i measure it by comparing myself to a 5 year old, living in the present moment in constant wonderment of life and loving everything about it...all the knowledge I have acquired and im still trying to live free in the present....not there yet.

That is a very good question....

I know some people who are extremelly educated and in sujects that are very difficult to understand but have no common sense...

No answer here..

Arfie,

To me it's both our ability to be effective - (choosing the environments where we can thrive, choosing ways of interacting that are constructive, working logically toward solving life's problems); AND as John said being aware enough to the wonder of the world around us, and living the joy that comes with that.

I remember when I was in a bad way about 8 months ago, realizing my experience of the world was flat. I would go down to the ocean and have no internal reaction to the breeze, sea birds, waves, clouds moving across the sky.... the psych word for it is ahedonic. Recently, when driving somewhere I realized I again am noticing things and feeling moved, have recover the mental ability to enjoy simple things- like watching a bird fly across the sky.

Me all have mentally foggy days. I just don't like mentally foggy seasons or years.

I don't. I have one of those IQ's that's off the charts and tried in college to hang out with the honors crowd, and I was bored to tears, or at least antsiness, "ge me out of here." There are people who are emotionally mature, whom I value much more. People who are funny, witty, nice, understanding, non-judgmental, appreciative, caring....I like this smart better. Is this smart? I don't know. It feels better than people ratting off inane facts who have no emotional depth or psychological soundness. I blather, because I just had a run-in with my brother, who is "smart" and very, very flat, stupid and lost. I, myself, do some brilliant things, and then the simple things sometimes catch me up. Like, I don't know how to fake a job assignement. I only see it from A to perfection. If there is a way to fudge it in the middle ground somewhere, I don't see it. I actually had to ask a colleague one time who used to fudge something that was handed over to me. How do you fudge this? He looked at me like I was stupid. In some things I am. He told me. I did it. No good answer here, I guess. I like to hang with really smart people for a while, then I want to get back to "good" people to get my fix.

Mila,

Smart people don't hold a monopoly on being shallow, boring, or condescending and judgmental. My experience is those sort of people exist at every "IQ" level.

And it's the same for nice people, they are found at all points of the spectrum. Being smart doesn't mean someone doesn't have a kind heart and good character.

IQ is really only a measure of the ability to do something. Science quantifies everything but how can a scientist quanitfy the human spirit?

I'm sure you have heard of that "God Particle" deal. What? Yea....like scientists are going to quantify a particle, right?

IQ is just a measurement tool.

Like, for example.......You might not want me to be a Civil Engineer, right but does that make me stupid? No.....because.....I can track down and find things....that is my gift, right?

So, I figure, in my old age, that my abilities are my abilities and IQ doesn't really mean a whole lot, it just might mean that a person might want to go into one career and not another is about all.

The psychometrist measured my son's IQ at 87, and yet, my son can TELL YOU NATURE FACTS or PLAY SPACE GAMES THAT HAVE THESE SPATIAL PLANE-SITUATIONAL BATTLES. There is NO WAY IN HELL that I can do that. Right?

So, yea. My son is a good naturalist and a good spatial dude and I am a good researcher and proofreader and that's how God or Nature made us.

Does that help you to feel better?

The human brain kind of evens out in the old age anyway.


Dad used to do caligraphy and he couldn't paint. Now, he paints--abstract. His brain changed over time.

The brain is plastic--It's flexible.

As I understand the traditional IQ tests, the scoring is based on a bell curve. 100 represents where the average person falls based on specific cognitive skills (not social, emotional skills). Then it gets broken down into several functional levels. It's hard sometimes to remember that this is not a calibrated score. The difference between 100 and 120 is not 20% but just 20. It's like rating how you feel today on a scale of 1 to 10. What does a 5 really mean? Nothing other than you feel in the middle of 4 and 6. The distance between 5 and 6 is arbitrary. It's only a conceptual continuum to convey a meaning. It is not a 'score.'

I was 'diagnosed' as profoundly gifted as a kid but didn't know it until I was much older. I used to think I might have made more of an effort academically if I hadn't just assumed I was average. But I was learning social and emotional intelligence like a sponge. Like most things in life it's all about balance. I have interests and friends in both camps. I just got a college course on DVD about Relativity and Chaos Theory just for fun. But I also have fun just being silly with the kids. I enjoy my astrophysicist friend just as much as my data entry friend. Using IQ for anything other than specific academia is a mistake. It would be like saying that since I am blonde I must only associate with blondes. Yuck. I'd much rather celebrate diversity in all things including intelligence. When we do, we all become more compassionate and more human.

