For a little while, I've thought that being smarter makes you more socially able since you're able to understand more conversations, but if Vox says the opposite, I have to trust him.
For the vast majority of human history, the guy who was a gifted communicator was greatly more valuable to his group than the one who could do algebra in his head.
That changed around 1850, but not as much as the high-IQ guy wants to think.
Not as much blindsided as knowing the avalanche is coming and I have to move out of the valley... When all my friends and family live in the Calley and will not move.
For many that Calley beneath the snow slope is the false security of a salary.
It’s like a certainly amount of higher intelligence can help pull others along at a quicker rate as long as it is closer enough to the other intelligences, like a train engine attached to cars.
But if the gap is too large then the engine simply pulls away leaving the cars grumbling as they are left idle.
We are talking about intelligence here, so I meant smart as intelligent. I know smart have different connotations and making good practical decisions has nothing to do with intelligence (IQ).
Doubt it's related. Langan is most likely a solid delta and Miles Mathis is a textbook gamma. I think your SSH will determine how much of a handicap your high IQ is.
IQ is like height. You did not earn it. Being able to predict with accuracy, widely read, and a walking encyclopedia lowers your SSH. Shut up and do something useful.
The biggest downside is that most average IQ people think that very high IQ and above means that you're supposed to be omniscient, and have Superman-like X-ray vision to be able to see through opaque substances or even have unfettered and infallible clairvoyant abilities.
People of average IQ often don't understand that what the VHIQ and above know (not merely factually, but say, predicting if something will succeed or fail, and in what time frame) isn't due to some magical ability, but due to careful observation of the world, and often, a lot of time devoted to the relevant subjects (either through reading or direct experimentation). And they REALLY resent gaining knowledge by reading about the experiences and conclusions of A, B, C, D, ... rather than taking the time to do repeat the experiences of ALL of the those authors who cared to record their memories of the experience. Although I can't say for sure, I think the resentment towards those who read "too much" (cue the all too common practice of scattering the books which a fellow student is carrying with him as he walks down the hallway. If you're upset by me throwing off the test score curve while I read some history book during the biology teacher's lecture on a subject which bores me, imagine how much worse it would be if I wasn't reading that book and was actually paying attention to the lecture and taking notes rather than reading the biographical and autobiographical accounts of various airplane pilots of the belligerents fighting in France during WW1!)
.
They certainly don't consider how utterly wasteful it would be if every student of, say, history would be only allowed to learn the lessons of various wars and battles by direct experience of repetition of such conflict. They would, of course, be demanding that historians just read the written accounts of the participants, rather than hold annual slaughters on battlefields around the world, for no reason other than "to learn the lessons firsthand."
There's also a certain amount of criticism for NOT being omniscient and/or clairvoyant, such as when facts and information are completely hidden, and you get blindsided by the unfolding of previously hidden operations (such as millions of Americans with STEM degrees being illegally replaced by the management class with foreigners mid-career), they act like you're an idiot for not being aware of secret, illegal conspiracies which the conspirators never mentioned (of course) until the victims could do nothing to defend themselves once ht operation was sprung on them, like an ambush.
IN such circumstances, there's the "if you're so smart... " I usually turn it around, and say, "I never claimed to you to be smart. YOU are the one who keeps saying how smart I am. Now, regarding XYZ, which happened only after some hidden process had been going on for some time... what evidence was there that the things that caused the event were even happening BEFORE XYZ was damaged or failed catastrophically? Did you see them? If so, why didn't you tell anyone? Or did you think they were unimportant, so you didn't bother to warn anyone, and now you're blaming someone else for not being able to read your mind without your permission, and also failing to know that someone should be reading your mind to find out what important information you do know that you refused to tell anyone?"
These are the types of people who would replace a blown fuse with a copper coin, and later the wiring catches on fire; this type will then blame anyone they can find for not immediately realizing that there was too much equipment on that circuit, despite the fact that the fuse didn't blow, because the person blaming everyone else replaced the fuse with a coin but didn't bother to tell anyone what they did.
“A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” - Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
It took me over a decade of marriage to learn that my husband didn't appreciate talking with me because I was intelligent enough to talk with him (ie, have valuable things to say); he appreciated talking with me because I was intelligent enough to understand that he was right.
Most who present themselves as intelligent appear retarded mid-wits and Gammas who talk fast and stupid.
For example Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Destiny.
However, Langan nor Vox fit this pattern. Though instead of presenting themselves as intelligent they present the IQ score and then go on to actually do something useful. IQ is impressive only if it is used impressively.
