Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer died on Thursday. Fischer was the only non-Soviet player to become world champion between 1948 and the fall of communism. Many experts consider him the greatest chessmaster of all time. During his last three years of competitive play (1970-72), Fischer not only defeated his opponents but totally dominated all the other top players in the world to a still-unsurpassed extent. His achievement is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that he mostly worked alone and was up against a massive chess "machine" lavishly subsidized by the Soviet government. Dmitry Plisetsky and Sergei Voronkov's fascinating book, The Russians vs. Fischer (based on internal Soviet documents released after the fall of the USSR), has numerous details about the Soviet effort to prevent Fischer from winning the world championship. It also documents the enormous respect that Fischer won from his Soviet chess rivals.
Unfortunately, as the AP obituary linked above notes, Fischer rapidly descended into delusional paranoia and anti-Semitism after winning the world championship in 1972. He refused to defend his title in 1975 and spent most of the rest of his life in seclusion, becoming increasingly more deluded as time went on. While no opponent could consistently beat him at the chessboard, the demons in his own mind ultimately defeated him far more completely than any rival grandmaster ever could have.
UPDATE: Garry Kasparov comments on Fischer's death here.
They're pretty much the same thing, in my view.
Other aspects of character and background are difficult to be specific about and the following thoughts are all subject to the usual provisos about false generalisations. The typical chess genius, though one should avoid clichés like the plague, would be a slightly neurotic, Russian, Jewish male from a broken home. Is there anything in this? Some of the statistical evidence supporting these stereotypes is quite striking so it is worth looking for possible reasons why. Let us consider them in reverse order:
Relatively few top players come from ‘normal’ family backgrounds - divorce or early death of a parent is much more prevalent amongst the chess greats than in the general population. In fact, this applies to other fields too and creative (and also psychologically disturbed) types are three times as likely to have lost a parent before the age of sixteen. Winston Churchill once wrote that ‘solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong’. It seems emotional turbulence is likely either to do real damage and/or make a child tougher. I think it is fair to characterise top players as being emotionally tough with strong egos (in the original, Freudian sense of the word), so one can begin to see possible reasons for the surprising statistical results.
i believe he made two claims - that several russians deliberately played to draws to focus on their games against him and that one russian threw a game deliberately. i think the latter was discredited, but the former is generally believed to be true.
I suppose I'd just say that paranoia and anti-semitism aren't the 'same thing,' since not all paranoid delusions are anti-semitic, even if all anti-semites are paranoid. (As an illustration: Not all dogs are poodles, but all poodles are dogs.) The mom of my girlfriend in college had severe schizophrenia, and was convinced that the Statue of Liberty, among others, was watching her though a water-stain in the livingroom ceiling.
But for some reason the Jews never played a role in this persecution. Perhaps they were too busy counting their profits from the slave trade and planning new ways of secretly running US foreign policy for the benefit of Israel. Oh, and collecting the blood of Gentile children to make biscotti. Or something.
But, in truth, I was genuinely saddened. I'd studied, briefly, his games. I always had the secret vision that he'd come back up from ashes and play again. I held the NY Times obituary in my hands and read through each word. In 1972 he was such a ray of hope. The young, odd genius can change the world. Giving hopes to all geeky middle-schoolers throughout the world.
That is not really your view. Obviously, delusional paranoia need not be accompanied by anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism can exist in the absence of delusional paranoia. So why would you say otherwise?
Sorry to nitpick again, but "technically a Jew" means a Jew according to Jewish doctrine. But not everyone adheres to Jewish doctrine in defining who a Jew is. Others might, for example, allow a person to define himself. And some of us don't define ourselves in an either/or manner, but say that we are of Jewish heritage but not otherwise Jewish.
As a child, my parents, born in the 30's, idolized him and I was to be the "next Van Cliburn." Thus my 12 years of forced labor at the piano.
Although I appreciate the dedication and skill I acquired, it would have been fun to play with the other kids in the neighborhood whilst growning up, know what I mean
I was terrible, and still am. But I did read several books on chess. Without Bobby, I would not have known much at all. Certainly nothing about 'castleing.'
True, but for an example of a sane, easygoing chess champion, there's Capablanca.