Good to see you back Jen, I hope that means your feeling better :-)

I *think* I tested around the 130's.
Ain't got nothin' to show for it.

...It isn't what you have, it's what you do with it.

...My dad always told me I wouldn't amount to much...and he messed up my mind so badly he kind of assured that would happen.

Einstein was thought of as a social idiot. The fact is that people will often judge someone, based on their own understandings and experience. EX: Someone who is street-wise will think anyone who is clueless about the dangers, is a moron. and Likewise people who have been told they are gifted intellectually often think that if you don't know the theory of relativity, you are a mental delinquent. In neither case does that measure a person's IQ. Preset judgements established by your social conditioning and perspective of others is a human thing and subject to error as well as tests based on what is thought of as the social norm, especially if the subject does not interest the person and then it all looks like R^&^%(GKJHOG*&, to them. It's the human thing again.... the need to label, catagorize and define. Add to that, ADD, PTSD, BPD, Autism.........and those tests are meaningless.

I was literally the "smart one" in my family--ended up being promoted at school until I skipped 2 grades and was 2 grades ahead by 10th grade in high school. And I was brutalized for it. In my violent, dysfunctional family, it was punished regularly. When books were found that my parents didn't understand--not dirty books, but books assigned to me in school--my father beat me with his fists. My reading Kierkegaard's philosophy for a high school class at 15 got me punched several times in the face one night when my father found out about it. I was tested and found to have a high IQ as an adult. I am a college professor now, and my Appalachian family is still completely hostile about it.

I knew better than to be a snob or be full of myself about it, but I could no more help being smart than anyone could help being tall or short. So I had to have PTSD survivor smarts and survive my family's violence and the violence in the streets growing up in a war abroad when my hillbilly family became missionaries ill-prepared for life overseas--street smarts. And I had to enjoy intellectual pursuits at school and then survive being brutally, brutally punished for them with more enraged trauma at home. My blood was sprayed across my bedroom wall the night I came home and was beaten savagely by both of my parents because I had starred in my high school play. No amount of humility ever stemmed the tide of abusive reaction to being the "smart one." Odd how people can react with hostility to what we might all assume would be celebrated and rewarded.

Muji, I have felt like that. "I can't help being smart. It's the way I was born." But I didn't have to suffer for it with my family, except my brother, about whom I've spoken. He's still mad at my IQ being higher than his. He is the abuser now.

Letitbe, I know that not only smart people are flat. I'm mad at my brother.

@ muji and Milla....
I truly believe that parents with kids that have apptitudes higher than theirs are actually; although secretly; afraid of that child. Especially true in situations where there is a "control" thing going on. Sometimes it is a simple pride issue, which makes no good sense because almost everyones perception of being a good parent is to want a life so much better for their children. Over the ages, alcoholism, drug addiction and mental health problems have all been huge factors as well. One factor that is not often talked about is social breeding. It is only recently; the last 100 years that "social circles" have grown beyond small secluded sects where people were free to adopt their own morality good or bad and enjoy it freely within those small circles. So easy to make immoral choices when all those around you agree and do likewise. In the 1990's I actually believed that the days of "hangin colored's" were thankfully over and then seemingly out of nowhere come two teenagers from a secluded town in Texas who because of their social breeding, thought it was perfectly acceptable to drag that poor man by chain behind his own pick-up truck which they also stole. That just re-winded social progress 100 years. Brute force is still a driving force in society and in some places, all the justification needed to support, who is right and who is smart. Still though, we expect everyone to form a line and walk one path, with many times the person in charge believing that those who cannot walk the same line should be exterminated or comfined to a lesser form of life with no thought at all that they themselves could be the one in error.

I guess for me when Im looking at other people it comes down to things like their ability to understand another persons perspective. How much do you see outside of yourself?

I dont get hung up on IQ. Standardized ways of measuring intellect never seem to quite fit anyway. I've met far too many people who excell at academics but fall quite short on common sense, and vice versa to really buy into it.

@ Twilight....Thumbs up!... Nothing infered to anyone, but the cold hard facts are that it simply does not take High IQ to empathise and understand that there are so many experiences and viewpoints out there and all are opportunity to learn because they were real enough to the other person to rest their safety and future on. It get's complicated so, when people's belief's become immovable and I mean unto their death. I, have always challenged myself; no matter how frightening; to at least have a "Cliff's Note's" understanding of the other side. I don't know if that is enough, but I hope and pray that I never let my mind be closed. To me that is being one of the "Walking Dead".