It's probably fairer to say that women who make being smart a big component of their identity insist that you be at least as smart and preferably smarter than they are. But it doesn't actually make you more attractive as such---if her gut believes she's entitled to say a mid-Bravo in the upper 80 or low 90th percentiles, she's not going to give you the time of day for being 'scary smart' if you're just a mid Delta. A lot of requirements that women have are like that--you have to meet them but meeting them doesn't let you get a hotter woman than you could otherwise because of it.
> A lot of requirements that women have are like that--you have to meet them
It's like when a woman says she wants a man with a sense of humor who is good to his mother, the unstated part is a man ...who she already finds attractive on a visceral level... An Omega with no chin who weighs 350 pounds can treat his mother like a queen and be funnier than Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Chris Rock et al will not get the time of day from most women
Pretty much. The sanest women will recognize about what percentile status man they can actually keep (realizing they can get higher for a one night stand or a short fling) and then get the man with the best secondary qualities who is in that range that she can. Frankly the flip side applies too---a sane man will figure out what range he can typically attract in terms of how attractive a woman is, and then try to get the best secondary qualities he can within that range.
Learned this as a sophomore in high school hanging out with a group of other students after school one day while waiting for a rehearsal to start. The beautiful blonde senior, who I knew well from church, had been very friendly and was probably helping my game with the sophomore girls, till when I saw she pulled out of her backpack the newest Harry Potter book, when I tried to be impressive and announced that I had read it in one night, the look of disgust on that beautiful face was unforgettable.
Almost all women are crowd-followers. Women who are true renegades or lone pioneers are almost invariably insane, because biologically, that's not a safe path for a woman.
While not insane, look at Marie Curie -- her pioneering spirit lead her to an early grave studying pitchblende and the uranium in it -- without any sort of protection against neutron radiation.
Arguably insane, psychotic (or too stupid to realize that eventually people would figure out her grift and push for criminal prosecution) is Elizabeth Holmes and her Theranos blood-testing fraud -- believing that with a mere 1 year of freshman chemistry, she had all of the answers in diagnostic medical testing. Without even a single semester of coursework in organic chemistry...which must be mastered before going on to a series of biochemistry coursework, which is where modern medical diagnostic testing starts.
The only female pioneer of sorts who wasn't destroyed in the process that I can think of is Admiral Grace Hopper, for her pioneering work in computer science and development of the first programming language compilere (COBOL).
UPDATE: Elizabeth Homes is not even out of prison and she's at it again.
Bragging, plus she may have taken it to mean he thought he was a lot smarter than her for reading it so fast. Depending on delivery, she may even have taken it as disparagement of the book itself. Only thing worse would have been throwing in an "Oh, I read that when I was 12!"
One of the challenges of talking to women is that they will often instantaneously read a hundred different hidden meanings into one simple interaction. They do this because quite often they mean a hundred different things with one simple interaction. 95 to 99 of those things will be utterly nuts.
I see this with female relatives, they'll spend time at a family gathering and then come home and parse not only every conversation, but every observed gesture as though they're reading tea leaves, trying to make the lie of the land fit some pattern they've decided must be present. Sometimes they're even right.
Another possibility is people generally don't like it when people have an effortless capacity to do things they have to put real effort into or is beyond their capacity.
1. It's an unverifiable claim that sounds like an empty boast. Most people can't read very fast -- the idea of reading 200+ pages of even non-technical literature in a single night is utterly incomprehensible to them. To most people, especially high school girls, that claim sounds as much like an empty boast, as impossible to achieve, as claiming that he went jogging and was passing cars that were going 50 mph (80 km/h).
2. It sounds like the sort of veiled, indirect criticism that girls and women use to attack each other. ("My, my, you've been reading that book for a full week and you're still not finished?")
There it is, I never think about that. Regardless of how much you're around someone, if they don't really know you and know that you speak only the truth out of habit and aren't trying to impress, they may just think you're lying. The autism is like "Why would I lie about something so mundane?" but that's not mundanity to 98% of people. Hell, even using a simple word like "mundanity" can seem like bragging without actually bragging to other people.
Was bragging and fishing for compliments, and probably a bit more, this particular young ladie’s mother would publicly proclaim her high intelligence and photographic memory. But that’s the point of the article. Her intelligence wasn’t her most attractive feature and it wasn’t mine either.
Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips" (Proverbs 27:2)
He made himself the subject, and the only thing for her to do in response was to either be impressed or disgusted. It would have been better to talk about their mutual interest in Harry Potter or, better yet, what she thought about Harry Potter. Everyone likes attention, not least of all pretty girls.