And an extremely sane and enterprising Kasparov (although one might say opposing Putin is insane, it is still less so, than what dissidents of yesteryear who were subjected to phsychotreatment faced).
That might be a recipee for insanity for some.
Philidor.
Both of these are mentioned in the article I linked, and both were very likely products of his mental ilness.
FWIW, when I was 9 years old I played Samuel Reshevsky, several times US Chess champion, as one of 50 going against him in a simultaneous exhibition match at the Detroit JCC. I think one person out of the 50 may have tied or even be beaten the grand master that day, and it wasn't me. I was quite pleased to have lasted 25 or so moves against him, though he didn't break a sweat.
Question: how closely correlated with IQ or math aptitude is chess playing ability? More or less highly correlated than musical ability? Any true idiot savants in the upper ranks of chess players?
True, but for the same reason Fischer was also a Jew by the definitions used by many anti-Semites, including the Nuremberg Laws.
The husband of one current presidential candidate usually appears quite genial, but is supposed to be given to intensely angry outbursts when not in public view. Not a "balanced" person? (Does "extreme mood swings" mean that Kasparov is given to bouts of depression? Or he is emotionally labile?)
"Contemptuous to nearly everyone." He comes across as a rather appealing and highly admirable person, at least to me. He is, in fact, unpleasant to be around?
I know relatively few details of Kasparov the man. Is he married and a father, which might be taken as some evidence of ability to maintain personal relationships. Clearly, he would beat Bobby Fischer in that department.
[Ilya Somin, care to say whether you regard Kasparov's efforts to change things in Russia as noble and/or quixotic?]
I have blogged about them several times. They are definitely brave and praiseworthy, though the odds against short-term success are high.
I meant what Hoosier said. So we apparently disagree in one respect. Although you are likely correct that anti-Semitism might exist in the absence of what a doctor would call "delusional paranoia," in my experience anti-Semitism is routinely, almost uniformly, characterized by what a layperson would call delusional and paranoid thinking.
That may well be true in your experience. However, anti-Semitism is far too common for that to be true universally. Polls show that hundreds of millions of people in the Muslim world, Russia, and elsewhere hold strongly anti-Semitic views. I doubt that they are all paranoid and deluded (at least in the clinical sense). They are of course deluded in the sense that their views are wrong.
I would not put Alekhine in a laid-back and well adjusted category (obviously very far from Fischer level, although he also bore a controversial anti-semitic stain not alleviated by mental illness) . That was one of his several dramatic distinctions from Capablanca that made their 1927 match the first "chess match of the (20th] century"
Don't be coy. Are you talking about Hucakbee's husband, or Thompson's?
I like your post, but is this bit really true? My impression was that Kasparov was pretty universally acknowledged to be better in his own prime than Fischer was in his. Maybe I'm wrong.
I like your post, but is this bit really true? My impression was that Kasparov was pretty universally acknowledged to be better in his own prime than Fischer was in his. Maybe I'm wrong.
That depends on what is meant by "greatest." If 1990 Garry Kasparov were to play a match with 1972 Fischer, Kasparov would likely win. However, by that standard, later champions will almost always be considered better than earlier ones. Even an average quality modern grandmaster would probably crush the greatest players of 50 or 100 years ago.
Thus, people who compare the quality of chess players (and athletes) across eras usually try to determine how high each stood above his contemporaries. Fischer dominated the chess world of 1970-72 more completely than Kasparov dominated the rivals he faced in his own prime (though Kasparov's prime was much longer due to Fischer's abrupt withdrawal from chess). There is therefore a serious argument that Fischer was greater than Kasparov, though of course the contrary view also has many adherents.
My definition has been would the Nazi's have made you wear a yellow star. I don't think they asked you how you define yourself.
It's somewhat difficult to compare the great players of history, especially those who have never played each other. I suspect that the majority (maybe a significant majority) would regard Kasparov at his prime to be a stronger player than Fischer at his prime but I doubt that view would be universal or even near universal.
Why in the world should we let the Nazis, of all people, define who is Jewish?
Perhaps you're trying to be funny, but, in case you're not, I didn't say that I don't want Jews to define it; I said "not everyone adheres to Jewish doctrine in defining who a Jew is." I'm happy to have Jews define it -- for themselves, just not for me. My mother was Jewish, and Jews are free to consider me Jewish because of that, but I don't consider myself Jewish, so what's the point of Jews considering me Jewish?
