Maybe this is why my marriage is so successful; I looked for and married a man I considered smarter than I am and I ask his opinion on every important decision I make; and vice versa. My best friend, confidant and fellow soldier in life. I can't help but think that if more women chose their mates based on that criteria, (instead of looks, charm and income), their relationships might work out.
Oh, I agree with Vox that the standalone paragraph he quotes from Miles is very gamma. I’m just taking Miles’ statement as a whole, not just that one paragraph.
Remember, Mathis does not typically write stuff like this. This 10 pager he put together is called his version of a blog post.
And knowing his relationship won’t last because of the age difference shows he is not stuck in some gamma delusion.
I talked to Miles Mathis once. His number was on the page for a while (to sell art), the callback i got indicated a number different coastally from where he is supposed to live. This minute call, focusing on minutiae (the guy says “i only talk about art, the political stuff people just want to go on and on….”) gave voice to a slightly sociopathic mentality, I thought, where it was mentioned that some ol’ guy, who has a bunch of his paintings, was about to die soon. The voice was of a college-educated American genx’er, no doubt about it. Slightly effeminate. Zero traces of a Southerner/or/from/Texas. I felt a little icky about this call (made during offtime at work, in the evening, and to a bloke who was almost certainly at home lonely and alone, for all his prestigious familial ranking)…. So, why did I make the call? It was somewhat at the instigation of boomer blogger Allan Weisbecker (rip), whose take on the likelihood of that page being a major, mini-wikipedia level psyop is (I think?) brilliant. But Weis didn’t want to hear that there was an actual person who can be spoken to. Insisted it was just some random employee, which I suppose is possible. (Typical! The “mm” site, though I’ve read it has an ip in County Cork, clearly has American members.) Miles it seems is at least a real, quasi-pre-Raphaelite artist selling some paintings to yuppy households with no qualms of nudity. Btw, I think he’s gay
This is a paragraph further up from Vox’s quote. It does not sound very gamma to me.
The interesting story to go along with that is that I dated this girl very briefly when I was about 40 and she was 22. It was just before I went to Europe—when I first became aware that my youthful looks were a curse in disguise. Yes, though youthful looks were what allowed me to date this girl in the first place, which may look like a blessing, but it didn't work out that way. At first she thought I was another student, maybe a grad student, but once she saw my apartment she began to get suspicious. It wasn't the apartment of a grad student, since I had way too much interesting stuff. It wasn't a matter of wealth, since I had none, it was a matter of all the paintings and books and so on. No one could have painted all those paintings by age 25. So she did the addition and began to ask questions. She asked how old I was. I said how old do you think I look. She said 25, maybe 27. I said, well, that is good enough for me. I had been guessed at 23 that month by a girl at the pizza parlor. I didn't want to tell my friend my age because I knew it was a problem. I saw it coming. After we had slept together a few times, she thought to go online and do some digging. She came back and said “I know you are 40. I can't date a 40-year-old. What if I married you? You would get old long before I did!” So she went back to her 25-year-old previous boyfriend. I ran into her after that and told her he would get old before I did. She looked at me like I was crazy. Or a vampire or something. How could he get old before I did? But I predicted it for several reasons. One, I looked better than he did right then, which should have been her first clue. That is why she had been dating me. She wasn't dating me for my brains, she was dating me for my pretty face. Sad but true, and of course I knew it. It doesn't only happen to women, you know. Two, he didn't look like the kind of guy who took care of himself. He already had lines around his eyes, from drinking or drugs, probably.
I, I, I, I, I, I ... final count of 25 references to "I" or "me". Wall of text. Humble-bragging (youthful looks, too much interesting stuff, my pretty face, etc).
I think you need to spend more time studying the SSH before contradicting the judgement of the creator of the SSH.
I think Vox mentioned on a Darkstream that CS Lewis was likely Gamma. Reformed Gamma based on the insightful details of writing the characters of Edward and Eustace.
Another thing about him is that, while his art is good, his scientific theories have merit, and his writing is proficient, he nevertheless comes across as someone who whines and makes excuses for why he can't do things. If his science is as revolutionary as it seems, then there should be simple experiments that would prove it, and he has even talked about some, like a variation on the double slit experiment. But he will complain that the "Phoenicians" control everything and won't give him funding, despite the fact that there are many ways to get funding in the internet age. Or he complains there are no galleries that showcase good art, but he won't start one himself (again, Phoenicians, no funding, etc.). If he's content to live as a poor artist/writer, that's fine, but it's annoying to read him gripe about other people not doing the hard work for him. I'm surprised he hasn't claimed that all women who have rejected him only did so because they were paid off by the Phoenicians.