One aspect of this that tripped me up as a young adult was that my generation trained the women to prize intelligence as a sub-component of worshipping The Science(tm). There are scenes in films like Good Will Hunting or A Beautiful Mind where they glamorize over-articulately check-mating some douche in debate. I remember trying to be that guy. Thing is, at the time it kinda worked, though where I'd assumed it was for the above reasons, in hindsight it may've been amongst the only times I came off as both aggressive and dominating-
-but I'd've taken 20 minutes to explain why it was actually the exact opposite motivation/mechanic/etc.
The nostalgia incurred reading these articles is like a reckoning sometimes.
The bar scene in Good Will Hunting, Will stepped in to help his friend, and the scene ended when Will suggested they step outside to fight it out.
It wasn't just winning a smart boy debate, Will stayed quiet until his friend started flailing, then stood up for his friend, and had the willingness to escalate physically.
Using his brains to win the debate was just 1 of 4 things he did. Two parts demonstrated solid understanding of social group dynamics, and the last bit demonstrated his physicality.
If you haven’t figured out your intelligence is a social hindrance, you must be using all that firepower for navel gazing, inflicting the dreadful combo of high IQ, low SSH on everyone around you.
For a little while, I've thought that being smarter makes you more socially able since you're able to understand more conversations, but if Vox says the opposite, I have to trust him.
For the vast majority of human history, the guy who was a gifted communicator was greatly more valuable to his group than the one who could do algebra in his head.
That changed around 1850, but not as much as the high-IQ guy wants to think.
Not as much blindsided as knowing the avalanche is coming and I have to move out of the valley... When all my friends and family live in the Calley and will not move.
For many that Calley beneath the snow slope is the false security of a salary.
It’s like a certainly amount of higher intelligence can help pull others along at a quicker rate as long as it is closer enough to the other intelligences, like a train engine attached to cars.
But if the gap is too large then the engine simply pulls away leaving the cars grumbling as they are left idle.
Especially if you invited them to hook up to your engine, and they refused.
Vox, just a quick question, are you going to do stupid question day again? Definitely enjoyed the last one.
We are talking about intelligence here, so I meant smart as intelligent. I know smart have different connotations and making good practical decisions has nothing to do with intelligence (IQ).
Be valuable, be respected. Being smarter should make those easier.
If you're smart, people will eventually figure it out, but if you're valued and respected, most won't resent it.
Someone made a comment referring to a hypothetical "scary smart", "mid-delta."
Is that even a thing? I've never met one.
Do all High-IQ folks end up as Sigma/Alpha/Bravos?
I've never heard the term "scary smart" used anywhere, at any time, other than while watching the movie "Good Will Hunting"
Nor have I ever heard or read the word "scary" used as an synonym for "very," other than in the dialogue of that same movie.
Maybe it's just a Boston thing.
Maybe the commenter is from New England like me.
"You've neva heard a' that? Whadda you wicked retodded or somethin'?" lol cheers.
No. Majority are deltas. Based on my experience, IQ and SSH are unrelated.
Doubt it's related. Langan is most likely a solid delta and Miles Mathis is a textbook gamma. I think your SSH will determine how much of a handicap your high IQ is.
IQ is like height. You did not earn it. Being able to predict with accuracy, widely read, and a walking encyclopedia lowers your SSH. Shut up and do something useful.
The biggest downside is that most average IQ people think that very high IQ and above means that you're supposed to be omniscient, and have Superman-like X-ray vision to be able to see through opaque substances or even have unfettered and infallible clairvoyant abilities.
People of average IQ often don't understand that what the VHIQ and above know (not merely factually, but say, predicting if something will succeed or fail, and in what time frame) isn't due to some magical ability, but due to careful observation of the world, and often, a lot of time devoted to the relevant subjects (either through reading or direct experimentation). And they REALLY resent gaining knowledge by reading about the experiences and conclusions of A, B, C, D, ... rather than taking the time to do repeat the experiences of ALL of the those authors who cared to record their memories of the experience. Although I can't say for sure, I think the resentment towards those who read "too much" (cue the all too common practice of scattering the books which a fellow student is carrying with him as he walks down the hallway. If you're upset by me throwing off the test score curve while I read some history book during the biology teacher's lecture on a subject which bores me, imagine how much worse it would be if I wasn't reading that book and was actually paying attention to the lecture and taking notes rather than reading the biographical and autobiographical accounts of various airplane pilots of the belligerents fighting in France during WW1!)
.
They certainly don't consider how utterly wasteful it would be if every student of, say, history would be only allowed to learn the lessons of various wars and battles by direct experience of repetition of such conflict. They would, of course, be demanding that historians just read the written accounts of the participants, rather than hold annual slaughters on battlefields around the world, for no reason other than "to learn the lessons firsthand."
