The Suffering of the Smart

No, you almost certainly don't know anything about it.

Now… this is rather personal post, so I have a little bit of an introduction to it, even if it will affect and resonate, based on the number of subscribers I have and the statistics of IQ, with precisely NONE of you.

In fact, statistically, I’d need about 13-14 times the number of subs I have now for the likelihood that this applies to ONE of you. But hey… it’s my sub stack and I will write whatever I want. The fact some of you might be drooling on your keyboard as you get cancer on the tip of your finger as you try to follow along, is neither here not there.

And who knows, I have been culling the mouth-breathers hard here, with zero warning, as is my nature, so it may be that we have a couple of outliers here anyway. See? I am an optimist at heart.

Anyway, to do a proper job, you really should first understand what the difference in my terminology is between, Clever, Intelligent and Smart. Which I defined and explained in a post (or two?) starting here. So if you want to really get the full depth of it read that first. If you don’t as I assume most of you won’t, it needs to be understood that just because someone has a 150+ IQ does NOT necessarily mean they are what I define as Smart. They are certainly Intelligent, but that’s one level below Smart.

On the other hand, no, you cannot be considered Smart if you’re a 120 IQ midwit. Or even a 70 IQ really honest and careful person. They may be wise, they may be good people (or not, IQ is not especially related to morality) but they are not what I define as Smart.

So the analogy I will explain below is not ideal in THAT aspect of it, but it certainly suffices to make you understand a little bit what it’s like to be me.

Before I start, let me also state that, No, I do not have the official results of my IQ, I didn’t keep them, and I have moved home literally dozens of time since and countries four times, but… I also don’t care AT ALL if you think I am making this up, don’t believe me, or expect me to justify, demonstrate, or prove any of this to you.

It is also a personal curiosity to see if you’re even capable of understanding WHY that doesn’t matter to me at all, so if you’re interested in playing, try to think up of the reason you think I don’t care and then I’ll tell you and also have a poll at the end to see if you guessed it right before you got to the end where I tell you.

The now dead gorilla Koko was given IQ tests a number of times in different ways. The exact result is not completely agreed upon, but overall, the range of it is thought by all who looked the issue, studied it and administered the tests, to be in the min-max range between 70 and 95. There is argument about whether these were entirely valid, because they were infant IQ tests, and although several different ones were administered, some critiqued them on the basis that perhaps the testers were biased (consciously or unconsciously) and assigned more meaning to potentially ambiguous response and so on.

There have been papers written on this and the general consensus is that Koko’s IQ averaged out around 80. I am going to be generous, and say that it probably was 85 instead.

Now, if you are an average person with IQ 100 that places you only one standard deviation away from Koko (15 point being one standard deviation for IQ test generally).

But hey… you read my blog! You’re not an average human! You’re probably one of those “smartest guy in the room” guys, who have around 120 IQ.

And they genuinely, generally, are the “smartest”¹ guy or girl in the room. And that means there are at least 35 IQ points between you and Koko. Or —uncomfortable as this is for so many of you who have not lived there for 25 years, like I did— between you and the average African from Africa (where some nations have an average of 70 IQ *cough* Equatorial Guinea *cough*).

Now for those of you who don’t know, the IQ gap is about 30 points.

The IQ gap is what is experienced between people that have at least that many points between them in various different ways. At the lower end, say the average 70 IQ Equatorial Guinean with the average 100 IQ European, the lower side tends to simply see/note/accept as given, that the higher IQ guy has some quality (which can include magical powers, being just better, or in any case capable of doing things that the lower IQ guy cannot) that allows them to simply do stuff the lower IQ guy can’t and will generally die, maim themselves or others, or cause some kind of screw-up if they DO try to do it.

On the other hand, things are very different when the issue is between a 120 IQ guy and a 150 IQ guy. The same gap still exists, and the 150 IQ guy can do things, and achieve results the 120 IQ guy just cannot functionally understand. That is they literally are incapable of grasping how the 150 IQ guy does it. This does NOT (unlike the previous example) often lead to a kind of general acceptance, possible overall submission, or accepted guidance from the higher IQ person. Instead, the 120 IQ midwit, being used to being the “smartest” person in the room, will almost invariably tend to assume some kind of trickery is involved. They will assume they are being lied to, that the higher IQ guy cheated, somehow (at whatever it is that is being done, created, demonstrated, or calculated), or is otherwise fooling them in some nefarious way. And the problem is that even when the higher IQ guy tries to walk them through every single step of the process they did, the 120 IQ guy simply cannot understand it.

If, unlike me, you have never spent a week trying to teach a 70 IQ guy the concept of square metres… well… trust me… it really does work like that. You can use coloured charts, math, step-by-step power-point slides, and they will probably be less useful than if you just tell them you have alien DNA and are able to do magic.

Now, here is the bit that I don’t care if you believe me or not, but is absolutely factual:

At age 26 I took two proper IQ tests.

I scored 157 on the first one, and I thought that’s got to be wrong, I can’t be THAT much smarter than everyone else around me right?