As I said in my prior posting, however, I recognize my Jewish heritage, but that just means that my ancestors were Jewish and that unavoidably plays a part in the type of person I am (e.g., one who posts comments like this one). Neurodoc made an interesting point about never having heard it debated who is/isn't a Catholic, a Protestant, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, etc. No doubt that is in part because those religions, unlike Judaism, are not generally also viewed as ethnicities, but perhaps it is more complicated than that.
I am a US Chess Federation candidate master (nothing more than a flea as far as world rankings, but if you are are an average chess player, you really don't want to bet your bankroll against me in a casual game, as I am in the top 15% of all *tournament* chess players in the country). Fisher's popularity brought me into the game.
And in all the news reports I am seeing, he has been maligned in regard to his not playing a rematch. Here is the truth: All the while that the Soviets controlled the world championship (controlled is the right word), terms for any challenger were fairly onerous. You had to *beat* the world champion to wrest the title away. Now, however, after Fischer was champion, all of a sudden, the Soviets were much more interested in a match format that reduced the champion's match advantage. Gee, what a surprise. And what Fischer demanded was actually *less* of an advantage than Soviet World champions had always enjoyed.
The details are not as important as the concept I stated above. You can find details on Wikipedia I am sure.
So, while I cannot say for sure that Fischer would certainly have played if his terms had been met, I can say that his demands would have resulted in less of an advantage for him than the ones usually enjoyed by Soviet champions when they played. Look it up.
All well and good - it's a free country. You can declare yourself many things. E.g., I can find justification for checking off all the ethnic options on the census form, save maybe Pscific Islander, if I want to. But I would suggest that the definition really counts where the world recognizes it in some way that has real impact. It just so happens, that if you want to get in in some important ways, it is decided by Jews and if you want to get out, it is decided, I am sorry to say, by Nazis or their likes.
Even an average quality modern grandmaster would probably crush the greatest players of 50 or 100 years ago.<
What is your evidence for that? True in athletics, but has chess progressed like that?
1) Opening theory, the first 5-15 moves, has radically changed. You cannot spot a grandmaster such an opening advantage.
2) Theory of the game: Overall approaches, such as pawn strategies, have developed enormously.
True, a world class player would weasel out in many circumstances, simply based on strength of play. But overall, the modern GM would win.
I don't think we disagree. Again, I'm sure there are lots of anti-Semites who don't meet the clinical definition of paranoia and delusional. But I have never met an anti-Semite who was not deluded about Judaism, and who was not paranoid about the activities of Jews, all in the lay sense of those words.
I hasten to add that my very minor observation is not an effort to "pathologize" anti-Semitism in a way that would reduce or eliminate individual responsibility for holding anti-Semitic attitudes. On the contrary, I'm trying to pile on in my condemnation of anti-Semites, as in: "what a bunch of deluded, paranoid a-holes."
That is probably true if you operate on the assumption that the two players sit down to play a match today, but the GM of 50 years ago still knows only what chess players knew in 1957.
If, however, you took Botvinnik (for example) through a time machine to today AND gave him a year to study modern chess theory, I'd bet on him over an "average quality modern grandmaster" any day. Ditto for Smyslov, Petrosian etc.
"Jew" refers to ethnic origins more than to practicing a religion. Even the religion, Judaism, is intimately bound up with ancestry: One can convert to many Protestant faiths simply by coming to their church. To convert to Catholicism and be officially recognized as a member of that church, I think one has to go through the same things Catholic children do: study their catechism and be baptized and confirmed, but nothing more than every adult Catholic has done. AFAIK, to convert to Judaism and be accepted by an Orthodox or Conservative synagogue (at least), you have to go through a deliberately difficult process, which goes far beyond what they require of children raised as Jews or even of children of Jewish mothers that were not raised as Jews.
And, as other posters have pointed out, it's impossible for a Jew to cease being a Jew to the world. In the eyes of most antisemites a descendant of Jews is a Jew even if he has never practiced the religion. If your father was the child of Jews but married a gentile and never practiced the religion as an adult, Hitler wouldn't care that the Jews didn't recognize you as one of them - although as a half-Jew if you behaved yourself you could earn the privilege of being exterminated last...