There's also a certain amount of criticism for NOT being omniscient and/or clairvoyant, such as when facts and information are completely hidden, and you get blindsided by the unfolding of previously hidden operations (such as millions of Americans with STEM degrees being illegally replaced by the management class with foreigners mid-career), they act like you're an idiot for not being aware of secret, illegal conspiracies which the conspirators never mentioned (of course) until the victims could do nothing to defend themselves once ht operation was sprung on them, like an ambush.
IN such circumstances, there's the "if you're so smart... " I usually turn it around, and say, "I never claimed to you to be smart. YOU are the one who keeps saying how smart I am. Now, regarding XYZ, which happened only after some hidden process had been going on for some time... what evidence was there that the things that caused the event were even happening BEFORE XYZ was damaged or failed catastrophically? Did you see them? If so, why didn't you tell anyone? Or did you think they were unimportant, so you didn't bother to warn anyone, and now you're blaming someone else for not being able to read your mind without your permission, and also failing to know that someone should be reading your mind to find out what important information you do know that you refused to tell anyone?"
These are the types of people who would replace a blown fuse with a copper coin, and later the wiring catches on fire; this type will then blame anyone they can find for not immediately realizing that there was too much equipment on that circuit, despite the fact that the fuse didn't blow, because the person blaming everyone else replaced the fuse with a coin but didn't bother to tell anyone what they did.
“A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” - Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
It took me over a decade of marriage to learn that my husband didn't appreciate talking with me because I was intelligent enough to talk with him (ie, have valuable things to say); he appreciated talking with me because I was intelligent enough to understand that he was right.
hahaha! Yes! That is excellent.
I want to frame this and hang it in my house. (or just find a woman who doesn't make me want to frame this and hang it in my house...)
Most who present themselves as intelligent appear retarded mid-wits and Gammas who talk fast and stupid.
For example Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Destiny.
However, Langan nor Vox fit this pattern. Though instead of presenting themselves as intelligent they present the IQ score and then go on to actually do something useful. IQ is impressive only if it is used impressively.
Too many people hear “sapiosexual” and think it’s actually a thing, let alone think that if a little is good, more is better.
MPAI. Gotta see how they behave, not how they tell you they do/will behave.
In western culture, it certainly isn't common, or even uncommon. Extremely rare.
In and around Russia, it very well could be an actual trend among the women.
But just like money, meeting that one criteria isn't enough on its own.
It's probably fairer to say that women who make being smart a big component of their identity insist that you be at least as smart and preferably smarter than they are. But it doesn't actually make you more attractive as such---if her gut believes she's entitled to say a mid-Bravo in the upper 80 or low 90th percentiles, she's not going to give you the time of day for being 'scary smart' if you're just a mid Delta. A lot of requirements that women have are like that--you have to meet them but meeting them doesn't let you get a hotter woman than you could otherwise because of it.
> A lot of requirements that women have are like that--you have to meet them
It's like when a woman says she wants a man with a sense of humor who is good to his mother, the unstated part is a man ...who she already finds attractive on a visceral level... An Omega with no chin who weighs 350 pounds can treat his mother like a queen and be funnier than Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Chris Rock et al will not get the time of day from most women
Pretty much. The sanest women will recognize about what percentile status man they can actually keep (realizing they can get higher for a one night stand or a short fling) and then get the man with the best secondary qualities who is in that range that she can. Frankly the flip side applies too---a sane man will figure out what range he can typically attract in terms of how attractive a woman is, and then try to get the best secondary qualities he can within that range.
Learned this as a sophomore in high school hanging out with a group of other students after school one day while waiting for a rehearsal to start. The beautiful blonde senior, who I knew well from church, had been very friendly and was probably helping my game with the sophomore girls, till when I saw she pulled out of her backpack the newest Harry Potter book, when I tried to be impressive and announced that I had read it in one night, the look of disgust on that beautiful face was unforgettable.
I'm surprised an intelligent person would read Harry Potter.
Almost all women are crowd-followers. Women who are true renegades or lone pioneers are almost invariably insane, because biologically, that's not a safe path for a woman.
While not insane, look at Marie Curie -- her pioneering spirit lead her to an early grave studying pitchblende and the uranium in it -- without any sort of protection against neutron radiation.
