think I was clever. :confused:

[jrandom]

What about people like me that are just annoying cunts and not particularly clever?

Ah, you see, you are not an annoying cunt.

Quite possibly because you don't think (even though you're wrong about it) that you're particularly clever.

;)

[Hitcher]

Some of us have learned to disguise our lack of intellect with a subtle mix of guile and low cunning. And a spell checker...

[vifferman]

Ah, you see, you are not an annoying cunt.
Quite possibly because you don't think.


That's not right - normally people who don't think are very annoying, especially if they speak or do something.
Anyway - you haven't talked to mein offschpringervergolksen - I'm sure they'll confirm what an annoying bastid I can be.
"Yeah, Dad's an annoying bastid!"
"Definitely annoying yeah. I wish he'd hurry up and die already."
"Annoying?!? Pffft!! I dunno 'bout that, but he is a cunt."

[jrandom]

you haven't talked to mein offschpringervergolksen...

If one's offschpringervergolksen do not consider one annoying, one has failed in one's mission.

[Hitcher]

If one is both stupid and an arsehole, is one therefore an ignoranus?

[Str8 Jacket]

If one is both stupid and an arsehole, is one therefore an ignoranus?

Or maybe a Starsehole?

[Hitcher]

Rene Descartes walks into a bar. He orders a glass of wine and drinks it. The bartender says, "Would you like another?" Descartes replies, "I think not." And leaves.

[vifferman]

If one is both stupid and an arsehole, is one therefore an ignoranus?
Ignoranus = dumbarse.

[Hitcher]

Top Mensa Pick Up Lines

1. "This is your brain. This is your brain on my naked thigh. Any questions?"

2. "Could you help me get this tie tack out of my hand?"

3. "Towards what end does a substantially empathetic demoiselle such as yourself inhabit a locus such as this?"

4. "What say we skip this nerd-fest and hit an all-night symposium on Euclidean Geometry?"

5. "Perchance, would you be inclined to participate, at my domicile, sans apparel, in a modicum of copulation?"

6. "It doesn't take a genius to see how gorgeous you are, but if it did, I'd be overqualified."

7. "You'll have to excuse me -- Your presence excites me beyond all capacity for cognitive discourse."

8. "Vini, Vici, Va-va-va-voom!"

9. "You must be tired, because you've been running quadratic equations through my mind all night."

10. "That tape on your glasses really sets off your eyes."

11. "According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics, we may already be making love right now."

12. "If I were to mention to you that you have a bellus corpus, would you hold it against me?"

13. "I bet your brain stem reaches almost down to your gluteus maximus."

14. "Ooohh, your IQ is 145? I like 'em dumb and strong!"

15. "By visually measuring the wrinkles in the front of your pants, calculating your body mass based on your height and weight, and dividing that number by your waist size -- I conclude that you have absolutely nothing in your pocket and are, in fact, glad to see me."

16. "Baby, I'll have you barking like a Canis familiaris."

[vifferman]

Shouldn't #8 be "Vidi, Va-va-voom, vini vini vini"?

[idb]

It had to be you, didn't it?

I actually wrote 'myself included', but deleted it, so that someone's day could be brightened by the pleasure of working with my setup line.

:)

Haha...fell right into your clever trap!!!

[idb]

Some of us have learned to disguise our lack of intellect with a subtle mix of guile and low cunning. And a spell checker...

Ah yes, the internet is the wonder-world where Artifically Assisted Pedantry and the Google University beats Real Learning every time.
What a waste those months of school were.

[idb]

Men would be more inclined to respect a woman for her mind if it jiggled slightly when she walked.

[Mikkel]

My kindergarten teacher was also a gifted childrens specialist from the UK and noticed I had high aptitude early on. Being a member as a child helps kids stay interested in learning by presenting challenges and also helping them learn how to learn by being challenged. Picking things up easily can be a curse because once you get to topics that take study you haven't developed systems for study because you haven't had to before. You also notice pretty fast that other kids are different and aren't picking things up the same or thinking about thinks to the same extent.