Secret King MM mentions getting "talked over." Few years ago my boss taught me his trick for dealing with over-talkers. You don't simply talk louder(although that definitely works too if you can afford a confrontation), but you do have to keep talking. That can be difficult if you're a sperg, because of the interference. But the real magic is this: you talk slower, lower(deeper), and more quietly. Keep getting slower, lower, and quieter. You get low enough, slow enough, and quiet enough--they'll crack. They'll stop and ask you to repeat yourself. Then you can talk normally. Shit really works, but you might have to do it a few times. Try it yourself.
This does work -- if you can drop the octave in your speaking voice. If you are cursed with a higher pitch, it does not work.
One of my many sins is that I interrupt people and I also will not stop talking until I've said what I want to say. It is often an ... advantage in my particular line of work, but if I forget to turn it off I will irritate people, as my wife sometimes informs me.
Oh and lean back as you do this. Over-talk will drown you out, but body language cannot be drowned out. I'm not sure on why the leaning back works, but its part of it.
Dang. I feel so stupid. It just dawned on my that the band Booster Patrol predicted the global pushback as a consequence of the jab. Booster Patrol should be the name for the entire global revolutionary movement. F**king brilliant, Vox. F**king brilliant.
Women are always interested in what I have to say. I can't relate with the article. I feel delusional saying this because it sounds uncommon. I don't think I am alpha either.
Whining definitely lowers your SSH instantly and is a sign for the women to head to the nearest exit. Gammas complain a lot more than other SSH ranks and it is absolutely infuriating to listen to. Especially the "Oh, I am so superior" variety.
Gammas: No one owes you their attention, or is obligated to consider your Very Important Feelings and Opinions.
Keep in mind that Miles is referencing a short relationship that he had with a woman when she was 22 and he was 40. She later met up with him when she was 37 and he was 55 and she said he was right about the boy she eventually chose and that Miles was the better choice.
I don’t know if that fits in quite well with a gamma.
A Gamma can be right. It's not about technical correctness, but attitude and general mindset.
The fact he was right and the woman didn't care what he thought is evidence of Gamma. If he was Alpha/high SSH, she'd go along with him even if he was wrong.
The fact he's writing about it after the fact with so many words is again confirming evidence of his Gamma rank.
I don’t know if that is a fair assessment. He manages to get women to strip down and pose naked for him and he successfully dated a 22 year old at 40. Yes, I would argue he is sensitive in his writing, but I don’t get the impression that he is regaling all of these women with his theories. In fact, I do recall that he got revealed when some woman looked him up at the prompting of her brother.
I understand Vox’s point, but I think that paragraph he wrote should be taken in context of the entire article.
I know a gamma who specializes in seducing very young women with extreme family issues exclusively through online chatgroups. I have no idea how he finds these groups but he's done it for years and has a talent for finding these places. AOL -> IRC channels -> forums -> Discord sort of progression. The relationships never last long. He manages to get women but his behavioral patterns are completely gamma and the relationship dynamic conforms to what you'd expect very quickly.
In other words women treat gammas like they're trying to weasel into their pants because they actually are and they occasionally succeed.
He managed to get the foot in the door because of his looks. But he got kicked out of the house as soon as the women got to know him a little. That's simply a good looking Gamma.
It is a fair assessment that Gamma is an attitude and mindset independent of objective correctness on the facts. It's about how people react to you, whether you are right or wrong.
It is a fair assessment that Vox's observations are objective evidence of Miles having a Gamma mindset and approach towards women.
Also, Miles dating a 22 year old at 40 involved deception about his own age. He hid it and she had to dig to find out. His shame at his own age and his arguments that it didn't matter created an incoherency that signaled weakness and decreased her attraction for him.
The fact he was "right" about his 40 year old self aging better than her 25 year old boyfriend is petty, and bragging that she admitted he was right is vainly Gamma.
The tone, and I admittedly only read the excerpt here and didn’t click through, reads as though he expects to be loved by a woman for being genius-level smart. But women REQUIRE intelligence in a man, they don’t LOVE them for having it.