On the subject of anti-Semitism (and any other prejudice), it strikes me that just about any grouping of humans tends, as a general rule, to exhibit certain obnoxious traits, and it doesn't take Mensan to notice and list them, if one is inclined to do so. Of course not every member of the group will exhibit those obnoxious traits, but many or most will, which is how these sterotypes got started in the first place. So when someone who is prejudiced comes along and lists all the reasons he dislikes Blacks/homosexuals/Jews/women/Catholics/etc., most of the time what he says has at least a grain of truth to what he's saying. So the interesting question about prejudice is: Why does he find that particular group's idiosyncrasies more annoying than equally annoying idiosyncracies of other groups that he's not prejudiced against?
Mensa is for self-congratulatory losers.
I just got back from a Mensa regional gathering. In addition to interesting workshops on space exploration and cosmology, I found a bunch of people who are socially awkward anywhere else surrounded by friends and having a great time. For some of them, Mensa is the only place that's ever happened. I'm sorry that point seems lost on you.
Wow. I think we have at last found the fabled ATOSMLTCMNTRTROAP*
Also, I threw up in the back of my mouth, just a little.
*All Time Opening Sentence Most Likely To Cause Me Not To Read The Rest Of A Paragraph
Oh my.
Mensa actually makes me feel well-adjusted. Trust me, that's incredible.
"Self congratulatory losers" could apply with equal force to people involved in religion, politics, or waste their time posting on blogs (no disrespect to the host). Candidly, the hostility my comment generated is sufficiently intense that it sounds far more like a psychological issue than a rational one.
P.S. -- OK, so one of our members is a belly dancer. I will admit to knowing several people on the YouTube production. Are you saying belly dancing is a sign of maladjustment?
But for God's sake, it's just a game. It's a game, people.
Yes, it takes intelligence to play at a high level, and no doubt for people who play at that level, there are all sorts of aspects to it that normal people like me just can't comprehend.
But it's just a game. There's a king, a queen, two rooks, two knights, and two bishops, and a bunch of pawns, on either side. That's it.
All the crap I've heard about "styles" and "classical v. romantic playing" and "multi-layered strategies," etc., strike me as absurd exaggerations of the game's qualities.
It reminds me of wine-tasters. No doubt there's more to it than amateurs can understand. But there's only so many ways to describe a wine. "This wine has a fragility that draws out it's noble inherent majesty." Blah blah blah.
And so you hear about a chess player who moved his queen to one place instead of another, and oh how brilliant, because it indicates a modernistic twist on an otherwise mundane attack. Blah blah blah.
It's a game, folks. It just ain't that big a deal.
Imagine there were a similar organization for physically beautiful people. My criticisms would apply to Mensa in the same way.
1. I'd object to a group defining beauty so narrowly that it can be tested for.
2. I'd object to members segregating themselves into groups of beautiful people, with the suggestion being they benefit more from interacting with those beautiful, like themselves, and that non-beautiful people have less to offer them. I'd object to the stigma it places on those individuals supposedly not beautiful enough for the club.
3. I'd object to the suggestion that if beautiful people have trouble interacting with non-beautiful people, then the fault lies with the non-beautiful people, and that limiting interaction with non-beautifuls is an appropriate response.
4. I'd object to participants taking a capacity they (mostly) lucked into, and capitalizing on it - if only in their own minds - so brazenly.
5. I'd object to people taking a basically superficial quality and making it so central to their identities; superficial compared to compassion, perseverance, integrity, friendliness, courage, charity, etc.
You pretty much answered your own question with that second sentence.
It's like a game of battleship, and my first shot is a hit!
Under these circumstances, unequivocally "yes."
Actually, let me Rumsfeld this question for increased clarity: If you're asking whether I think convening what you call a "Smartigras" complete with a belly-dancing Mensa-ite is a freakish, self-congratulatory, loser thing to do, the answer is: Yes. Oh, yes.
I don't know enough about chess to compare it to the wine-freaks, but I think you're onto something with respect to wine. It reminds me of the running feud between Skeptic magazine and the audiophiles.