So true! I'd write a book on it if I just could be arsed...

Consistent effort and a strong work ethics will beat raw intellect hands down every time.
And what is this intelligence worth anyway. How often do you actually gain anything by having an IQ above 120 - unless you were a human code breaker back in the early days?

As for mensa - I don't care too much for any group of people that sits down and pats eachother on the back to confirm that they ok and superior, whether it's based on IQ measurements, occupational similarities or dick sizes.
But good on them for recognising that bright kids needs more stimuli than your average elementary school can provide - wish they'd been there when I was bored shitless and got used to never having to do anything to get by.

[jrandom]

Consistent effort and a strong work ethics will beat raw intellect hands down every time.

Absolutely!


How often do you actually gain anything by having an IQ above 120...

A high IQ, like a high sex drive, is a curse.


... unless you were a human code breaker back in the early days?

Plenty of PhD theses still to be written on cryptanalysis.

:yes:


wish they'd been there when I was bored shitless and got used to never having to do anything to get by.

I used to pass the time fantasising about riding motorcycles...

[MisterD]

But good on them for recognising that bright kids needs more stimuli than your average elementary school can provide - wish they'd been there when I was bored shitless and got used to never having to do anything to get by.

Very true - University was shock to the system. Work? Wtf is that?

[vifferman]

I used to pass the time fantasising about riding motorcycles...
... and dreaming of the day when there'd be something just like KiwiBiker where you could waste time writing all sorts of crap about not very much at all...

[Pancakes]

So you were a 'gifted' child who was put into the 'look at me' class and have been a Mensa member ever since?

Gotcha.

Agreed re. people with very high percentile IQs often not being high achievers in life. They tend to settle into a rather isolated and static existence, in my experience. Then again, a lot of what people think of as 'achievement' is just shit that keeps you awake at night.

Dunno about the look at me class, I was only stoner in the accellerate class it high school and got the most detentions ever. I like thinking about things and experimenting, building amps and speakers. Designing things with a few friends who are inventors or prototype developers but don't really give a shit about progessing at work and doubt I'd have the self control to get a university education.

Did you get infracted for asking the question cos I did for answering!

CLEVER, bit of a dirty word. The only one of "those" words I wouldn't take as an insult might be " insightful" or something. Some people have too much to prove.

Hitcher, #11 maybe misrepresents Heisenberg's ideas somewhat but I don't blame you, the spulling hints at some cut and paste?

It's not a mutual admiration society, just helps kids not feel like freaks and gives adults access to all kinds of inferesting shit (My mum is a human biology lecturer for them and kids as young as 4 can disect hearts and eys and stuff) things that kids the same age wouldn't be interested enough in to do in a mixed class. Once a family member is elligable the whole family is in and they can do stuff with thier siblings and bring friends to lots of the events too. Hey, I'm going bald at 28 and I don't blame anyone for that. I have access to some interesting stuff by a fluke of nature. I won't complain either. Most of the people are normal but some of the parents are freaks and expect their kids to grow up too fast, it's good to have people let the kids just be kids too.

[Mikkel]

I used to pass the time fantasising about riding motorcycles...

I got into watching Robotech when I was about 6 - so I was fantasising about flying fighter jets...

After I finished high school I went and did the tests (tests for a whole week with no letup) for the pilot training at the Royal Danish Airforce.They usually only select the 60 best candidates between the people who passed the tests in the last year - and only about 5-10% of the people who go to the tests pass them. I was the only one to pass out of a bunch of 11 hopeful young men who went to do the test. A lot of them were talking themselves up big time and said stuff life "I'm feeling sorry for the other guys that they're going to waste a week on these tests since I'll be the only one to pass." :lol:
Personally I didn't even know if I wanted to be a fighter pilot - but had decided to find out if it was indeed an option for me to consider at all (no reason to get yourself onto a track of thinking "This is the ONLY thing that I want!" if it's not an option).
Anyway, I passed the tests and got a letter inside a week that they would like me to start the following summer.