The problem is that, while a woman generally requires that her man be smarter than her, “smarter than me” is a bare minimum sort of requirement, along with having a pulse and a penis. Most women aren’t going to get hot and bothered if they think a guy is an idiot. But “smart enough” isn’t really a turn on in and of itself. It’s more that “stupid” is a disqualifier.
And since most women are clustered around the great big middle, they really only need the guy to be in the 110 range to their 105, or even on the higher end 140 to her 135.
Miles has a couple of problems:
(1) With very high IQ being so heavily skewed male, there are not a lot of women five points below Miles. And those few women who are even in the -15 to -20 points range from him will have their pick of the guys at and above their level if they can find an environment with enough to choose from. They won’t select among the high IQ men based on who is smartest; passing the “smarter than me test” is sufficient. The men will be classified as mate material, or not, based on other criteria- courage, risk taking, stability, whatever attracts her.
(2) The women don’t care to pick his brain because what they’re looking for with the intelligence filter is being able to trust the guy’s judgment by handing over the decision making on abstract sorts of things to him. She wants to be able to trust that he’ll make as good or better a decision than she would, and then let go and trust his judgment. She doesn’t want the ins and outs of how his mind works - she just wants to trust that he’ll do the things in his wheelhouse well.
Are you certain that a woman generally requires that her man be smarter than she? The only women I noticed were interested in me before I started lifting were more intelligent than I assume I am.
Women at the high IQ end willingly date lower IQ men. For instance, 135 IQ is under 2% of the population, so she'll triage IQ with her other requirements, to willingly date that hot athlete with only a 125 IQ.
As I understand it, the female IQ bell curve is more narrow then the male. As a result, females as a group skew more towards the mean, or conversely males are more likely to be idiots and geniuses.
Given the natural desire of everyone to partner with someone roughly in their league in terms of intelligence and combine that with the other soft requirements -- six figures, six feet, etc. -- their are very few people to choose from if you are a woman 120 IQ+ and expecting all of those boxes to be checked. Something has to give.
You’re mistaken- people in that IQ range are rare but because females skew more toward the middle the male:female ratio at the high end is extremely favorable to women, like 7:1. Decent looking smart women don’t have to settle if they can get themselves into an environment, male dominated graduate programs, that is heavily skewed toward high IQ during their prime years. It’s expensive though.
Hard disagree on the “willingly.” A woman at 135 is stuck dating the hot athlete at 125, but she cringes every time he says or does something less intelligent than she would ever do or say.
Eventually she’ll find herself an environment, in my experience a male dominated science/law/engineering graduate program, that contains enough men in the 135-145 range to have some choices and monkeybranch to the most athletic of those, if athleticism is her thing, for example.
The midwit girls found husbands at the college level, my smartest college girlfriends were stuck dating down intellectually through college. The way we talked about our decent and decently but less intelligent boyfriends would make you all hate us. “Can’t take him out in public.” “ugh, can you believe he did xyz, what an idiot.” Nicknamed one “snarffblat.”
Being with a man you think is not smarter than you is viscerally painful. And you’ll be much less forgiving of earnest mistakes because you think he’s dumb. It’s not a good marriage situation.
Because the only clusters of very smart men are generally in graduate school or the jobs that come from it, these women have to get very expensive MRS degrees in order to find a mate, and end up late to the game on kids as a result.
I live 2-3 miles from 2 of the top universities in the world, I'm sure you'd guess my city correctly, so my perception of the world might be skewed, since I have so many friends who are Ivy alums or have graduate degrees or both, but I absolutely see very smart women date "smart enough".
When both have relatively close IQ, the difference is more, sometimes he's smarter, sometimes she's smarter. A 5 IQ difference, you'd never notice, as that's like a good day vs an average day.
My husband and I have attended top caliber universities, so I share the same skewed data set.
I don’t think we are saying different things.
The man has to be smart enough, and “within five points of her” is a fine estimation.
“Equal to or better” = “not a dumbass.” “Smart enough” is a baseline requirement like breathing and being physiologically male.
Once “smart enough” is hit, more IQ is not an attractor.
What Mathis is failing to understand is that if the women he’s after are 140IQ (because so few exist at the 150/160/170 levels) the men who attract those women only need to be circa 140 themselves.