1. A Republican national convention, in which people wear papier-mache elephants on their heads, enough campaign buttons to sink a battleship, and red-white-and-blue tights is no more a reflection of what most Republicans are like day to day than a Mensa convention is a reflection of what most Mensans are like on a day to day basis. A Mensa convention is mostly a party, for God's sake, with some discussion of serious topics thrown in.
2. DPS, there is some question as to the value or testability of intelligence, but you simply don't get the reason why Mensa exists. Intelligent people are stigmatized almost from the day they are born -- if you think back to high school, the most popular kids weren't the smart ones. The smart ones were uniformly ridiculed, and their intelligence was discounted; when I got an A on a test everyone thought it was because I was lucky enough to be smart and nobody thought hard work had anything to do with it. Whenever I raised my hand in class the teacher said, "Oh, I know that YOU know the answer; I want to know who else does," which would result in either laughter or resentment. Trust me, being smart is a burden far more often than it is a benefit. If you think I'm wrong, look at the reaction I got when I mentioned my Mensa membership here, and this is a group that's probably of above average intelligence. Most Mensans leave Mensa off their resumes for precisely that reason.
Add to that the fact that the highly intelligent tend to be socially awkward, as I mentioned before, and for many of us this is the first time we've found a group of others like ourselves, where our accomplishments won't be ridiculed and our intelligence won't be devalued. Mensans assemble in groups for the same reason gay people assemble in groups; to be with other people where we don't have to explain ourselves and where we won't be sat upon in judgment by others.
At one level you're right; I'm far more likely to be intellectually challenged by other Mensans than non-Mensans. But why is that a bad thing?
DPS, I was once with a group of Mensans when somebody who thinks like you do asked us if we could add another 30 points to our IQ in exchange for a disfiguring facial scar. A woman said that she would not, and the questioner said, "Of course a woman would say no." She replied, "Actually, scar or no scar, I wouldn't want to add another 30 points to my IQ because then my IQ would be 182 and I would have absolutely no one else to talk to." She gets it. You don't.
What's even more, this state of affairs has persisted for centuries. The question I struggle with is it, and has it always been irrational? In nature, we don't generally label the behavior of animals as right or wrong. If we look close enough there is usually some type of evolutionary basis for the behavior in question.
I do think it interesting, and possibly useful though, to consider his intellectual capacities, expressed so incredibly narrowly in this board game. The NYT said that Fischer had an IQ of 181, which presumably was arrived at by testing, not someon's guesstimate. So do that mean if he wasn't something like an idiot savant and he could have been pretty awesome at a variety of endeavors (e.g., math) other than chess, if he had chosen to pursue them and his mental illness did not incapacitate him for purposes other than playing chess?
If Fischer had continued to compete notwithstanding the ravages of his mental illness, is it likely that he would have gone on trouncing the opposition, or would he have been unable to manage even this monomaniacal pursuit? (Schizophrenia is seen as a "thought" disorder, but I heard a researcher maintain once that if schizophrenics were properly tested, they would all be found to have some degree of cognitive impairment too.)
David Smith, on the occasion of Bobby Fischer's death, any thoughts about IBM's Deep Blue computer that narrowly defeated Kasparov. Would a top tier player likely fare better against it than Kasparov did in his famous match against the computer? With a little tweaking, could the IBM team have brought their program up to date, maybe making it so awesomely powerful that it would beat the best players today with greater ease than it did Kasparov? Would greater computational power be the difference, or is it about "understanding" the game and capturing that understanding in code, which then with the computational power will always triumph over humans? Was Deep Blue the high water mark for chess playing machines or have others continued improving chess programs since IBM got out of the business?
Are there any feats of memory like the recall of past moves in their own games and those of others by a Fischer or a Kasparov? Or for someone with an international grand master's understanding of the game is it not as extraordinary a feat of memory to recall all those moves as it seems to a patzer like me?
A knowledge of history, especially European history, is surely a prerequisite to any meaningful understanding of antisemitism. In particular, the origins of antisemitism and its manifestations over the course of centuries will be less mysterious, if you study the rise and evolution of those monotheistic religions, namely Christianity and Islam, that came along after Judaism. And then some grasp of psychiatry/pschology will be of further help. (You weren't looking for the Cliff Notes version, were you?)
I think it's wrong. I label it wrong. Shame on the lion.
"Nor do we when two bull walruses fight to determine who will have all the females and who will be forced out of the group."
