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I Am Not Smart Enough to Enter Mensa, But I Can Prove They Are Stupid

Wow! Who the fuck do I think I am to claim Mensa is a stupid organization? But I can prove it. With math.

By Ana-Maria LazarPublished 7 years ago 4 min read
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Photo source: www.flickr.com/photos/cblue98/

First, I have to define some terms, to be able to prove my point. I need to explain stupid, Mensa (and how to enter), IQ, and what IQ tests ignore.

I defined stupid as one’s ability to know something is wrong and still doing it. I will call this A.

Mensa is not an acronym — it is Latin for "table."It denotes a round table where all members are equal, “is ‘the’ high IQ society”, and finally and most important, a“society [that] welcomes people from every walk of life whose IQ is in the top two per cent of the population…” where this 2% is “a score of 132.” Mensa equals Mensa’s members with high IQ. I will call this B.

IQ is an attempt to measure intelligence (called by scientists fluid intelligence — Gf) to enter Mensa, IF one's IQ is bigger than 131. Now, Mensa measures quickness of mental apprehension (or mental agility)”, different of “knowledge, wisdom, memory, or a myriad of other attributes”, but this is not actually a fixed value; it varies compared to the world. By the world, I mean other measurements they have, not everybody. In addition, they claim one’s IQ remains the same as one is becoming older, but they admit some differences can occur before 18 years in that one’s life. I will call this C.

Basically, if I would measure my IQ (which I did ), since I am over 18, my IQ measurement (that is absolute) is changing only compared with other measurements, according to Mensa. The one and only result I got is 107, therefore I am not smart enough to enter Mensa. To be more accurate, I don’t have an IQ high enough to enter this lovely organization. I only said smart in the title because the general assumption is that a high enough IQ to enter Mensa equals smart.

Now, that I have defined some terms, I can do some math. To recap, B means Mensa, as defined, and C means IQ, as defined. Therefore,

B=C IF C>131

What these tests do not measure is my interest to enter their society. I only did a test to see how the real test it is. I really can’t understand why they have a workout on their site, to do before the test, if B is a constant. Anyway, I will call my interest D.

To adjust the math, B=C+D IF C>131

I believe D is an important variable to the equation because I was not interested in entering. I did a warm up test while talking to my boyfriend and wondering if I should play with the cats before or after writing this text. I did the IQ test for this text. Therefore, D influenced the result of the test, so must be bigger than zero.

The rules of Mensa do not take into consideration people’s interest to join their cute organization. In my opinion, they could not measure people’s interest, so they ignore it. Therefore, Mensa is only measuring a part of the 2% with high IQ, only when D=0, so it would not influence their math.

“Mensa has three stated purposes: to identify and foster human intelligence [in certain conditions] for the benefit of humanity [how? What are those notable achievements of Mensa?], to encourage research in the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence, and to promote stimulating intellectual and social opportunities for its members [but let’s not contest our math].”

To recap again, a bunch of high IQ people are using a formula they know is working only in certain conditions, choosing to ignore what they cannot quantify (interest in this case, but other factors can influence B=C as well, not only D). How is this really in the benefit of humanity to measure some people in certain conditions? What is the benefit of that, apart from the information that we have: these people are in a social group?

To come back to my first definition, stupid is one’s ability to know something is wrong and still doing it. I will call this A.

My conclusion is A=B, or as the Iinternet claims Stephan Hawking said,“People who boast about their IQ are losers.”

After all this proving, I don’t think Mensa is stupid, I think it is only a social network for some smart people, that want to take a break from all the things that are going thru their heads, in the company of other smart people. I think Hawking (if he) called them losers (he did so) because he doesn’t agree with their way of spending free time, or doesn’t agree with free time at all.

Now I would like to know what is Hawking doing in what he considers free time. The Internet claims he called his disability an advantage.

Note: All the quotes, except last one, are from here, but the comments in the brackets are mine.

intellectscience
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Ana-Maria Lazar

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