Even if the 140+ subset is only 2% of the population, it’s skewed like 7:1 male to female. In a high caliber graduate program a 140 IQ woman has found an environment full of 135- 150IQ men, all of whom pass the “smart enough” test. She won’t distinguish between them on the basis of intelligence because they’ve all already made the cut.
Mathis waltzing in with a big old 180 brain or whatever he has, isn’t going to be more attractive than the other guys on the basis of his big brain. He wants to be loved for being the smartest, but the smart women are happy with smart enough and will be attracted based on other criteria.
"Being with a man you think is not smarter than you is viscerally painful. And you’ll be much less forgiving of earnest mistakes because you think he’s dumb. It’s not a good marriage situation."
Yes, times 1000. Smart doesn't even have to mean smart in all ways; if it complements your own intelligence and is adequate in most other areas, so much the better.
I agree with what you write with one caveat : “But women REQUIRE intelligence in a man, they don’t LOVE them for having it.” Having observed my girls and their female friends in their high school days I wouldn’t rate low Intelligence as being a disqualification factor, unless the guy rode the short bus. I suggest your statement is correct when applied to Women. But not younger females, that is until they get more experienced and develop better cognitive skills, become less prone to infatuation.
Women do not require men to be more intelligent. Obviously the communication gap applies here and Mathis' work is specialized to fields which most women possibly do not know even exist.
Women require men to provide. Communication gap exists no matter what. A wife does not care to know about a specialty, be it what MM does or a plumber.
Maybe this is why my marriage is so successful; I looked for and married a man I considered smarter than I am and I ask his opinion on every important decision I make; and vice versa. My best friend, confidant and fellow soldier in life. I can't help but think that if more women chose their mates based on that criteria, (instead of looks, charm and income), their relationships might work out.
Well, I finally understand the type of person this song was written for
now.
https://youtu.be/Ggj8AI_Woo0
Oh, I agree with Vox that the standalone paragraph he quotes from Miles is very gamma. I’m just taking Miles’ statement as a whole, not just that one paragraph.
Remember, Mathis does not typically write stuff like this. This 10 pager he put together is called his version of a blog post.
And knowing his relationship won’t last because of the age difference shows he is not stuck in some gamma delusion.
I talked to Miles Mathis once. His number was on the page for a while (to sell art), the callback i got indicated a number different coastally from where he is supposed to live. This minute call, focusing on minutiae (the guy says “i only talk about art, the political stuff people just want to go on and on….”) gave voice to a slightly sociopathic mentality, I thought, where it was mentioned that some ol’ guy, who has a bunch of his paintings, was about to die soon. The voice was of a college-educated American genx’er, no doubt about it. Slightly effeminate. Zero traces of a Southerner/or/from/Texas. I felt a little icky about this call (made during offtime at work, in the evening, and to a bloke who was almost certainly at home lonely and alone, for all his prestigious familial ranking)…. So, why did I make the call? It was somewhat at the instigation of boomer blogger Allan Weisbecker (rip), whose take on the likelihood of that page being a major, mini-wikipedia level psyop is (I think?) brilliant. But Weis didn’t want to hear that there was an actual person who can be spoken to. Insisted it was just some random employee, which I suppose is possible. (Typical! The “mm” site, though I’ve read it has an ip in County Cork, clearly has American members.) Miles it seems is at least a real, quasi-pre-Raphaelite artist selling some paintings to yuppy households with no qualms of nudity. Btw, I think he’s gay
This is a paragraph further up from Vox’s quote. It does not sound very gamma to me.
