Mensa

[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."
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.

[idb]

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

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!