I mean I knew I was, but I did not understand IQ properly at all back then, never having been too interested in it, and also having imbibed the general boomer Kool-aid that intelligence didn’t really matter because we are all humans after all, I had the wrong assumption it merely measured the speed at which you can do things. I simply knew I was much faster (as I was in physical reflexes too) than the average person, but I just assumed it was always possible for anyone to be able to eventually grasp the same things I saw instantly. And it was only much later I realised how utterly wrong that perspective was. In any event, I took another proper test, a different one (it wasn’t MENSA, I genuinely don’t recall the names of the tests nor the organisations, I honestly didn’t think too much about it at the time) and on this one I really tried to do my best. So of course I scored 152.²

That averages out at 154.5 or rounded, to an IQ of 155.

So, if you are a 120 IQ smart-boy/smart-girl, the difference in intelligence between you and me is essentially, exactly the same as between you and Koko.

Now, it’s true IQ does decline a little with age, but that’s true for both you and me, and no I don’t really care what mine is this very second. I can tell you that without a doubt, the general gap in my perception of reality and that of pretty much everyone else around me, remains the same. I may (and I say may) have just learnt to tolerate the pervasive stupidity I see all around me a little better over the years.

But I have only learnt to do so primarily as a result of of a couple of things, which is not to say I advise any of you to try and do any/all/some of them, I am just sharing my personal experience here, I’m not advocating for anything in particular.

1. Being with a lot of different women - It let me verify in autistic detail that their brains are just completely different from male brains and work different, for different reasons and with different mechanisms, and yes, these are even present as physical differences in the physical brains of men and women. Realising this was rather important, because once I understood that, at a very deep level, the generic frustration I felt at the female lack of capacity for logic was greatly reduced. I never hated women for it, but I certainly did think they were fucking idiots, generally speaking. And generally speaking, from a male perspective, they really kind of are. BUT and this is the important point for autists like us, if that is how reality works, then that’s that. You adapt or die. And also… if it IS that way, there must be a good reason for it. And when you look into that more, you realise aha! there is indeed. And I cover all this stuff in more detail in Caveman Theory, which is only available in digital format, so if you care, go get it.

2. Having children - Children often simply don’t know better through lack of lifetime on Earth. Of course, they also tend to know better a lot more than weak parents think, so it’s not a straight line. But still, being patient with little kids is easier. With teenagers probably less so. But it’s the circle of life, the kicks in the ass, by dad, life, or God, will make them into better people, c’est la vie.

3. My wife - Partly she does this by the infuriating way in which God tries to teach us patience. Which is roughly the equivalent of having a cute howling monkey on crack tear through your day with insane levels of chaos that no normal human (male) would ever even consider as possible. But on another side, it is because I estimate her IQ is high enough that (thank you God!) while there is a gap, it is not THE IQ gap of 30 points. And, once I did take some time to study IQ and high levels of it, I realised that there is a trend. High IQ men and women, bot tend to exhibit aspects of various “spectrum disorders” (a label used by the various Koko’s trying to describe people like me (or my wife for that matter) by using often made-up words to try and finger paint their way through a micrometer thin web of facts they can’t understand much less see). In men it can present as OCD type stuff, in women it can too but generally with a giant side-dish of completely irrational shit that makes autists twitch at 50 paces. It’s not always been easy for either of us, but as time passes, we certainly learnt to understand better each other’s “quirks”.³

So… there wasn’t really a point to this long post, that is somewhat solipsistically self-reflective, other than perhaps:

1. Don’t try and marry someone with whom you have an actual IQ gap (the 30 points or two standard deviations barrier) with. It will not, cannot work. I definitely did that with my first wife, and it is not an indictment on the person in any way, she is one of the kindest people I have ever known and we are still very good friends, and always will be. In fact I was the official legal guardian of her daughter for years in case anything happened to her. And my current wife and her also really like each other and get along. She is genuinely a good person and the fault of marrying her, was probably almost entirely mine. After all, I have that high IQ right? But I tell you that Boomer Kool-Aid… it’s truly poisonous shit.

2. If you have a high IQ in that sort of range, patience IS a virtue. At least in the sense of it keeping you out of jail, at minimum.⁴

Oh, and here is the poll and after it, also the obligatory warning for you Planet of the Apes denizens.

WARNING: references to spouse-icide, murder etc. are for comedic purposes only. No one here is advocating for carefully planning premeditated (or any other kind) of homicide. Ok monkey-boy? There’s a good monkey! Go get yourself a banana!

1. I am using the general vernacular of the word as most people use it here, not as I used it. In my parlance while you could possibly use the word “smartest” in this context, strictly speaking it would be wrong. What would be the correct word to use here in MY nomenclature is “intelligent”. The 120 IQ guy is usually the most intelligent person in the room. He may also have some traits of smartness but only traits, generally speaking.

2. Because, as is predictable once you understand some basic neurology, the “trying hard” almost inevitably tends to result in a worse outcome than a relaxed, having fun while doing it mode. This applies across disciplines, be it motor-skill based, or intellectual endeavours.

3. You know, the shit that can result in spouse-icide by the other spouse.

4. I mean, if you can’t control your urges, well, at least patience allows you to plan your murders carefully enough to get away with them, right?