The interesting story to go along with that is that I dated this girl very briefly when I was about 40 and she was 22. It was just before I went to Europe—when I first became aware that my youthful looks were a curse in disguise. Yes, though youthful looks were what allowed me to date this girl in the first place, which may look like a blessing, but it didn't work out that way. At first she thought I was another student, maybe a grad student, but once she saw my apartment she began to get suspicious. It wasn't the apartment of a grad student, since I had way too much interesting stuff. It wasn't a matter of wealth, since I had none, it was a matter of all the paintings and books and so on. No one could have painted all those paintings by age 25. So she did the addition and began to ask questions. She asked how old I was. I said how old do you think I look. She said 25, maybe 27. I said, well, that is good enough for me. I had been guessed at 23 that month by a girl at the pizza parlor. I didn't want to tell my friend my age because I knew it was a problem. I saw it coming. After we had slept together a few times, she thought to go online and do some digging. She came back and said “I know you are 40. I can't date a 40-year-old. What if I married you? You would get old long before I did!” So she went back to her 25-year-old previous boyfriend. I ran into her after that and told her he would get old before I did. She looked at me like I was crazy. Or a vampire or something. How could he get old before I did? But I predicted it for several reasons. One, I looked better than he did right then, which should have been her first clue. That is why she had been dating me. She wasn't dating me for my brains, she was dating me for my pretty face. Sad but true, and of course I knew it. It doesn't only happen to women, you know. Two, he didn't look like the kind of guy who took care of himself. He already had lines around his eyes, from drinking or drugs, probably.
I, I, I, I, I, I ... final count of 25 references to "I" or "me". Wall of text. Humble-bragging (youthful looks, too much interesting stuff, my pretty face, etc).
I think you need to spend more time studying the SSH before contradicting the judgement of the creator of the SSH.
The narcissism of “The women don’t like me? It must be because there’s something wrong with them.”
So many women since have been members of the Phoenician Navy as well.
What socio-sexual status would you apply to C. S. Lewis? He expressed a similar sentiment about why he didn't get married until his fifties.
I think Vox mentioned on a Darkstream that CS Lewis was likely Gamma. Reformed Gamma based on the insightful details of writing the characters of Edward and Eustace.
Another thing about him is that, while his art is good, his scientific theories have merit, and his writing is proficient, he nevertheless comes across as someone who whines and makes excuses for why he can't do things. If his science is as revolutionary as it seems, then there should be simple experiments that would prove it, and he has even talked about some, like a variation on the double slit experiment. But he will complain that the "Phoenicians" control everything and won't give him funding, despite the fact that there are many ways to get funding in the internet age. Or he complains there are no galleries that showcase good art, but he won't start one himself (again, Phoenicians, no funding, etc.). If he's content to live as a poor artist/writer, that's fine, but it's annoying to read him gripe about other people not doing the hard work for him. I'm surprised he hasn't claimed that all women who have rejected him only did so because they were paid off by the Phoenicians.
It is nice that he uses punctuation.
Secret King MM mentions getting "talked over." Few years ago my boss taught me his trick for dealing with over-talkers. You don't simply talk louder(although that definitely works too if you can afford a confrontation), but you do have to keep talking. That can be difficult if you're a sperg, because of the interference. But the real magic is this: you talk slower, lower(deeper), and more quietly. Keep getting slower, lower, and quieter. You get low enough, slow enough, and quiet enough--they'll crack. They'll stop and ask you to repeat yourself. Then you can talk normally. Shit really works, but you might have to do it a few times. Try it yourself.
This does work -- if you can drop the octave in your speaking voice. If you are cursed with a higher pitch, it does not work.
One of my many sins is that I interrupt people and I also will not stop talking until I've said what I want to say. It is often an ... advantage in my particular line of work, but if I forget to turn it off I will irritate people, as my wife sometimes informs me.
Oh and lean back as you do this. Over-talk will drown you out, but body language cannot be drowned out. I'm not sure on why the leaning back works, but its part of it.
That is sound philosophy. In addition with your feelings. Like Matt from QoC, worry about yourself.
It is funny seeing how these men posture like they do not care but then write many paragraphs on how much they care.
Dang. I feel so stupid. It just dawned on my that the band Booster Patrol predicted the global pushback as a consequence of the jab. Booster Patrol should be the name for the entire global revolutionary movement. F**king brilliant, Vox. F**king brilliant.
Women are always interested in what I have to say. I can't relate with the article. I feel delusional saying this because it sounds uncommon. I don't think I am alpha either.
The bot adds nothing. Stay secret.
Whining definitely lowers your SSH instantly and is a sign for the women to head to the nearest exit. Gammas complain a lot more than other SSH ranks and it is absolutely infuriating to listen to. Especially the "Oh, I am so superior" variety.
Gammas: No one owes you their attention, or is obligated to consider your Very Important Feelings and Opinions.
Keep in mind that Miles is referencing a short relationship that he had with a woman when she was 22 and he was 40. She later met up with him when she was 37 and he was 55 and she said he was right about the boy she eventually chose and that Miles was the better choice.