That's wrong too. Those are bad walruses, especially the one who wins. You shouldn't treat members of your own species that way. No. Not for any reason.
Okay, I get it. You're a troll. You totally had me going there with the "smart people are victimized" sob story from high school stuff, but this is just too much.
You're the one who picked this fight with your gratuitous ad hominems so don't call me a troll. And you still have yet to respond to a substantive point.
I get it. You're a bigot. So nothing I say will make any difference. So I quit. If you want to tell yourself you won, be my guest.
I appreciate your comments neurodoc. I will have to study the subject more. I have found Thomas Szasz's work on the Inquisition of some value, especially with respect to the pschology/psychiatry angle.
All of which takes us back to my original point. You obviously are comletely clueless about what Mensans are like, either individually or in groups, and if you are really interested in reality rather than this fantasy you've constructed, I can get you in to the next Mensa gathering near wherever you live.
But never mind all of that. I will concede that Mensans as a group have idiosyncracies that others may find annoying (though in my experience snobbishness really isn't one of them). The real question is why you find the idiosyncracies of this particular group so much more annoying than others that you have a hostile reaction whenever the name comes up. And I would submit that your hostility level is so high that it's obviously psychological rather than rational. Which isn't a moral judgment either; I have prejudices of my own.
Differences in height is is beyond moral judgement. Being five feet tall is no better or worse than being six feet tall.
Basically calling someone dumb or less smart than you certainly is a moral judgement.
I don't know what Szasz has to say about the Inquisition, but do be aware that as a psychiatrist he is shall we say rather "aberrant." (Szasz is certainly provocative and when I first heard him speak 40 years ago, I was enormously impressed. Then, after I attended medical school and completed a residency, I wasn't so impressed. As a physician, I can't imagine refering anyone to him for care.)
Right on, bro! And what's up with all of these picture galleries in museums? Rooms and rooms full of pictures and people just staring at them. They're just pictures, people. And don't even get me started on the whole Bach and Mozart mumbo-jumbo. It's just noise, people.
Guess not.
If it's so unimportant, why did you bring it up? Probably for the same reason the Mensans convened a meeting and called it... wait for it... Smartigras
Face it, you like pointing out that you are smarter than other people. I offer this entire comment thread as Exhibit A.
I only occasionally attend Mensa meetings. I know that I am probably in the lower half of the bell curve of Mensa members--and yet, as near as I can tell, I am dramatically wealthier than any of them. This is not what I would expect, if intelligence is positively correlated with income or wealth.
A co-worker who was really, really brilliant, didn't just join Mensa, but also a group called 4 Sigma (four standard deviations above the norm--roughly the top 2% of the top 2%). He was strange, but in a nice way!
But instead of responding to my substantive points, you launched into an ad hominem broadside. And after I've responded to what few substantive points you've made, you're still doing ad hominems. Frankly, I think you're scared half to death that somebody somewhere might be better than you are at something, so you lash out with insult at anything that looks better than you do. If Tom Brady posted here you'd make ad hominems about sports jocks. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court posted here you'd make ad hominems about judges. Because a Mensan posted here, your ad hominems are about smart people. Your issue isn't about Mensa; your issue is about your own need to cut down to size any tree that looks taller than you do.
By the way, I never met Bobby Fischer, but I will bet a month's salary that part of the reason he suffered from the emotional problems that he did is that as a super-intelligent person he spent his whole life dealing with jerks like you.
Comparing people playing chess to the creative process involved in great music is just f'n ridiculous.
Because its whole raison d'etre is bragging about test scores, which I've been taught since age 15 or so is impolite and a sign of a self-congratulatory loser.
Most (or a substantial minority, at least) of my classmates in high school, college and law school would probably qualify for mensa. The same is true of the people I work with, I think. But no one I know has ever felt the slightest inclination to join.
If your IQ is 140+, you're over 30, and your greatest achievement in life is cracking 1500 on the SATs, then you're the definition of wasted potential, and the only reason to seek out similar people is for group therapy.
One of 5 or so VC comments that's made me laugh out loud at my desk....
"bad walruses..."
the justifications for joining Mensa offered by its members here include being so smart relative to the general population that social maladjustment or maltreatment set in.