However, in the mean time I went and served my public duty at the civil defense force and decided that I treasured my personal freedom too much to go for a military career. Funny thing that - if I had gone for it I could probably have been flying F-16s for well over 2 years by now. :) 9g gotta be something eh. Guess I'll never know - gotta work on getting my knee down instead. With a military career I certainly wouldn't have found my way to NZ.

[idb]

And what is this intelligence worth anyway. How often do you actually gain anything by having an IQ above 120 - unless you were a human code breaker back in the early days?

Dead right.
On "The Money Or The Mob" a few weeks back half of the Mensa group in The Mob didn't even know the name of Britney Spears' kid!!!

I mean...ask yourself!!!

[MotoGirl]

Being a member as a child helps kids stay interested in learning by presenting challenges and also helping them learn how to learn by being challenged. Picking things up easily can be a curse because once you get to topics that take study you haven't developed systems for study because you haven't had to before.

I know exactly what you're saying. My primary school teacher used to make me help other kids because he'd run out of work for me to do. This was until I was 12 so going to college and having to work was a huge shock!

[Mikkel]

Dead right.
On "The Money Or The Mob" a few weeks back half of the Mensa group in The Mob didn't even know the name of Britney Spears' kid!!!

I mean...ask yourself!!!

Well, that's credit to Mensa kids in my book honestly! Seriously, nothing is less important than celebrities - still they take up more than half of the international news spots. FFS, their only claim to fame is that they know nothing about anything and are spoiled brats to boot.
Go use your mental capacity for something worth while!

[xwhatsit]

Mensa?

I love what Professor James Flynn said about Mensa recently. For those that don't know him, Flynn is a smart dude who discovered the `Flynn effect' -- the way that IQ test results seem to be increasing every year, so they keep having to adjust the test to make it harder. This is despite the fact we're not getting particularly smarter, just better at taking the tests ;)

He said this:

"I think it's crazy. I can imagine wanting to be around people who read novels or appreciate music, but these must be people of very low self esteem that they have to convince themselves they are important by qualifying for Mensa. [Philosopher Karl Popper, one-time lecturer at Canterbury] said that whatever his intelligence was, it wasn't so low as to make him want to sit around with people whose only attribute was that they did well on IQ tests."

What's fascinating is that the Flynn effect causes the makers of new IQ tests to make them harder, to scale them. For example, in the US (I'm getting this all from the Listener), they don't give you the death penalty if your IQ is under 70 (mentally retarded and all that). So he's been called as an expert witness over there to re-test death row inmates with scaled tests to get a much more accurate IQ -- which is often considerably lower, and enough to keep them from the 'leccie chair. On a similar note, again speaking about Mensa:

Why don't they retest everyone who's presently a member with a test that's just been normed? They'd probably have to clean out about half their membership! I'd be happy to help them out with that.

[Hitcher]

Smart kids don't have to feel like freaks. That's the whole point of the New Zillun education system -- it dumbs things down to a "safe" middle ground where the smart kids get bored shitless and spend time on detention with the dumbos for flicking acid at their teachers, etc.

[Ixion]

Dead right.
On "The Money Or The Mob" a few weeks back half of the Mensa group in The Mob didn't even know the name of Britney Spears' kid!!!

I mean...ask yourself!!!

Who is britney Spears? What is "The Money or the Mob" ? Who are the Mob ?

Yes I do lead rather a sheltered existence.

I passed the Mensa test years ago, then met the members and decided I didn't like them or the idea of a society based on mutual congratulation .

Nowdays, the smarter I get the more ignorant I become. I think Mensa is full of people so busy being intelligent that they don't get round to becoming ignorant.