I don’t know if that fits in quite well with a gamma.
A Gamma can be right. It's not about technical correctness, but attitude and general mindset.
The fact he was right and the woman didn't care what he thought is evidence of Gamma. If he was Alpha/high SSH, she'd go along with him even if he was wrong.
The fact he's writing about it after the fact with so many words is again confirming evidence of his Gamma rank.
I don’t know if that is a fair assessment. He manages to get women to strip down and pose naked for him and he successfully dated a 22 year old at 40. Yes, I would argue he is sensitive in his writing, but I don’t get the impression that he is regaling all of these women with his theories. In fact, I do recall that he got revealed when some woman looked him up at the prompting of her brother.
I understand Vox’s point, but I think that paragraph he wrote should be taken in context of the entire article.
First, no one cares what you think.
Second, I positively ID'd Miles as a Gamma long before he ever wrote that particular paragraph.
Third, there is no context that would prevent the author of that paragraph from being a Gamma.
I know a gamma who specializes in seducing very young women with extreme family issues exclusively through online chatgroups. I have no idea how he finds these groups but he's done it for years and has a talent for finding these places. AOL -> IRC channels -> forums -> Discord sort of progression. The relationships never last long. He manages to get women but his behavioral patterns are completely gamma and the relationship dynamic conforms to what you'd expect very quickly.
In other words women treat gammas like they're trying to weasel into their pants because they actually are and they occasionally succeed.
"...he successfully dated a 22 year old at 40."
He managed to get the foot in the door because of his looks. But he got kicked out of the house as soon as the women got to know him a little. That's simply a good looking Gamma.
It is a fair assessment that Gamma is an attitude and mindset independent of objective correctness on the facts. It's about how people react to you, whether you are right or wrong.
It is a fair assessment that Vox's observations are objective evidence of Miles having a Gamma mindset and approach towards women.
Also, Miles dating a 22 year old at 40 involved deception about his own age. He hid it and she had to dig to find out. His shame at his own age and his arguments that it didn't matter created an incoherency that signaled weakness and decreased her attraction for him.
The fact he was "right" about his 40 year old self aging better than her 25 year old boyfriend is petty, and bragging that she admitted he was right is vainly Gamma.
The tone, and I admittedly only read the excerpt here and didn’t click through, reads as though he expects to be loved by a woman for being genius-level smart. But women REQUIRE intelligence in a man, they don’t LOVE them for having it.
The problem is that, while a woman generally requires that her man be smarter than her, “smarter than me” is a bare minimum sort of requirement, along with having a pulse and a penis. Most women aren’t going to get hot and bothered if they think a guy is an idiot. But “smart enough” isn’t really a turn on in and of itself. It’s more that “stupid” is a disqualifier.
And since most women are clustered around the great big middle, they really only need the guy to be in the 110 range to their 105, or even on the higher end 140 to her 135.
Miles has a couple of problems:
(1) With very high IQ being so heavily skewed male, there are not a lot of women five points below Miles. And those few women who are even in the -15 to -20 points range from him will have their pick of the guys at and above their level if they can find an environment with enough to choose from. They won’t select among the high IQ men based on who is smartest; passing the “smarter than me test” is sufficient. The men will be classified as mate material, or not, based on other criteria- courage, risk taking, stability, whatever attracts her.
(2) The women don’t care to pick his brain because what they’re looking for with the intelligence filter is being able to trust the guy’s judgment by handing over the decision making on abstract sorts of things to him. She wants to be able to trust that he’ll make as good or better a decision than she would, and then let go and trust his judgment. She doesn’t want the ins and outs of how his mind works - she just wants to trust that he’ll do the things in his wheelhouse well.
Are you certain that a woman generally requires that her man be smarter than she? The only women I noticed were interested in me before I started lifting were more intelligent than I assume I am.
Did any of them marry you?
No.
Women at the high IQ end willingly date lower IQ men. For instance, 135 IQ is under 2% of the population, so she'll triage IQ with her other requirements, to willingly date that hot athlete with only a 125 IQ.
As I understand it, the female IQ bell curve is more narrow then the male. As a result, females as a group skew more towards the mean, or conversely males are more likely to be idiots and geniuses.