Now how hard is it, really, to meet a Mensa-level intellect? They are not THAT rare. It maybe a tough go for the guy Clayton talked about--a 1:2500 intellect, but 130-150 IQ people are everywhere.
And how do people you meet in adult social situations even know you have, say, a 145 IQ as opposed to a more terrestrial 125 unless you make it explicitly or implicitly clear by how you comport yourself? How complicated could your jokes really be?
BTW, I like many of those who blog here am Mensa- eligible, but have never quite found an adequate rationale to join.
If your IQ is 180, your high school summer job at Taco Bell might make for some interesting conversations, but if you're only comfortable talking to smart people there are many significantly more useful organizations (e.g. employers) out there that one could associate with.
The whole Mensa thing seems to be based on a desire for praise without having actually achieved anything. The reason that people respect Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein is that those people had productive careers using their intellect. Marilyn vos Savant probably has a higher IQ than either of them (and her Parade column is great, btw), but there's a reason that she's not mentioned much in the same breath as the other 2.
Look, nobody takes any offense when the New England Patriots socialize with each other instead of with a local football club, and nobody takes offense when law professors socialize with each other rather than blue collar workers. None of which is to say (although I'm sure alias and waldensian will twist it to say) that Tom Brady can't enjoy a beer with someone of less talent or that a law professor may not enjoy lunch with a blue collar worker. What it means is that people prefer to be with other people who are like themselves. Most blue collar workers probably wouldn't be comfortable going to Eugene's for cocktails either.
I agree it's impolite to rub someone's nose in the fact that he's less talented, but that's not what preferring to be with others like oneself is. Neither is Mensa the greatest achievement of most of its members, any more than stamp collecting is the greatest achievement of most people who join stamp clubs.
Prufrock, most of our jokes aren't that complex, and we tend to like really, really bad puns (the worse the better). On the other hand, I made a speech to a group of Mensans not long ago in which I told a joke the punch line to which required knowing the difference between exo-thermic and endo-thermic, and I didn't have to explain it to anyone. Maybe I wouldn't have to explain it to you. The difference is that when I talk to Mensans I know up front that I'm not going to have to explain it to anyone.
What, exactly, do you "have in common" with fellow Mensans qua Mensans?
I can understand people getting together who share a common sub-cultural interest--whether it be in the Patriots or World of Warcraft(sp?)or Spinoza or Longaberger baskets.
But the only thing that you "share" with fellow Mensans, as far as I can see, is that you all did very well on a particular test...Unless it is that you are each quite proud of your score.
Also: with regard to your final comment at 11:39: of what, specifically, are you "justifiably proud"?
I think the snarkiness that you are hearing is a consequence, if I may, of statements like that.
But if the point of Mensa is just a harmless social forum, then why brag about it? It seems like something that people should just enjoy for whatever it's worth and otherwise keep to themselves.
Look, nobody takes any offense when the New England Patriots socialize with each other instead of with a local football club, and nobody takes offense when law professors socialize with each other rather than blue collar workers.
Right. Football teammates and law professors have jobs. Those jobs require a good percentage of their respective waking hours and a great deal of their energy. People who spending much of your waking time and your energy at something tend to care about that something and tend to have a great deal in common with other people who care about that same thing to the same degree.
Most people tend to hang out with people of roughly equal intelligence, and no one thinks that's unnatural.
Mensa takes it a step further, though. The socializing comes with a consistent theme. Also, the webpage is riddled with smug self-pitying sentiment. It's like every mensan thinks of him/herself as living out the movie "powder" or something like that. Children can be cruel to their high-achieving classmates, but usually the smart people go on to honors programs or entire colleges full of similarly intelligent people, or they grow up and get past worrying about what others think... or they learn a few social skills along the way like not to brag about their test scores or not to call their classmates "troglodytes" or Phillistines."
First, of the 300 million people in the US, approximately 6 million (i.e., 2%) are Mensa eligible (including of course infants and others whose circumstances prevent them from joining). Mensa nationally has about 50,000 members, which means that less than 1% of the people who are eligible to join Mensa actually do. So we're talking about a small, self-selected group of the small percentage of people who are even eligible. And people come and go -- we have a certain number who drop out after a short period of time, or who pass the test just for bragging rights but don't even join -- but those of us who are there long term are there because we enjoy one another's company. And we also understand that someone who fails the test but whose IQ is in the top 3% or 4% of the population is still a very smart person, but the cutoff had to be somewhere.