Arguably insane, psychotic (or too stupid to realize that eventually people would figure out her grift and push for criminal prosecution) is Elizabeth Holmes and her Theranos blood-testing fraud -- believing that with a mere 1 year of freshman chemistry, she had all of the answers in diagnostic medical testing. Without even a single semester of coursework in organic chemistry...which must be mastered before going on to a series of biochemistry coursework, which is where modern medical diagnostic testing starts.
The only female pioneer of sorts who wasn't destroyed in the process that I can think of is Admiral Grace Hopper, for her pioneering work in computer science and development of the first programming language compilere (COBOL).
UPDATE: Elizabeth Homes is not even out of prison and she's at it again.
https://nypost.com/2025/05/11/us-news/theranos-felon-elizabeth-holmes-advising-baby-daddy-on-blood-testing-startup-report/ and according to various online sources, the psychopath still hasn't even taken a single 2nd-year chemistry class, despite running the Theranos scam for 15 years (more than enough time to get a PhD and a Post Doctorate degree) while swimming in cash, to the tune of several billion dollars from investors.
Help an autist understand, why was this the wrong move?
Was it because you were bragging?
Bragging, plus she may have taken it to mean he thought he was a lot smarter than her for reading it so fast. Depending on delivery, she may even have taken it as disparagement of the book itself. Only thing worse would have been throwing in an "Oh, I read that when I was 12!"
One of the challenges of talking to women is that they will often instantaneously read a hundred different hidden meanings into one simple interaction. They do this because quite often they mean a hundred different things with one simple interaction. 95 to 99 of those things will be utterly nuts.
I see this with female relatives, they'll spend time at a family gathering and then come home and parse not only every conversation, but every observed gesture as though they're reading tea leaves, trying to make the lie of the land fit some pattern they've decided must be present. Sometimes they're even right.
> Sometimes they're even right
Much like a stopped clock
Another possibility is people generally don't like it when people have an effortless capacity to do things they have to put real effort into or is beyond their capacity.
1. It's an unverifiable claim that sounds like an empty boast. Most people can't read very fast -- the idea of reading 200+ pages of even non-technical literature in a single night is utterly incomprehensible to them. To most people, especially high school girls, that claim sounds as much like an empty boast, as impossible to achieve, as claiming that he went jogging and was passing cars that were going 50 mph (80 km/h).
2. It sounds like the sort of veiled, indirect criticism that girls and women use to attack each other. ("My, my, you've been reading that book for a full week and you're still not finished?")
"unverifiable"
There it is, I never think about that. Regardless of how much you're around someone, if they don't really know you and know that you speak only the truth out of habit and aren't trying to impress, they may just think you're lying. The autism is like "Why would I lie about something so mundane?" but that's not mundanity to 98% of people. Hell, even using a simple word like "mundanity" can seem like bragging without actually bragging to other people.
Correct.
Was bragging and fishing for compliments, and probably a bit more, this particular young ladie’s mother would publicly proclaim her high intelligence and photographic memory. But that’s the point of the article. Her intelligence wasn’t her most attractive feature and it wasn’t mine either.
Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips" (Proverbs 27:2)
He made himself the subject, and the only thing for her to do in response was to either be impressed or disgusted. It would have been better to talk about their mutual interest in Harry Potter or, better yet, what she thought about Harry Potter. Everyone likes attention, not least of all pretty girls.
One aspect of this that tripped me up as a young adult was that my generation trained the women to prize intelligence as a sub-component of worshipping The Science(tm). There are scenes in films like Good Will Hunting or A Beautiful Mind where they glamorize over-articulately check-mating some douche in debate. I remember trying to be that guy. Thing is, at the time it kinda worked, though where I'd assumed it was for the above reasons, in hindsight it may've been amongst the only times I came off as both aggressive and dominating-
-but I'd've taken 20 minutes to explain why it was actually the exact opposite motivation/mechanic/etc.
The nostalgia incurred reading these articles is like a reckoning sometimes.
It helps to look like Matt Damon or Russell Crowe
The bar scene in Good Will Hunting, Will stepped in to help his friend, and the scene ended when Will suggested they step outside to fight it out.
It wasn't just winning a smart boy debate, Will stayed quiet until his friend started flailing, then stood up for his friend, and had the willingness to escalate physically.
Using his brains to win the debate was just 1 of 4 things he did. Two parts demonstrated solid understanding of social group dynamics, and the last bit demonstrated his physicality.
Thanks for the heads-up. I think my point still stands, but I haven't watched the film in quite a while. 'Preciate the assessment.
If you haven’t figured out your intelligence is a social hindrance, you must be using all that firepower for navel gazing, inflicting the dreadful combo of high IQ, low SSH on everyone around you.
Your intelligence can get you sacked from your job.
Definitely in some lines of work