Given the natural desire of everyone to partner with someone roughly in their league in terms of intelligence and combine that with the other soft requirements -- six figures, six feet, etc. -- their are very few people to choose from if you are a woman 120 IQ+ and expecting all of those boxes to be checked. Something has to give.
You’re mistaken- people in that IQ range are rare but because females skew more toward the middle the male:female ratio at the high end is extremely favorable to women, like 7:1. Decent looking smart women don’t have to settle if they can get themselves into an environment, male dominated graduate programs, that is heavily skewed toward high IQ during their prime years. It’s expensive though.
Hard disagree on the “willingly.” A woman at 135 is stuck dating the hot athlete at 125, but she cringes every time he says or does something less intelligent than she would ever do or say.
Eventually she’ll find herself an environment, in my experience a male dominated science/law/engineering graduate program, that contains enough men in the 135-145 range to have some choices and monkeybranch to the most athletic of those, if athleticism is her thing, for example.
The midwit girls found husbands at the college level, my smartest college girlfriends were stuck dating down intellectually through college. The way we talked about our decent and decently but less intelligent boyfriends would make you all hate us. “Can’t take him out in public.” “ugh, can you believe he did xyz, what an idiot.” Nicknamed one “snarffblat.”
Being with a man you think is not smarter than you is viscerally painful. And you’ll be much less forgiving of earnest mistakes because you think he’s dumb. It’s not a good marriage situation.
Because the only clusters of very smart men are generally in graduate school or the jobs that come from it, these women have to get very expensive MRS degrees in order to find a mate, and end up late to the game on kids as a result.
I live 2-3 miles from 2 of the top universities in the world, I'm sure you'd guess my city correctly, so my perception of the world might be skewed, since I have so many friends who are Ivy alums or have graduate degrees or both, but I absolutely see very smart women date "smart enough".
When both have relatively close IQ, the difference is more, sometimes he's smarter, sometimes she's smarter. A 5 IQ difference, you'd never notice, as that's like a good day vs an average day.
My husband and I have attended top caliber universities, so I share the same skewed data set.
I don’t think we are saying different things.
The man has to be smart enough, and “within five points of her” is a fine estimation.
“Equal to or better” = “not a dumbass.” “Smart enough” is a baseline requirement like breathing and being physiologically male.
Once “smart enough” is hit, more IQ is not an attractor.
What Mathis is failing to understand is that if the women he’s after are 140IQ (because so few exist at the 150/160/170 levels) the men who attract those women only need to be circa 140 themselves.
Even if the 140+ subset is only 2% of the population, it’s skewed like 7:1 male to female. In a high caliber graduate program a 140 IQ woman has found an environment full of 135- 150IQ men, all of whom pass the “smart enough” test. She won’t distinguish between them on the basis of intelligence because they’ve all already made the cut.
Mathis waltzing in with a big old 180 brain or whatever he has, isn’t going to be more attractive than the other guys on the basis of his big brain. He wants to be loved for being the smartest, but the smart women are happy with smart enough and will be attracted based on other criteria.
"Being with a man you think is not smarter than you is viscerally painful. And you’ll be much less forgiving of earnest mistakes because you think he’s dumb. It’s not a good marriage situation."
Yes, times 1000. Smart doesn't even have to mean smart in all ways; if it complements your own intelligence and is adequate in most other areas, so much the better.
Looked at another way: I'm just smart enough to get into serious trouble. I need someone smarter to keep me out of it.
I agree with what you write with one caveat : “But women REQUIRE intelligence in a man, they don’t LOVE them for having it.” Having observed my girls and their female friends in their high school days I wouldn’t rate low Intelligence as being a disqualification factor, unless the guy rode the short bus. I suggest your statement is correct when applied to Women. But not younger females, that is until they get more experienced and develop better cognitive skills, become less prone to infatuation.
That’s fair, and probably has a lot to do with the monkey-branch rate during the transition form high school to college.
Women do not require men to be more intelligent. Obviously the communication gap applies here and Mathis' work is specialized to fields which most women possibly do not know even exist.
P1: Women don’t get hot for men who they think are idiots.
P2: Because they are solipsistic,
women measure “idiot” as “I think he’s dumb, so he’s not as smart as me.”
C: Women don’t get hot for men who they perceive as less intelligent than themselves.
Women require men to provide. Communication gap exists no matter what. A wife does not care to know about a specialty, be it what MM does or a plumber.