So, why do we enjoy one another's company? Well, because the specific personality type that is both highly intelligent and likely to be drawn to a group like Mensa means that it's a comfortable fit, like old shoes. Most of the people at a Mensa convention are people who enjoy talking about the same types of things, enjoy playing the same kinds of games (in fact Milton Bradley uses Mensa to test new products), enjoy workshops on the same general types of topics. Mensans tend to be people who do other interesting things -- I went mountain climbing in Antarctica two antarctic summers ago. I have never gone to a Mensa hospitality suite and not had great conversation. Mensa has special interest groups for pretty much whatever special interest you may have. I get to talk to physicists who are sending people to the space station; I get to talk to people on the cutting edge of cosmology; I get to parse philosophy and theology and history and current events with the leading lights in the field. The Journal of Mensa allows me to read what the smartest people in the world are thinking about and writing about. I don't remember the last time anyone said anything at all about how much smarter we are than everyone else; why would we when we've got so many more interesting things to discuss?
On the "justifiably proud" part, are you suggesting I should be ashamed of my intellect? Are you saying that the ability to solve problems is something to be embarrassed about? I think people should be proud of whatever they can do well. I'm sorry others here seem to think that the fact that I'm proud of my own accomplishments somehow means I discount the accomplishments of others whose talents lie elsewhere.
But, a couple of things in response:
I maintain that, yes, it strikes me as strange to hear someone profess to be "justifiably proud"--not merely "proud" but justifiably so--of his IQ.
To say that is not, of course, equal to saying that you should be "ashamed" of that quality, anymore than saying that a person should not profess "justifiable" pride in height or his 40 yard dash time is to say that he should be ashamed of those characteristics.
Also, I suppose that your "thing" could just be a ravenous curiosity for all things "intellectual". If so, then, like I said, more power to you. But then why not expand the admission criteria and give fascinating people in the 96th, or the 90th, percentile a shot?
To the casual observer, Mensa does look like a group of insecure people congratulating one another over (sorry...) not much.
That strongly suggests that a high test score is not the only common characteristic of Mensans. From what's been posted, I'd guess that extreme social awkwardness is another common trait.
Curiously, I am also extremely socially awkward. Yet I haven't felt much desire joined Mensa. So there must be a third common trait as well.
I suggest the common trait is a willingness to retreat from the social challenges members face, rather than confront them? I have gone a long ways towards becoming more socially capable. I've married an intelligent but non-geeky woman, I'm raising three kids, I've accepted volunteer positions in my church and community that require me to develop some skill with social interactions. It's been very much worthwhile. Membership in Mensa would have run counter to this.
Has my intellectual potential been wasted? Well, I'm not in line for a Nobel Prize, and I never became a college professor. But I'm involved in scientific research at a national laboratory, I have never had a problem supporting myself or my family, and I don't vote Democratic. That has to count for something.
On the justifiable pride issue, my intellect allows me to accomplish things I would not otherwise be able to accomplish. True, I still have to go out and actually accomplish them, but I'm proud to have the tools I need.
I think that it is possible to discount any achievement you want by saying that the person didn't really earn it. Someone who works hard and does well was likely born with a temperament that made it easier for him than somebody with a different temperament. I don't have substance abuse problems because I'm not attracted to those substances; do I really have the right to sit in moral judgment of people who are? I'm sure Tom Brady worked very hard to get to where he is, but he started off with a well-performing body, and if I had his body maybe I could be a superbowl quarterback too. Etc. So yes, a lot of what we have is pure undeserved luck, and maybe none of us should be proud of anything we accomplish. Or, maybe people should be proud of what they do no matter how they got the tools to do it.
I think so too. Thanks.
not a doc:
I couldn't agree more. The piano hardly ever fights back.
Bobby Fischer is Still Dead!
(Franco too.)
But the thread continues. See below.
I do wish that David Smith, or someone other knowledgeable person, would inform me about how far advanced chess playing machines (computers) are these days. Was IBM's Deep Blue, which narrowly triumphed over Gary Kasparov, the most accomplished ever, or has it been surpassed?