[idb]

Well, that's credit to Mensa kids in my book honestly! Seriously, nothing is less important than celebrities - still they take up more than half of the international news spots. FFS, their only claim to fame is that they know nothing about anything and are spoiled brats to boot.
Go use your mental capacity for something worth while!

So you don't know either........

[Mikkel]

So you don't know either........

That's correct. And I couldn't even be arsed to spend 10 secs googling it to pretend that I did. :calm:

[idb]

That's correct. And I couldn't even be arsed to spend 10 secs googling it to pretend that I did. :calm:

It would have been quicker than writing this sniffy reply.
Crikey you genii are touchy!

[Mikkel]

It would have been quicker than writing this sniffy reply.
Crikey you genii are touchy!

Actually that was the whole point of the exercise... to show that I care about not caring at all.
And I'm not touched at all ;)

[idb]

Actually that was the whole point of the exercise... to show that I care about not caring at all.
And I'm not touched at all ;)

But...if you don't care why would you care that we know that you don't care?
If you don't care then it wouldn't matter whether we think you care or not.

It's all too clever for me.

Being touched can be quite nice if it's done in a caring and safe environment.

[Mikkel]

But...if you don't care why would you care that we know that you don't care?
If you don't care then it wouldn't matter whether we think you care or not.

It's all too clever for me.

Being touched can be quite nice if it's done in a caring and safe environment.

Oh, I think you misunderstood my meaning.
By caring about not caring at all - I mean that I care a great deal about what I do not care at all about. In the case of caring about you knowing that I don't care, I only care about that you know that I don't care what Ms. Spears' son's name is. As for your opinion, I care if you don't care about the above matter but do care that I don't care and don't care if I do.

It's not clever, it's funny - and care is a funny word actually (IF you say it enough times).

Edit: As for touching - here and now is not the place :(

[idb]

Oh, I think you misunderstood my meaning.
By caring about not caring at all - I mean that I care a great deal about what I do not care at all about. In the case of caring about you knowing that I don't care, I only care about that you know that I don't care what Ms. Spears' son's name is. As for your opinion, I care if you don't care about the above matter but do care that I don't care and don't care if I do.

It's not clever, it's funny - and care is a funny word actually (IF you say it enough times).

Edit: As for touching - here and now is not the place :(

Oh.
That's what I thought.
But you can never be too careful.

[Laava]

They need to go right back to basics with the IQ tests because some of the more intellectual people I've met couldn't screw the lid on a jar! You know, tongue out, holding the thing cack handed, trying to remember which way to turn it! Coloured shapes in holes, people, to start with!

[idb]

They need to go right back to basics with the IQ tests because some of the more intellectual people I've met couldn't screw the lid on a jar! You know, tongue out, holding the thing cack handed, trying to remember which way to turn it! Coloured shapes in holes, people, to start with!

And they all run funny and can't throw a ball!

[Laava]

And they all run funny and can't throw a ball!

NO, no, that's the IHC!............wait a minute!....................

[Hitcher]

And they all run funny and can't throw a ball!

So that's why they have raffles!

[idb]

So that's why they have raffles!

A little known fact is that ants don't have balls because they can't dance.

[Hitcher]

A little known fact is that ants don't have balls because they can't dance.

And much is made of the fact that Firemen have bigger balls than Policemen because they sell more tickets.

[Pancakes]

I have gone to some of the events as an adult. Special lectures with guests on topics I'm interested in but your all right that the adults that are really involved seem to be classic geeks!

They don't use "IQ" tests tho, it is aptitude based so matching pattern sequences etc. They do tests with a few different psycologists (sp?) over a few days and use a whole range of things to judge you.

In the end it really doesn't meed shit. I know some people more athleticly able and taller than other fiends who play basketball all the time but the more Physically gifted ones sometimes just sit on the couch playing Playstation eating pies.

The real world is far more entertaining IMO.